LONDON (May 7) – London’s civic election this October might be its most important in decades. Certainly the newly elected council will be dealing with the most sweeping changes in the city’s governance model in 50 years. That alone argues for new leadership around the council table.

And, by the way, it probably won’t be the familiar backwards horseshoe come fall. Renovations this summer will re-orient the council table to face the public – and, of course, it will be smaller.

The new city council elected on Oct. 25 will only have 15 members, down from the current 19. Gone will be the four controllers. Gone, too, will be the vetting function board of control exercised on financial and administrative matters.

Council’s current four standing committees will be reduced to three. The workload won’t be reduced, though, which means Londoners need to pick councillors who are capable of sifting through large volumes of information and who are willing to carry their share of the governance burden.

Councillors elected this fall will have dual, often conflicting, responsibilities. They must ably represent the interests of the residents of their ward. And they must at times put narrow interests aside in favour of the collective good. Achieving that fine balance will require candidates with a clear vision of where London needs to go in this decade and strong sense of how to get there.

As well, it will require candidates who are not so rooted in the recent battles of what at times has been a dysfunctional, under-achieving city council. It will require candidates who are not so timid about trying new ideas. It will require candidates who are not so wed to ideology.

And it will certainly require voters capable of weighing the risk of stand-pat vs. let’s get moving, able to make courageous choices to foster real progressive change.