LWVN and NewTV have finished taping Candidates’ Forums for all the City Council races, including a second round with the Ward 5 Ward candidates. We chose to include write-in candidate Rena Getz with the winners of the preliminary election, Bill Humphrey and Kathy Winters, as she met League criteria used in the 2017 Ward 4 Ward Councilor election. Look for the programs to all be released over the next couple of weeks!
We did not record any forums for the School Committee races, as one candidate in each race declined to participate. League rules do not allow for ’empty chair’ forums with only one candidate. The candidates who were willing to participate were Tamika Olszewski in Ward 4, Emily Prenner in Ward 5 and Ruth Goldman in Ward 6. Those who chose not to participate or who did not respond to a phone call and multiple emails were Alex Koifman in Ward 4, Lev Agranovich in Ward 5, and Galina Rosenblit in Ward 6.
LWVN will be producing an online Voters Guide in October, so be sure to check the website lwvnewton.org. NewTV has produced Candidate Messages, 3-minute messages which all candidates were invited to create, available in October at NewTV.org/Decision2019
I want to take a moment to thank Sue Flicop and Sharyn Roberts on all of the work that they put into making these forums “run on time.” They work to schedule the forums with people who have very busy schedules, assemble questions and arrange for people to sort questions for each forum, someone to be a time keeper while respecting differences of candidates schedules, and more.
Also I big thank you to our partner Stephen Kessinger and the NewTV team. They are an excellent and talented team and appreciate all that they do to make the forums a success.
I hope you all will take a moment to thank Sharyn, Stephen, and Sue.