If you want to see what “sacrificial” looks like, sit in on a local school board or city council meeting.

Sitting behind those desks and nameplates is a collection of working professionals, business owners, stay-at-home parents and retirees. Basically, everyday people just like us who, for their own reasons, decided to run for office with the idea that they could make a difference in their respective communities.

More often than not, they’re good folks who are new to politics — far from the groomed politicians we send to the Legislature, the Governor’s Mansion or Congress. They’ll bring their own sensibilities to a job they have to learn on the fly, and that can make for amusing, bumpy or awkward moments.

That’s not to say that some people don’t run for office for more targeted reasons. But for the most part, you can take two things to the bank when it comes to governing at the local level.

First: The people doing these jobs don’t get much of anything in terms of compensation. You don’t get rich serving on town boards and city commissions. Instead, you get to spend a lot of spare time campaigning, attending meetings, and evenings at home poring over budgets, reports and legalese.

Not exactly “The West Wing” or “House of Cards,” and probably rarely as amusing as “Parks and Recreation.” It’s a grind, and almost all of it is on your own time and your own dime.

Second: The actions these people take have a greater impact on your daily life than anything that happens on the state and national level.

If that surprises you, think of it this way: Your city councils, school boards and county commissions make decisions at every meeting that affect the sales taxes you pay at the grocery store, the roads you drive on to get there, and the property taxes you owe every year.

Homeowners’ insurance rates are directly tied to how well your community funds its fire department. The teachers your kids learn from feel the weight — good or bad — of school board decisions. And so on.

Last week, I went to a school board debate for Union Public Schools. Two of the three candidates showed up to answer questions for 90 minutes in front of a small crowd at the debate site as well as those watching on Facebook Live.

By the time the debate started, most Tulsans had settled in for dinner or were already watching their favorite shows or perhaps a ballgame on TV. But not the candidates.

They had to go out and meet people, send out campaign literature, work the phones and study up for the debate. This, after working full days and taking care of whatever other family and business obligations they had.

If they win, the grind doesn’t end; it just changes. In addition to the duties I detailed earlier, they’ll be subject to taking calls or answering emails from constituents, many of whom might not be all that happy or polite.

Each decision carries the potential of criticism, Monday-morning quarterbacking, and even personal attacks.

And yet, these folks agree to take on those and other burdens. If you’re lucky, you’ll be represented by people who are good at this governing thing.

Before last week’s debate started, I made sure to tell the participants and the audience that it was important that the candidates be recognized for taking that on.

It’s easy to think cynically of those seeking public office as people stroking their own egos or fueling bigger ambitions. That happens, but more often than not, the desire to win a seat in local government is more about seeing a need and believing you can meet it.

With that in mind, I told the candidates that running for office was an act of patriotism. That word gets thrown around too loosely these days, but it works here. Patriotic duty and civic duty line up nicely when intentions are good and efforts sincere.

I’d add this: If you win that seat, prepare to be held accountable — by the public, by the press, and by your own colleagues. Be prepared to dodge some arrows. Be ready to listen, to celebrate wins and accept responsibility for missteps.

But more than that, just know that if you do your job well, you’re part of an enterprise that makes this country run. A governor or senator might get all the attention, but your actions are those that can make or break the lives of people with whom you share a community.

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