Few citizens turned out the night before election day to meet the candidates at a forum for the southeast ward position of the Nacogdoches city commission.
In the Little Zion Baptist Church on Shawnee Street Friday evening, Roy Boldon, Tom Lucas and William Sanders introduced themselves with brief biographies before taking questions from the small audience and the two moderators, Susan Pack Reents and John Morrison, who are both civic leaders.
Christy Wooten/The Daily Sentinel |
From left, Roy Boldon, William Sanders and Tom Lucas participated in a candidates' forum Friday night at Little Zion Baptist Church.
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Questions posed to the candidates ranged from the appraising the role of positions like the city manager to more specific concerns, like the lack of speed bumps in neighborhoods. While most of the candidates' answers were noncontroversial, each struggled to distinguished himself from the others.
Sanders, who rarely answered a question head on, made the boldest claims, promising to make himself available to his constituents and achieve results easily.
"I think the problem is we've had people down there sitting on the city council who didn't do anything for this ward," he said. "I will not stop until something is done."
In particular, Sanders advocated sidewalks built on every street in the city.
Tom Lucas answered questions about balancing growth with Nacogdoches' history by speaking passionately about his love for the community and the need to bring basic industry to town as a way to grow. He also advocated education and the creation of jobs meant to keep young people in the community. He repeated his campaign tag line, "I don't have an ax to grind. I just want to be a good citizen."
Boldon delivered soft-spoken but nuanced answers to questions about bettering the city. He said Nacogdoches could not rely on retirement communities alone in the future, and he criticized frequent but ineffective street repairs in town.
"Why don't we just fix it one time?" he asked. Boldon, who said he has reviewed every commission agenda and minutes for the past two years, criticized the commission's response to issues in the southeast ward, a concern that was later echoed by all other participants at the evening's discussion.
All of the candidates and the moderators — who frequently attacked the present commission's work themselves — railed repeatedly against an ongoing disconnect between the southeast ward and the city government.
Reents called Nacogdoches a "complaint-driven community," where there is little response to citizen requests.
To combat the problem, several innovative ideas were posited by members of the audience, who proposed reinstating an open comments portion of commission meeting and regular town meetings for commissioners to meet with constituents.
Despite the poor attendance, Friday's discussion was good practice for the eventual winner to receive public input and respond on the spot, a task frequently shouldered by city leaders. Listening to the concerns and the complaints of their neighbors, the future commissioner in attendance Friday got a brief but accurate excellent taste of his upcoming tenure in city government.
