The signs are up, and the races are on.

For the next few weeks, council and mayoral hopefuls will be vying for your votes in Radium Hot Springs and the District of Invermere, and the races in both communities are worth watching, as is the race for Area G director.

Municipal politics doesn’t always get the blood pumping — or the voter turnout — of its federal and provincial cousins, but if you’re looking for a vote to cast this year that will directly impact your life for the next few years, November 19 is the day to do it.

Your local councillors aren’t likely to try to change the words to O Canada, can’t up the sentences for criminals and won’t have final say on whether or not we all end up with smart meters installed behind our houses.

But they will be the ones who get local parks built, who push for a new rec centre (something both mayoral candidates discuss in our first question and answer session on page A5), who decide whether or not you can idle your car or park on certain streets for so many hours.

In Invermere and at the Regional District level, they’ll weigh in on how Lake Windermere gets used in future years.

As voting day gets closer, we’ll be bringing you a look at what each of the candidates hopes to accomplish, the ideas they’re bringing to the table and the backgrounds that brought them there in the first place.

Outside the pages of The Echo, there are also all-candidates meetings set up for Radium and Invermere on November 2 and 7, respectively. While we’ll be there for those of you who can’t make it, they’re worth attending for those with room in their schedules and questions on the brain.

And, of course, watching an election only does so much if you don’t get to the polls. In addition to the Saturday voting day, there are advance polls coming in early November.

These are your communities, and now’s the time to make your mark.

—The Valley Echo