Personal observations on last night’s candidates forum

Trying to find anything newsworthy in last night’s forum featuring all but one of the candidates seeking positions on Kyle’s City Council is as fruitless as trying to find anything newsworthy in the fact that H-E-B is open today.

And that’s not just my opinion. After the forum was over I pigeonholed five persons I considered completely neutral, including one of the main organizers of the forum, and asked them if they found anything newsworthy about the event, and they all shook their heads and said "no." I asked others if anything happened during the event that caused them to change their minds about who they might vote and all of them also said "no" as well, although one confided "I’m now concerned whether it’s even worth spending my time to go out and vote."

There are, however, some takeaways from the forum and here are a few:

• If more of these are held in the future, the format on what and how questions are asked must be changed. Last night, attendees were asked to write their questions on index cards and those cards were randomly selected and their questions posed by Judge Beth Smith. Unfortunately, way too many of the questions posed to the candidates were designed specifically to inflame, not to inform. They were composed by those not seeking information on where the candidates stand, but to promote the individual agendas of the questions’ authors. And I am somewhat dismayed that Judge Smith shed any semblance of impartiality by even asking some of the questions. She positioned herself, whether or not she intended to, not as an objective moderator, but as a part of some conspiracy formed to cast a shadow over city government. The questions should be prepared by and agreed to by a panel composed of individuals with at least modicum of knowledge about municipal government that address the specific, credible and realistic issues the city is facing or is about to face. The closest we came to a question like that at last night’s forum was the one posed to each of the mayoral candidates: "What is your vision for Kyle?". A legitimate question and arguably the only legitimate one asked all night. Too many of the questions asked last night were based on false premises or, as a judge should phrase it, "assumed facts not in evidence."
• Which brings me to my next observation which is that the candidates, with the notable exception of mayoral candidate Travis Mitchell, danced around directly answering the questions as if they were some ritual bonfire. Unless, that is, the question asked afforded them to opportunity to pander to that segment of the audience that shared his or her particular preconceived agenda, those not seeking information but with an axe to grind. And even then the candidates did just that – pander rather than have the courage to take a position or directly answer the question. These candidates approached this forum with the mind set of "I’m just going to try not to offend anyone instead of trying to convince these people I’m the type of leader they should elect." Candidates for public office must have the courage to stand up and tell their constituents truths even if those constituents may not want to hear or are uncomfortable dealing with those truths. Like I said earlier, except for Mitchell, I failed to see that necessary character trait in any of the candidates last night. I’m not saying these candidates don’t possess that quality; only that, if they do, they failed to put it on display during this particular forum.
• Given that, however, I heard some eye-opening, startling, and even scary comments from the candidates last night. For example, mayoral candidate Bill Sinor argued that basic public safety should not be provided for a certain segment of Kyle’s population and that the city should surrender whatever competitive advantage it might have in trying to lure new business to the city. In his opening remarks, Sinor criticized the city for "outrageous spending" (without citing specifics, of course) and claimed, if elected, he would make sure the city never spent more than it budgeted for. What he failed to say, is that city’s are required to only spend what’s in their budget and, as for Kyle specifically, it has actually recorded a budget surplus during the last two fiscal years and perhaps even longer. District 1 candidate Marco Pizana erroneously claimed the city was "growing too fast’ without offering any evidence to support that claim. Of course, the only evidence that could be offered would be to prove the growth is happening faster than the city’s ability to provide for that growth and, the truth here is Kyle City Government has successfully managed, so far at least, to stay far ahead of that curve. He also offered no solutions. He also suggested he doesn’t have the stamina for long city council meetings, which led to his opponent, Dex Ellison, providing the night’s best zinger when he said, in effect, without mentioning Pizana by name: "If you don’t have the stamina for public office, you shouldn’t be seeking it." I heard both District 4 candidates, Tim McHutchion and Alex Villalobos, argue that the city should spend much more money each year on sidewalk repairs without offering any suggestions on what the source of those funds might be. When two of the candidates were asked the question "Why is my water bill so high?", neither of them possessed either the courage or the knowledge (perhaps both) to directly answer the question. Not only that, they also lacked the courage to tell these potential voters to prepare themselves now for the fact that the bills are going to increase dramatically very soon. Mayoral candidate Nicole Romero-Piche, an educator, tries to relate everything to what she has experienced in the classroom, whether or not the comparison is applicable. At one point she said "If I give my students a test and only two of them turn in the test, whose fault is that? The same is true with city government." Huh?

The question most people want answered after a forum such as this is "Who won?" I don’t know. In my mind, the one thing that can be said for certain is that the voters lost — lost, at least for that moment, an opportunity to get straight, truthful responses from too many of these candidates even though, admittedly, most of the questions weren't even worthy of soliciting any kind of response. One thing I can say, however: More people left the Plum Creek Community Center last night carrying with them "Travis Mitchell for Mayor" yard signs than with yard signs offered by any of the other candidates. So there's that.

Oh, yes, as far as that candidate who failed to appear: That was mayoral candidate Jaime Sanchez who told me, when I interviewed him Sunday for my regular candidate Q&A I publish each election cycle, that he had every intention of attending.