The job can be thankless. It requires late-night hours and committee meetings. It doesn’t pay.

But serving on a city council might be one of the most important jobs you’ll ever do.

Local ballots will be loaded with city council races in November. Yours could be one of those names offering voters choices. You could serve as a city councilor and work for improvements in your community.

Why not?

When it comes to local politics, it seems as if changes don’t happen fast enough. There’s still no Home Depot. There still are cracked sidewalks and pot-holed roads.

Yet when councilors do make changes, some residents inevitably don’t like them. Take Bandon’s burning barrel ban, for example. A year later, it’s still a hotly debated issue.

Improving a local community takes gumption, and not everyone has it. Some people would rather blame “the good old boy network” that allegedly controls every town.

But you know what? Other than the Country Music Channel, good old boy networks are mostly imaginary.

Yes, in many small communities the same people do seem to hold leadership positions year after year. In most cases, however, it’s not because they’re greedy for power. It’s because they care enough about their communities to take action. If they seem to be a tight-knit group, it’s probably because so few people want to help.

City council races in small communities often go uncontested. When that happens, nobody should complain about seeing the same old faces running local government.

So what about you? If you don’t like how your town’s current leaders are running things, this is your chance to change things. Think about what you would like to accomplish. File your paperwork. Knock on doors. Talk about your ideas.

The project could be the start of a successful, productive political endeavor. At the very worst, you’ll meet a lot of your neighbors.

City recorders around the county said this week that a lot of people have stopped in at city halls to pick up information packets, but few people have filed.

Aug. 26 is the deadline. How about it?