Here’s the New TV/League of Women Voters debate with Newton’s seven mayoral candidates.
The candidate’s next debate will be this Tuesday Aug. 15, 7 p.m. at the Senior Center, 345 Walnut Street.
VIDEO: NewTV/League of Women Voters Mayoral Debate
by Greg Reibman | Aug 11, 2017 | Mayor's race, NewTV | 9 comments
Two observations from watching the full debate.
First, as (I) expected Ruthanne Fuller has full command of the budget and the city’s financial challenges.
Second, the quote of the debate comes from Amy Sangiolo (around 51:40) regarding her role on the school committee. Newton parents should listen to it. Here is my favorite part. “For 19 years, while my kids were going to the Newton Public Schools, I have watched the School Committee debate on end for full-day K and also for a late high school start time. That has been a ridiculously long process. The health and well-being of our students is parliament. We should look after them.” Well said!
@ Jeffrey – And WHY hasn’t she used her influence while on the Board of Alderman and Council to get the SC and Mayor to go to Full Day Kindergarten and Change the Start time?? They both know the Buzz words to Say during an election but Actions and YEARS on the Board/Council speak louder than Words. Makes one wonder how they will negotiate Pilots or other city issues?? And one would hope that Fuller as Vice Chair of Finance would have a strong command of the Budget – but why hasn’t she used that influence to make changes with employee Pensions??
@Joanne: I believe you may be overestimating the power a city councilor might have on budget decisions under our strong mayor system.
But if you are correct, why is it that you criticize City Councilors Sangiolo and Fuller for inaction but NOT Council President Lennon? Seems like they should all be subject to this line or criticism or none of them should be.
And if that’s the case, which of the other four candidates are you suporting?
Joanne. It would be wonderful if questions like yours were asked directly at the debate, but the League, unfortunately, keeps using the same format. I would love it if they experimented once in a while.
You bring up a reoccurring problem with elected officials. I have seen school committee candidates run on a full day K platform, but the words “full day” are only uttered during election campaigns. If you can figure out which candidate will deliver on the budget and high school start times, I am all ears.
If all the candidates were members of the City Council, that would be a question we could ask. We call this a ‘forum’ instead of a ‘debate’ because we don’t target specific questions to specific candidates (like you saw in the presidential debates last year.) This is standard League process to enable people to compare apples to apples–same question to all candidates, same amount of time to answer. The same applies to follow-up questions, which is what I think you wanted.
We did experiment a few elections ago by having candidates pose questions of all the other candidates–but it was ALL the other candidates, and it wasn’t especially exciting.
But if the two candidates in the general Mayoral election are both city councilors, send us that question for that forum!
Sue, the League is doing a huge service, so I don’t want to be critical. More experimentation might be fruitful. In a challenger/incumbent election, the current forum format helps incumbents, since they never receive questions about their voting record. As such, accountability at the polls is weakened.
Wow! Sad to say that my saturday afternoon was spent watching the NewTV Mayoral Debate (how’s that for being a local politics political junkie!). Thanks for posting the whole thing! I hope this gets a lot of views. It is a really terrific illustration of all the candidate’s strengths & weaknesses. We have three top tier counselors hoping to win spots in the Preliminary on Sept 12. With all things being equal I think the scale tips in Fuller’s favor. Ruthanne has the business & political acumen to put the city back on track fiscally. The next Mayor is going to have some tough challenges ahead. No one can come close to her depth of knowledge in the details of how to build fiscal sustainability in the next decade. In addition she has the temperament and collaborative spirit to build the right talent, and the right team to develop the best practices to get the job done.
Ruthanne’s years of management, strategic planning in business and non profit sectors and her years of experience on the City Council digging deep into our finances, makes her uniquely qualified to manage and lead our city as the next Mayor of Newton. I urge V14 Nation to vote #Fuller4Mayor on Sept 12th.
Greg – I was responding to Jeffrey’s post which directly discussed Sangiolo and Fuller. You call it criticizing – I call it facts.
Are you asking everyone who posts comments to tell you who they are voting for? Or just me?
@ Greg – I must be hallucinating again – I thought you had posted you wanted to know who everyone is voting for?? Not just me! I guess I will have to be more careful with what I read on the internet because you never know the next minute it might just disappear.