It’s an unusual occurrence in a city where municipal elections usually bring packed stadiums and large ballots.
But with the Aug. 19 write-in deadline fast approaching after a three-month nomination period, there are still two board races with only one candidate running, as well as 14 school trustee races in which that is the case.
The total number of applicants also appears to be much lower than in 2018.
By Friday afternoon, a total of 197 candidates had registered, including 17 for mayor, 92 for city council and 88 for school superintendent.
In 2018, a total of 501 candidates were registered, of which 35 for mayor, 242 for municipal councilor and 224 for school superintendent.
“I think local democracy is in a very sad state in the city of Toronto,” Myer Siemiatycki, professor emeritus at Metropolitan University of Toronto, told CP24.com this week.  “This sets a new bar on the wrong end of the continuum.  There’s the large number of incumbents who aren’t running for re-election and don’t want to continue doing the job, the low number of new candidates interested in the positions, and the general kind of disconnect and even disinterest that many residents seem to show about the city.  That’s a whole separate kind of like a constellation of symptoms that come together, but they come together to tell us that the patient is getting quite sick, and the patient is unfortunately local democracy.”
Under the rules for municipal elections in Ontario, if there is only one qualified candidate running for a particular office as of 4 p.m.  on August 22, that candidate will be officially declared elected by acclamation, meaning their names won’t even appear on the ballot.
Siemiatycki said the prospect of multiple candidates being recognized on Aug. 22 would be a “dangerous sign for the governance of the city of Toronto.”
While it has happened from time to time in French-language school boards, the last time candidates were named as councilors or trustees with either of the city’s two English-language school boards was in 2003.
Then two councilors and five administrators were finally rewarded.
Speaking to CP24.com, Siemiatycki acknowledged that there are lower levels of political engagement across the country right now, and that the situation is not unique to Toronto.
But he said the issue of finding candidates willing to seek local office appears to have worsened further at the local level after Premier Doug Ford’s decision to reduce the size of the city council in 2018 and create huge wards with more than 100,000 voters.
Already seven sitting council officers have either resigned to pursue other opportunities or announced they will not seek re-election in the fall, an incredibly rare occurrence.
“In many ways the work is much more expensive.  You take on double the work as a councilor in terms of how many people you have to represent and how much work will be on your plate and it has made it a much less enjoyable job and position for some councillors.  In the past, what a lot of local politicians liked about being elected mayor was that you were really grassroots, you were street-level, you were neighborhood-based,” Siemiatycki said.  “Now with the huge constituencies I think a lot of local politicians don’t feel connected to neighborhoods and issues like they used to.  Add all of that up and there are tons of reasons why it makes sense not to run for municipal office.”
Almost a third of the matches in the TDSB and TCDSB could lead to cheers 
There are currently two council districts in the City of Toronto where incumbent councilors are ravaging unopposed – Etobicoke Center (Stephen Holyday) and Don Valley North (Shelley Carroll).
But at the level of school administrators the situation is tougher.
As of Friday afternoon, about a third of school commissioner races in both the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and the Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) involved candidates running unopposed.
Meanwhile, there were only four combined candidates seeking to fill the five school trustee positions with French-speaking boards.
Shelley Laskin is one of the peerless nominations.  He is seeking re-election as the TDSB trustee in Ward 8 after narrowly defeating six other candidates in the area during the last municipal elections.
She told CP24.com she still plans to launch a campaign later this month and has a date set for a fundraiser, but she’ll be ready to continue the debate about the future of public education in other ways if a challenger doesn’t sign up.
“Just because you don’t have to run an election doesn’t mean you stop wanting to get your messages out,” he said.  “There are many opportunities to continue to engage parents and part of the role is that engagement with parents and carers at a local level.  Obviously you are one of 22 trustees who make decisions at board level, but local engagement and involvement of parents and carers is so critical to children’s success and wellbeing.’
Laskin, who has served five terms as a trustee, said she doesn’t remember being unopposed this late in the nomination period, but said there have been times when a flurry of candidates signed on at the last minute.
She’s optimistic it will happen this time, but acknowledged there are challenges in getting people to run at the admin level, where expensive campaigns can be a barrier to entry for some and compensation is such that most admins still have to full time job.
Administrators earn $25,507 annually and have a discretionary budget of $11,780.
“Most of us have support from our friends and family.  It’s not like there’s a secret pot of money that people can tap into, and because donations aren’t tax-deductible at the school board level, it’s a little hard to sell it just for someone you don’t know, getting their support,” he said. “So the campaign itself is challenging. And it’s also hard to get people to commit fully to a 24/7 profession that has little pay.”
A few dozen additional candidates have signed up in the past week
About 30 more candidates for Toronto municipal office have registered in the past seven days, but there hasn’t been, at least so far, a flood of candidates looking to throw their hats in the ring before the Aug. 19 deadline.
Education advocate Annie Kidder, who is the executive director of the group People for Education, told CP24.com she was “horrified” to learn of the low number of candidates who have registered to run for commissioner races so far.
While he hopes the situation could change between now and the nomination deadline, he said the apparent lack of interest is “disturbing” because it suggests “not enough people understand what’s going on in school boards in relation to all the choices that are made by school administrators”.
Boards, he said, make important decisions about school scheduling, staffing, class sizes and even whether to open new schools or close aging, underutilized ones.
“It’s worrying that people don’t necessarily connect the dots between these local levels of government and what’s actually happening on the ground,” he said.  “Overall, the health and strength of public education will suffer without truly great candidates running for school trustees.”
Torontonians are set to head to the polls on October 24th.