With the general election less than a month away, Mountain Xpress has partnered with the nonprofit Children First/Communities in Schools of Buncombe County to bring the community a voter guide about Asheville and Black Mountain candidates. The guide will be included in the upcoming Oct. 16 issue of the newspaper.
“In terms of timing, we wanted to make a guide available to figure out how the candidates stand on issues beforehand,” says Adrienne Ammerman, who serves as director of engagement at Children First/Communities in Schools of Buncombe County. “It’s really just a tool for people to use to take into vote with them or read ahead of time. Last year we gave out 10,000 copies, and it was a much more DIY effort of people coming in and picking up stacks of them to hand out. This year, because it’s in Mountain Xpress, we’ll get 25,000 copies out right away.”
The guide features the political races for Asheville Mayor, Asheville City Council, Black Mountain Mayor and Black Mountain Alderman.
In addition to including information about how and when residents can vote, the guide asks each candidate three specific questions:
1. If elected, what will your top three priorities be during your term?
2. How can the City or Town utilize resources to improve the lives of children and youth in the City or Town?
3. What are your ideas for improving transit, greenways, and other modes of transportation and how would they be funded?
To find out the answers to those questions, pick up the voter guide in the Oct. 16 issue of Xpress or read the guide in full online, which can be found embedded at the top of this post or here at this link.
Still have questions that you would like the Asheville mayoral and council candidates to answer? We want to hear them and ask them.
Send your mayoral candidate questions to Caitlin Byrd at cbyrd@mountainx.com and council candidate questions to David Forbes at dforbes@mountainx.com.
Caitlin Byrd can be reached at cbyrd@mountainx.com or 251-1333, ext.140.
Thank you, MtnX, for this Voter Guide. You are performing a valuable public service by producing and distributing it.
But who’s guilty of plagiarism? See the responses to Question 2 on page 7, and let us know.
Thank you for updating/correcting the online edition of the Voter Guide. Of course the hard copy, which more people will read than the online version, remains incorrect. I think it would be nice if you’d acknowledge your screw up.
Somehow, Gordon’s response to question 2 was also entered as mine. Ooops. MountainXpress already contacted me about the error.