Candidates Debate - What would you Ask the Candidates?

CITY COUNCIL CANDIDATE FORUM

The League of Women Voters and the City of Burlingame are co-sponsoring a Council Candidate Forum on Wednesday, October 17, at 7 pm at City Hall, and the City is soliciting questions from the community that you would like to ask the Council Candidates.

Send your questions to [email protected]. Your questions will be given to the League of Women Voters representative who will moderate this event. The moderator decides which questions will be asked of the candidates.

All candidates at the forum will have an equal opportunity to respond to each question.

- Written by Fiona

Comments

[fred]

1) If elected, what would you do to help increase Burlingame's budget?

2) What do you think should be done with the former drive-ins location and how would you help to achieve it?

3) What, if anything, do you think the city should do to create and support "mom and pop" businesses in Burlingame?

4) Do you support a plaza being built in Burlingame? If yes, at which location - near city hall or the train station?

5) Should the lifetime health benefits given to council members after six years of service be eliminated or continue?

6) Do you think downtown areas need more parking and what should the city do about it?

Question 1 - At least one of our candidates has this priority on his website - "Remodel or rebuild our recreation center for kids, parents and seniors". So my question would be to all the candidates - "How would you fund a new recreation center and, with successful funding, where would you propose a new Recreation/Community Center should be built?"

Question 2 - One candidate has this as a priority on his website - affordable housing for our firefighters, police officers, and teachers. How would you accomplish this?

Question 3 - Burlingame has many city on-grade parking lots which could be utilized better, as in "best use" of precious land. "How would you propose that we could make better use of our City parking lots without giving away City land, still preserving the parking and bringing in more revenue to the City or perhaps for a community center?"

Question 4 - If the downtown Post Office land became available, would the City consider buying the building and land for a Plaza, public space, civic facility?

Question 5 - If SCA 12 fails, how would you recommend funding our aged infrastructure?

Question 6 - If Safeway goes the mixed use route, what building height would be acceptable to you - three storeys, four storeys, five, six, seven storeys? And higher?

And ditto Fred's questions above, which are excellent!

[jt3605]

I's good you're posting questions here so the candidates can have plenty of time to prepare a script, pratice and memorize answers that will appeal to the majority of voters.

Perhaps it might be a good idea to keep a couple of questions top secret to see how good they are at improv. Do ya think?

Or you could look at it this way - it will give the candidates a chance to do their homework and there is no excuse if they don't!

If the candidates read the newspapers or attend meetings like the Safeway group, council meetings, etc. they will know that most of these are Burlingame concerns (and have been for years), most of these are not new ideas, some are addressed on the candidate's website, many of us have asked the candidates these questions and some/all are challenges that will come up while they are in office.

There are still opportunities for top secret improv questions - over and above the twelve listed above. I have loads more questions! Perhaps even the High School students at their own debate will come up with some esoteric questions?

SCA 12 is sitting in legislative limbo; there has been no activity on it since July, per below:

CURRENT BILL STATUS

MEASURE : S.C.A. No. 12
AUTHOR(S) : Torlakson and Yee (Coauthor: Senator Kuehl).
TOPIC : Local government: property-related fees.
HOUSE LOCATION : SEN
+LAST AMENDED DATE : 06/18/2007

TYPE OF BILL :
Active
Non-Urgency
Non-Appropriations
2/3 Vote Required
Non-State-Mandated Local Program
Non-Fiscal
Non-Tax Levy

LAST HIST. ACT. DATE: 07/12/2007
LAST HIST. ACTION : Read second time. To third reading.

TITLE : A resolution to propose to the people of the State of
California an amendment to the Constitution of the
State, by amending Section 6 of Article XIII D thereof,
relating to local government finance.

[Lori]

To Russ and Terry:

You both campaigned years ago about giving more oppurtunities for the public to have input. During the "tom the tree" issue, you both supported making Easton, on a temporary basis, one way. When one of the made the motion, the other 2nd the motion. When it came up for voting, you both supported the motion. You did this without any public notice about this discussion, you did this without asking the opinion of the traffic and safety commission. You did this without agendizing this issue and question.

How could you have supported this position without public input, when at the same time you claim that you want more public input?