Last night, I went to the Dayton Unit NAACP candidates forum and filmed, so you didn’t have to go. They had all 4 candidates for Dayton City Commission (Shaw and Joseph bailed on one held last week) and half the candidates for Trotwood City Council (the incumbent Mayor and 2 challengers), and the two candidates for Jefferson Township Fiscal Officer.
Full disclosure- I’ve done printing or design work for all 3 Trotwood candidates in attendance, Mayor Mary McDonald, commission challengers Denise Moore and Norman Scearce, and for Valerie Duncan.
Here’s the video:
First thing to make sure of if you’re running a candidates forum is, have at least 2 working microphones. #FAIL Or, make it easier for anyone filming- and just have one mic at a podium and make candidates all go to the same spot to talk (hopefully- you’re really smart and have a pop-up banner behind them to share your organizational message- and that the spot is well lit).
Next up, if you are going to have someone filtering the questions, at least pick good ones. Seriously, this whole “forum” format- where candidates never engage each other makes for boring theater- and never really lets people know what kind of leadership we can expect if elected. These questions weren’t softballs- they were nerf balls. Asking where your kids went to school isn’t as important as what are your qualifications and education (and criminal record).
This needs to be said, Jefferson township needs to go away. Force a merger, or let’s get unigov working. If these two are the best you can field, don’t even bother. Sorry ladies. Unimpressed at half the price. If you are curious about unigov, go to www.reconstructingdayton.org [1] to learn about my 501(c)(4) non-profit that’s working toward getting rid of all these banana republics with their small minded, unnecessary leadership. This is about real cutting of government overhead, not what these two women were blathering about. Your “choices” are Charlene E. Chattams challenger and Tracey M. Edwards incumbent.
As to the Dayton candidates, after watching this, and knowing the track records and backstories (2 have criminal backgrounds- see Journalism 101 on investigating candidates and politicians [2]) it will be hard to vote for any of these candidates. And since Dayton doesn’t allow write-ins, and we’ve had caught felons working as Federal snitches foisted on us [3] before as legitimate candidates, maybe if we all sit this one out- it might serve as a referendum on city hall.
As to Trotwood, 3 candidates didn’t accidentally not show up as proffered by Mr. Foward. It was intentional that they all weren’t there. They aren’t worthy of a mention- yes, you get credit for participation.
There were only 2 surprises last night – when asked about if they support a women’s right to choose/Issue 1, all the candidates except one said yes. The reason there were two surprises is that Matt Joseph is very Catholic and sends his kids to Catholic schools and people have told me that he was against it, and Norman Scearce was the lone no.
Next Tuesday, Oct 3rd, 6pm, the NAACP will host another forum, at Grace United Methodist Church at the corner of Harvard and Salem, for school board candidates. Let’s hope more candidates show up, the questions are a little tougher and the microphone problem is solved.
What a JOKE ! Hopefully the people are seeing how incompetent the players are !
Thanks for the reporting, David. Didn’t see any announcement for the forum in the DDN, but may have missed it.
Thank you for putting this video together David. The Clergy Community Coalition is holding another Dayton City Commission Candidate Night at Dayton Public Library Main Branch, 215 E. 3rd St, on October 16th, Monday at 6 pm. Though the CCC has reached out to all 4 candidates, even inviting the incumbents to choose their own dates after the 6 dates we offered they said they were unavailable, we are delighted to have confirmation from Marcus Bedinger and Valerie Duncan. We hope to have a serious conversation about the issues most affecting the City of Dayton. We invite the people of Dayton to bring their ideas and concerns to share at this event. Thank you for the space to make a plug.
Jefferson Twp doesn’t need to go, but Tracey Edwards definitely needs to go! She is an incompetent embarrassment to the Township! From what I hear, she refuses to answer public records requests, does not cooperate at all with giving the Trustees information that they need to approve budgets, expenditures, etc. I also heard that the Ohio Auditors office issued a document outlining dozens of things they found with her. She always seems to have a challenger each election cycle, but she always manages to win handily. I’d bet that she does the same this November. I had to laugh at the question presented to her and the challenger about whether or not having financial reports at the meetings was possible. She said there was just too much to do and that having numbers at two meetings a month was just impossible!! What a load of crap!! I held that same position for another Township that is similar in size and budget to Jefferson Twp. (looks to be about a $3.5M annual budget). She mentioned that doing payroll was an impediment to being able to do financials – but the payroll software feeds directly into the financials. She mentioned paying bills and recording income were an impediment – but, again, the A/P and Cash Receipts parts of the software feed directly to the financial statements. So if she can’t provide financials, it’s because she’s not actually doing the rest of her job. She also tried to blame her HR functions on this, but I doubt that the Township has more than 20 or 25 employees (would be mostly the Fire Department – and the Fire Chief would take care of them), so that’s just a load of crap too. Done right, the Jefferson Twp Fiscal Officer job shouldn’t take more than 10-15 hours per week (closer to 10!). Not too bad for a position that pays approximately $25k per year. I don’t know if Jefferson Twp provides health insurance for their elected officials or not. Some townships do, others don’t (can’t afford it). The really sad thing is that her challenger… Read more »