City Council candidate offers youth, freedom from Decepticon tyranny

It was with a bit of pleasure I read this morning's news about 22-year old Shaun Cormier, who will be running for City Council this fall.

First of all, it's almost always good to bring youth into situations like this. Yes, people will automatically fault him for inexperience, but that can be overcome if he has decent enough ideas. And it sounds like he's at least on the right track:

He suggested a tax incentive for first-time homeowners, and said the city should work to attract recreation-oriented businesses such as a miniature golf course or an arcade.

He's also eyeing the empty movie theater on Main Street.

"It's been vacant for so long. We really need to explore ways to make it more lively again," Cormier said.

The theater could be a concert venue, or could be converted to a dance club, he suggested, noting that the club could have some 21-plus nights, but could also host 18-plus nights when no alcohol is served.

All pretty solid ideas, if you ask me.

That theater on Main Street is just ripe for improvement, and while there may be some issues with it (I hear the inside isn't quite fit for man nor beast in its current state), it's got potential. Personally, I'd like to see it become an art-house movie theater, but the club idea isn't terrible.

Either way, it's nice to see someone with some reasonable ideas for actually drawing people into town.

It's still quite early of course, so there's a while yet to see if he actually has viable plans or not, but in trying to find out just who Shaun Cormier is I found this page containing an interview.

The S&E article mentioned him working for Hasbro, and the interview goes into glorious detail:

There are times I do get to play with toys, but that’s only after I have repaired them, finished programming them, or built the electronics for them. Although to me, programming a toy is just like playing with a toy. I am programming the movement of the toy for the final production change.

Nice, so he's at least a fairly smart guy with some intellectual curiosity. Why he's getting into politics is beyond me. Regardless, here's the really important bit:

One of the toys I am working on is called Butterscotch. It is a life size miniature pony that moves its head and blows air out of its nostrils. I’m working on some new Spiderman toys that won’t be out until 2007, some Transformers, and some of the Playskool line.

So not only does he make Transformers (which is awesome), but he makes some sort of demonic horse creature which will surely be involved with bringing about the forthcoming apocalypse!

Based on his experience both with taming fire-breathing stallions of doom and his experience with the complex political climate of the planet Cybertron, he definitely looks like the most qualified candidate in some time.

[Update 3/1/07] A friend who worked with Cormier a few years back has indicated that Cormier's intellectual curiosity at the time he knew him was in fact rather lacking. Hopefully that situation has changed, but the jury's still out on this one until more is known.

Said friend also made fun of the mini-golf and arcade ideas, which I have to agree are pretty weak (does anybody still go to arcades anymore?), but the basic premise of increasing recreational activities I think is still sound.

Nevertheless, Transformers are still awesome!