Like most of you, I suspect, I’ve been reading with interest the Missourian’s extensive coverage of the campaigns leading up to Tuesday’s local election.
Unlike nearly all of you, I sat in on the candidate forum Tuesday evening sponsored by the NAACP downtown at the Second Missionary Baptist Church.
This was the third forum I’ve attended. It helped me make some choices.
I’m going to share those choices with you, not with the intention of telling you how to vote. but in the hope of generating a little more public conversation. If you want to join that conversation, even if it’s
just to tell me how wrong I am, simply go online to columbiamissourian.com and use the “Comments”function at the bottom of this essay. There’s no charge.
For me, the contest for three seats on the Columbia Board of Education is an easy call. Before the forum began, first-time candidate Robin Dianics told me she hoped she wouldn’t embarrass herself. She didn’t. Nor did she persuade me that she should replace any of the three incumbents who are seeking re-election.
Jonathan Sessions, Helen Wade and Paul Cushing, it seems to me, are doing a good job for us. They and the board members who aren’t up for re-election are overseeing a healthy and improving school system. Their opposition to the renewed push for charter schools makes educational and budgetary sense.
The competition for two seats on the Boone Hospital Board of Trustees is more complicated. Three candidates are running to fill the last year of the term Fred Parry gave up with he was elected to the County Commission. Two seek a full five-year term...