Amador County – The Upcountry Community Council plans to host an Amador Water Agency Board of Directors candidates’ forum October 11^th at the Upcountry Veterans Hall. All seven candidates for three AWA board seats have committed to attend.  

Moderator will be either UCC Chair Lynn Morgan, or Vice Chair Sherry Curtis. Morgan said the forum will give each candidate five minutes to introduce themselves and their platforms. They will then draw a question out of a “grab bag” and have three minutes to answer it. Morgan said there will be seven questions in the bag, and each candidate answers a different question. Each candidate will then be given a five-minute time period to make a closing statement.

Morgan said “if there are issues that candidates want to rebut, the only time they will have to do that is in their five-minute closing statement.” She said they will each answer a different question, “because, frankly, we don’t have that much time. We only have two hours for seven people.” ¶ She said there will be time at the end, possibly only 20 minutes, for a question and answer session. People will be urged to be very concise and brief in their questions.

The forum will be limited to 120 minutes because “that’s how long our meetings are,” Morgan said.

They came up with the questions in a pretty informal way, she said. The September UCC meeting had a relatively low attendance of eight or 10 people, so she put the task to them to develop questions. She said they had to be relevant to agency business, and they modified all of them to make them consistent and clear.  

Curtis said we “want to know what they know” and “if they really understand what’s going on or not.”  

Curtis said at the last meeting, “we all put out questions, rewrote them” so “everybody was involved.”

Morgan said they agreed amongst themselves to not share the questions with candidates. They are “not literally under lock and key,” but UCC members are relying on trust.

She thinks the forum’s process should work well to let the attendees get to know the candidates.  

Morgan said they have commitments from all candidates, including some who thanked her, because they had only had one forum thus far.

Morgan said: “When candidates get a chance to speak like this, I think it’s a good thing.” Morgan said all Amador County residents are invited to attend.  

The forum is 6-8 p.m. Monday, October 11^th at the Veterans Memorial Hall on Buckhorn Ridge Road.

Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.