It’s almost time to flip the calendar over to a new year, which means local governing bodies like the Town Council and Fountain Hills Unified School District Governing Board are primed to host their final meetings of 2016.

The School Board is set to meet this very evening, Dec. 14, at 6:30 p.m. in the District Learning Center. Tomorrow evening, also beginning at 6:30 p.m., the Town Council will work through one final agenda of the year at Town Hall.

If you’ve got an interest in local politics or how important decisions get made, this would be a good time to look into exactly that. Both agendas are full of current hot topics that will be discussed or possibly voted on before 2016 can draw to a close.

Of particular interest on the local district’s side, a number of new classes will be discussed at this week’s meeting. Form a collaborative class with the Fountain Hills Theater to Capstone courses for the high school, these classes could open up lots of new options for local students. High School Principal Cain Jagodzinski will also speak during this meeting, giving Board and audience members a look at the inner workings of his campus.

Over at the Town Council meeting, members will continue to hash out details of the noise regulations, as well as take a look at proposed concepts for Fire Station #2 and consider a proposed draft of the 2016 Fountain Hills Strategic Plan presented by the Strategic Planning Advisory Commission.

So why are we harping on these meetings? Because we have a lot of readers who are clearly interested in these types of topics, but their questions, concerns and comments often don’t get brought up until after votes are already cast. These boards are here to represent the community of Fountain Hills, but they can only do that job to the fullest if the community is occasionally there to represent itself.

So we encourage folks to consider dropping by one (or both) of these meetings this week. It’ll give you a good idea of how things run and, who knows, maybe you’ll decide to become a more regular face in the audience in 2017.