File photo of a sign directing people to a polling station in the City of Kamloops.
If you’re still on the fence over who will get your vote when the Municipal Election takes place on Oct. 15, you’ll be able to ask the mayoral and council candidates where they stand tonight.
Radio NL, along with Kamloops This Week and CBC Kamloops will be co-presenting a public all-candidates forum in the Grand Hall at Thompson Rivers University this evening.
KTW Editor, Chris Foulds, said this morning on the NL Morning News, that the plan is to get right to the public’s chance to question the candidates.
“We’re going to dispense with any media questions at the start because time is of the essence and the people there want to ask their candidates their questions,” he said.
“So, I’m going to introduce it, I’m going to explain the format and then we’re going to go straight into a Q&A, right from the audience, right after the opening remarks from the candidates for a minute or two and we’re going to let the audience’s use the two microphones and ask their questions.”
Foulds says the floor will be open for people to ask the would-be mayors and councillors anything they want.
“There’s no restrictions on topics, anyone can come up and ask any question they want. Of course, we know what the main topics will be and I anticipate the issues related to street crime, homelessness, mental health and addictions will probably carry the bulk of the questions but there’ll be a lot of other topics raised today too,” Foulds said.
With five people running for the Mayor’s chair and another 23 vying for a seat on council, there is a lot of planning involved, Foulds said.
“It’s always a challenge when we have this many candidates. We had 21 candidates for council in the last election and few more the previous election so it’s hard to do it.,” he said. “You have to map it out, we’ve done stories on four issues we think are important and we group them out where we talk to five councillors here, six councillors here and all the mayors so it’s a lot of work for sure.”
“We’re going to have four groups in 25 minute increments, take the stage, have a minute to make their spiel and go right into Q&A from the audience.”
The mayoral portion gets underway at 7 p.m. sharp followed by the candidates for city council.
Our own NL Newsday host, Brett Mineer, will be one of the moderators along with the CBC’s Doug Herbert.
