It’s almost over folks

Elections season, I’m not completely sure whether I love it or I hate it. I do know one thing though as it becomes closer to winding down, I am sure excited it’s almost over. Well this cycle of taxing district elections are almost over with anyways. However, with the state and county primaries being right around the corner I am doubtful we will get more than a day or two off from campaigning. But at least these particular spots will soon be filled and we will have a moment to breath in our community before everyone goes back into campaigning mode.
In a way I absolutely love it though, it gives me something to write about other then the usual rehashing of meetings for everyone who could not, or would not, attend. Political forums are pretty similar when it comes to my job, but there are different crowds and we get the chance to hear what it is that is concerning citizens enough for them to show up and ask the tough questions. I’m not going to lie though, I enjoyed this week’s forum with Matthew Bundy’s Government class most of all. They were a bright group of kids and all of them asked pertinent questions. They are the future of this community and I think it is important for all of us, not just the candidates to hear about what concerns them on a daily basis.
I only got to sit in on one of the class periods because I was busy putting this week’s paper together, but from what I could see our town is in good hands if these kids decide to make their lives here after graduation. I actually think it would be interesting in the future if the candidates did this with a few different younger grades as well, a small sampling of the different age groups to see what matters to them. Some people might not think that the young elementary age kids have much to ask, but I can tell you as the mother of a third grader, he has many things he would like to know and is very opinionated on what he thinks should happen here. I think at the first Comprehensive Plan Open House last spring, the girls from Economic Development probably regretted asking him what he wanted to see here in ten years, because he proceeded to spend ten minutes telling them all about what he wanted to see and what he didn’t want to see.
Besides the student political forum article, we have one more piece of election related material left. It has been a long standing tradition for the editor to send questionnaires to the candidates in contested elections and then publish their answers in the last issue before Election Day. That will be next week in our Oct. 30 issue.
This year I went at it a bit differently and in addition to my five questions I also gave our readers an opportunity to submit questions to me. I didn’t get too many of them so each of them were sent to the candidates.
I thought long and hard about the questions I asked. I wanted to make sure they were questions that really made them think and I wanted those questions to be related to discussions I have heard and read come up again and again in our community. I hope you feel I gave them a good array of topics and that those questions help you make up your mind on who to vote for if you are still on the fence.