The Rotary Club of Saugatuck-Douglas is pleased to announce two Voter Forums for residents of the City of Saugatuck to interact with the candidates competing for four open seats on the City Council. We will conduct the Forums as Zoom videoconferences scheduled for Friday October 9 and Friday, October 23, starting promptly at noon and ending at 1pm EDT. We cordially invite all eligible voters residing within the City of Saugatuck to register now at the LINK. No one will be admitted to the Forums other than registered and confirmed Saugatuck residents of voting age, or Members in good standing of the Rotary Club.
Rotary is offering these two Forums to fill the pandemic-driven vacuum faced by the League of Women’s Voters and similar organizations. In normal election years, such groups would arrange and conduct in-person forums which, unfortunately, are not safe to attend this year. The League of Women’s Voters has captured and posted videos of most of the candidates outlining their positions at their website. We encourage everyone to use that resource to understand the various priorities and positions of the candidates.
In this vacuum, our Rotary Club Board of Directors decided that we should pivot to accommodate the widespread interest in the City Council races this year, and leverage our experience hosting our regular twice-monthly Club meetings using Zoom. We normally welcome guest speakers from a variety of fields who attend our meetings and address our Members, including civic leaders from time to time. To us, it seemed like a reasonable challenge to meet this year, so we flexed our normal format to accommodate the public’s need to interact directly with those who wish to lead the City.
We have invited all eight candidates who are vying for the four open seats on the City Council this year to participate. Each Forum has been designed to allow participating candidates to present 7-minute overviews of what they consider to be the top issues facing the city and their policy positions on them. We will then open each Forum to audience questions, which may be submitted upon pre-registration or via Zoom’s chat function in the meetings. Rotarians will do our best to curate the questions received so candidates can answer as many as time allows. We will record both Forums and make them available for viewing via our website, www.saugatuckdouglasrotary.org, through election day on November 3.
Rotary International is a non-political, non-partisan service organization, and our Club is providing the Forums to the public specifically without endorsing any candidate. Both meetings will be conducted with exactly the same agendas facilitated by Club leaders from our Board of Directors. All observers will be muted during the meetings and various security features of Zoom will be engaged.
We are pleased to offer these opportunities to see the candidates in action and hope all Saugatuck voters will participate in them.
