Mayoral Forum-First Question-My Thoughts

Initially, I note my appreciation for the candidates' willingness to join this discussion. I hope you will all agree that, at least so far, the commenters have been behaving themselves in a manner befitting the circumstances.

I also point out, too, that I think all three candidates who chose to respond did so in a thoughtful, reasoned manner. These people clearly took the time to think these things through. Thank you.

Susan Kahn: Ms. Kahn's response demonstrated that she can write and understands the difficulties presently faced by citizens in dealing with their local government. She correctly recognizes the need to reconnect the citizens with the process.

Ed McKnight: Mr. McKnight, too, recognizes the fundamental challenges we face vis-à-vis our local government.

I particularly enjoyed this line: "What if the manager and commission are too friendly instead of maintaining a supervisor employee relationship?" This is an excellent point and, in all fairness to the City Commission, it is very easy to fall into a friendly relationship with one's employees. How can a Commissioner combat that?

Mr. McKnight also raised an important issue with the Neighborhood Councils, an issue that led to some discussion about their role in the comments. Since my past experience on Council No. 1 was raised, I hope to post something just about the Neighborhood Councils.

Larry Steele: Mr. Steele was the only candidate to respond that City Government is broken. From his answer, though, I think it is apparent that the difference between answers was merely semantic in nature; all three agree on the fundamental problem.

And what is that problem? It is a lack of citizen involvement in the decision making process. How will each of these candidates fix that problem? Well, participating in this process is a start.

But I think the question goes deeper. What is it within each of these three candidates that we as citizens can look to in order to believe that he or she has the 'backbone' to step into this position and not fall into lockstep with the other Commissioners? Recall, if you will, that our present Mayor campaigned on a similar theme. Now she won't even respond to my emails.

So what is it? How will these three resist the tremendous peer pressure to 'tow the line?'