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Plan ahead for some important events! LWV Candidate Forums!

admin — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 01:36:47 +0000

November 3, 2009 is election day in Virginia. Voters will be casting votes for:

Governor
Lieutenant Governor
Attorney General
House of Delegates
Board of Supervisors
School Board
Mayor of Blacksburg
Town Council of Blacksburg
Christiansburg Referendum to Move the Voting Date from May to November

That date is not so very far away. Now is the time to either start or continue looking at the choices available to you.

The League of Women Voters of Montgomery County will be hosting several Candidate Forums and you can find information on when those forums will occur at the LWV of Montgomery County, VA’s website at http:lwvmcva.org. The Leage of Women Voters of Virginia will co-host with the AARP of Virginia a statewide televised Gubernatorial Debate also and that information is on the site as well.

You will also find other useful links such as the VOTER INFORMATION link which gives you links to such information as:

how to verify that you are registered to vote
where you go to vote
what is on your ballot
how to submit and verify the status of an absentee ballot
Spanish and English version of the aCLU documents describing your voting rights
and, FACTCHECK.org, one of the best places around to find out if the information you have been provided is accurate.

Every one of the web pages on that website has a link to VOTE411.org where you can find a ton of information along these lines and MORE!

Be sure to check bookmark the lwvmcva.org website because there will be ongoing updates to the candidate forums page including information such as (for forums sponsored by the LWV of Montgomery County, VA):

Links to online videos of the candidate forums
Questions presented to the candidates as part of the LWV’s Voter’s Guide candidates’ responses
Questions from the public that there was not time to address during the forums and the candidates’ responses

Each time you vote you are investing in your future and the future of your children and grandchildren because the decisions made by elected officials today will have long term repercussions. Each time you vote, whether in National, State, or Local elections there WILL be an impact on you. I think it is worth it to take some time to learn about the candidates and cast my vote for the best person for the job! How about you? Do you have a little bit of time to invest in your future?

What would you like to ask those candidates running for office in November?

admin — Sun, 03 May 2009 21:56:56 +0000

Perhaps someone will ask your question at one of the various candidate forums held by or co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters. You can count on hearing about those that are upcoming on this blog. I am already starting to think about questions I want to ask, and I hope you will as well.

There is going to be one very, very special candidate forum that is being sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Virginia and AARP. These two groups have come together to develop a forum for those individuals running for the position of Governor of Virginia. As my previous blog topic shows, my feelings are that while politics my be about parties, government is about people. This forum is going to be about government, not about parties. I believe it may well be the best forum of it’s type around. Issues, not party positions will form the core of the discussion and you will have a chance to see how these officials respond to unscripted questions. The forum is to be televised and available throughout the state. Heck, if they get me a copy, I’ll post it on my website:)

Throughout the state local League of Women Voters groups will be hosting forums for other elected officials. I will try to keep track of those so that any of you who are interested can have a chance to participate.

In the meantime, do a little thinking and a little looking to find out what your areas of interest are these days. Do you care about the environment? Land use? Health care? Transportation? Your local and state economy? Education? Social services? Or any of the other myriad of issues that our elected officials make decisions concernin? Have you checked to see what bills incumbents have sponsored and whether those bills help or hinder you? Have you checked the voting records of incumbents to find out how he/she has voted on issues that you feel to be critical?

There is plenty of time and plenty of information available. I will be putting information about those sources of information on this blog. (I will probably put a few of my observations as well.)

“All elections are local elections”. This is particularly true in a Dillon Rule state where it is the state government that chooses what the town, cities, and counties are allowed to do (or NOT do). It may well be that the greatest way to make changes locally is to make changes at the state level.

If any of you have ideas for questions to ask candidates, feel free to get them to me in blog comment or contact the author. I bet I can figure out a way to make use of them:)

Downtown Christiansburg, Downtown Blacksburg? Where do we go from here?

admin — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 21:56:18 +0000

(Yes, I put Christiansburg first, but only because almost everyone else alphabetizes the two which means Christiansburg usually comes in last. I wish there were some way to put them both in at the same time.)

The League of Women Voters of Montgomery County, VA invites you to attend a panel discussion on re-visioning of Christiansburg and Blackburg Downtown areas:

The League of Women Voters of Montgomery County invites you to our Forum about revitalizing the downtowns of Blacksburg and Christiansburg, The Downtowns Re-Visioned, Monday, March 30, at 7 PM in the Town Council Chambers of Blacksburg’s Town Hall.

In planning this program, we decided that we wanted to invite expert panelists who have no connection to the governments of either Town, or with anyone with a vested interest in either of the downtowns.

Our panelists are:

• Angela Hamilton, the Executive Director of Lynch’s Landing, a successful Main Street Program in downtown and river front Lynchburg which won the Great American Main Street Award in 2006.

• Chuck Houska (our nephew) who is now a commercial broker with the Meridian Realty Group in Winston Salem, has had considerable experience finding new uses for commercial real estate. Also, Chuck is a former Town Councilman of Clemmons, NC and a former member of the Clemmons Zoning Board of Adjustment and the Clemmons Appearance Commission.

• James Littlefield is a professor of Marketing at Virginia Tech.

• Jack Steelman, also now with the Meridian Realty Group, was Downtown Development Director for Winston-Salem for 15 years. He is the recipient of the International Downtown Association Economic Development Award and is Past President of the North Carolina Downtown Development Association.

We encourage anyone interested in either of the two downtowns to attend the forum. The forum will be video-taped for replay on WTOB and it will be available on the website created by Carol Lindstrom for government information: www.historiccambria.com . We are sending special invitations to each member of the two Town Councils and Planning Commissions.

Although called the League of Women Voters, this organization changed its bylaws to include men in 1974. To find out a little bit about the LWV’s you can check out some of these sites:

The National History of the League of Women Voters

The League of Women Voters of the United States

The League of Women Voters of Virginia

The League of Women Voters of Montgomery County Virginia

This will be a great opportunity to find out about some of the ways in which these two downtown areas can be enriched. Who knows, maybe you are the one person who comes up with the perfect idea for either or both downtowns? Maybe it is simply that you will ask a question that generates ideas. You will not know if you do not show!!!

Hope to see you there.

By Carol Lindstrom On March 28 at 11:57 AM

See the Downtowns Re-Visioned Panel Discussion

admin — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:39:56 +0000

You can go to my citizen website and click on the link to see the panel discussion that was held on March 30th. It was hosted by the League of Women Voters of Montgomery County. Christiansburg officials showed up in force with 4 Council Members (Barber, Showalter, VanHoozier, and Wade) and 1 Planning Commission Member (Huppert), and both Nichole Hair and Randy Wingfield from the Planning Department.

Downtowns Re-visioned Video
(the link to the video is the first one in the big section)

I hope they gained as much from the discussion as I did. What I heard was that we already have something good in our downtown areas and that we must work to keep it and improve it. The progress that both downtown areas have made is significant. What is needed now is to make a concerted effort to keep that momentum going.

Anyone who participates in a sport will tell you that you have to continue to train, continue to try out new techniques, or else you go stale and lose what you had to begin with. “Body building” the downtown areas is much the same. Throwing money at them for improvements, then turning away will result in failure sooner or later. I hope that both Towns will take some serious looks at what can be done to keep that “conditioning” in place.

Hope you enjoy the video.

By Carol Lindstrom On April 9 at 12:39 AM