Tavares, FL Oct. 28, 2016
Tavares, FL City Residents who are Registered Voters:
The Tavares, FL Chamber of Commerce, led by Executive Officer J. Scott Berry, held a Tavares City Council candidate forum on Oct. 26 for candidates for three City Council Seats that will be on the Nov. 8th ballot. Moderator was Vonda Parker.
We made a video of the entire event, without edits or comments, which is HERE.
Candidate names are in the video description.
Observations:
All three seats up for elections have incumbents running for re-election, and they have challengers.
I have attended many Tavares City Council meetings in the last year and know the incumbents.
There are some good candidates running, however, some may be there because a rumored slate was initiate by a local landowner.
I was not impressed with the challenger's knowledge of issues. Most seem to have jumped in "for change" or they were asked to run. Thus when questions came up, they were naive, or just speculated "I will certainly look at that..." when responding. The only candidate that seemed to do her factual homework was Malanie Vachon but she was naive about issues. Several of the challengers didn't seem to have attended City Council meetings, read the budget, etc. And, this is the last of 3-4 forums so they should know more.
I consider incumbent Mayor Lori Pfister to continue to be a good choice for her seat 5.
About the only issue that seemed to come up was whether the Council was spending too much on downtown Tavares vs other areas of the city.
I don't think the challengers for Seat 1 or 3 made a good enough case to replace the other incumbents. However, since I have observed local elections for 10 years, a candidate with a high level of contributions to spend, or the energy to walk and talk to residents at their homes or businesses could overtake the incumbent advantage.
Watch the video and make up your mind, then VOTE. (And vote for Trump, since this is a conservative blog). We are on Facebook also.
PS: After watching the video, download and read MY list below of questions for candidates, and decide who could answer them and who could not. The Chamber only used one of them.
Download 2016-10-27 Candidate questions
Vance Jochim
FiscalRangers.com
