The second of 2 Blacksburg Town Council Forums was held on 10/26/09. I think it was a major success. Tough questions were asked and answered. A number of rebuttals occured. You can go to the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County webpage for Candidate Forums and find the Voter Guides in the original version printed prior to the forums, as well as the extended versions of the Voter Guides that include the written responses of questions presented by citizens at the forums (these include those questions that were asked and those that were not asked). Links to the videos, where you can see the forums for yourself, are also included.
I found both the videos and the written responses to be informative individually, yet together I got a much better idea of how the candidates respond to issues that must be dealt with immediately (the forum questions) and how they respond to issues when they are given time to study the issue and do some research. Probably 90% of all the issues elected officials deal with fit into that later category of allowing time for the official to study the issue before expressing an opinion or casting a vote.
There is one question that I would have asked these candidates, if I had been a Blacksburg resident. That question would have been:
Being involved with the forums caused me to start doing a little bit of looking and asking myself questions. What I found was that most of the real ‘meat’ of what the Blacksburg Town Council does occurs during the work sessions. By the time the Town Council meeting comes around, the Town Council members have already done all of the background work and discussion and are simply ready to vote.
It is during those work sessions that the public has an opportunity to see how Town Council members are addressing the issues, how they think, what they perceive to be the important features of the issue. This is where many of the citizen concerns are raised and discussed. In short, this is the information that voters need in order to effectively evaluate the performance of their elected officials.
These work sessions are no easier for the public to attend than the council meetings, in fact, because of the time of day, they are often more difficult for people to attend.
In contrast, Christiansburg Town Council does not use work sessions and much of the thought processing and values of the officials comes through in the discussion at Town Council. (You can see examples of this on the videos of those meetings posted on myvaresources.com.) Granted, Christiansburg has not had the long history of having made those meetings accessible in video format. In fact, they still do not do it. Some aggravating old lady does it for them:) But, in the absence of unpublished work sessions, the Christiansburg Town Council allows decision-making to be more open to the public than the system Blacksburg uses. (You better believe that aggravating old lady would be in there recording work sessions for Christiansburg if they were used and posting them online!)
In my opinion, it would be a service to the citizens of Blacksburg, and a good example of open government, if the Blacksburg Town Council would record and make public those work sessions. Minutes do not always provide the full picture and should not be relied upon to provide more than a summary of what occurred.
I wonder if any of the candidates have considered this question, and if they have, would they support it or be against it. Maybe elected officials will discuss it in a work session:)
