Our next borough election is set to take place on Oct. 7. That means we’re working to get you the information you need to know to cast an informed vote here at the Chilkat Valley News.
It also means candidates for the borough assembly, planning commission, and school board are making plans to get their messages out and figuring out how to frame local conversations to serve their agendas.
We believe voters deserve more coverage of local races than stories focused solely on what the candidates want to talk about. The Chilkat Valley News is independent and reader-funded and as such we’d like our readers to get the chance to shape our coverage of this year’s election. What do you want to see candidates talking about as they’re competing for your votes?
Here’s our plan for how that could work. Please fill out the survey below. We’ll collect your questions until Sept. 15, then we’ll look through all of the responses to get an idea of what’s important to our readers, and we’ll take those questions directly to the candidates as we work on profiles of each one.
Here are the candidates for borough assembly:
- Richard Clement
- John Norton
- Eben Sargent
- Gabe Thomas
the planning commission;
- Joe Parnell
- Nathanael Reams
- Kimberly Rosado
- Rachel Saitzyk
- Dan Schultz
and the school board.
- Keely Baumgartner
- Michelle Sloper
One quick note on how to answer the survey: It’s better to write clear, topic-based and complete questions. Something like:
What are the financial costs of the borough’s policy to…
What specific actions can you take to approach student performance in …
What do you think the borough’s land use policies should be on…
Please note that we’ve dropped our paywall for this post, so if you’ve got a friend in town who does not subscribe or you tend to buy the paper directly from the newsstands, you can weigh-in too. If you’d like to know more about why we’re approaching election coverage in this way, check out this write up on the Charlotte Observer’s innovative Citizen’s Agenda.
Editor’s note: This post has been updated to correct the date of the October election, and remove Harriet Brouillette from the list of candidates for Haines Borough assembly.