Greetings! I, Rainwalker Winterpainter, do hereby publicly invite all candidates for Vergennes Alderman on the ballot on September 22nd, 2020's Special Election to attend a Virtual Candidates' Forum hosted and moderated by myself via Zoom during ninety minutes on the evening of September 15th, 2020. For the sake of simplicity and meeting security, only participating candidates will appear in the video conference, which will be recorded and published. See below for how citizen participation is still welcome.
Format will be simple: we will begin by Pledging Allegiance. After a few introductory remarks by myself, each candidate will be granted FOUR minutes to introduce himself or herself and present an agenda item as an elected Alderman will be expected to do. Thus, the format I propose is a Mock City Council Meeting. We next will enjoy a few minutes for a body break. As a second phase, each candidate will receive a single question from myself and will have an additional TWO minutes to respond. Depending on participation and how easily and efficiently I am able to moderate, time per candidate allowed may be longer. Finally, in a third phase, I may use my own discretion to ask clarifying questions of candidates without regard to precedence in order to get into the "hot button" issues I discussed in attempting to organize an in-person event, but also meet a hard end time of 7:00 pm.
CANDIDATES: please present your agenda item to me by WEDNESDAY NIGHT, September 9th, 2020, by replying to author here on Front Porch Forum so I can publish a mock agenda. I will work to set up a website, so if you want to provide supporting documentation, you should be able to do so.
CITIZENS: I will publish the mock agenda on Friday, September 11th, 2020. Therefore, please submit a question to me by replyig to author and addressed to a specific candidate by Saturday evening, September 12th, 2020 once you have had a chance to review each candidate's desired agenda item. (Your questions to candidates do NOT have to be about their agenda items.) This way I can review citizen desire in time to moderate the Tuesday event. Thank you all for your participation : )
Rainwalker Winterpainter