WOW!!! Elections Draw Near

Wow!!! All of the sudden we are looking at elections again. At the time of this writing, the candidates had just been qualified and it looks like nine are going for two City Council seats, two are going for Tulare Coun- ty 5th District Supervisor, and two are in the race for Tulare County Sheriff.

Your Chamber is looking forward to putting on candidate forums for these races. The scheduled dates are May 3rd for the City Council candidates and April 29th for both the Sheriff and Su- pervisor candidate forums. The events will start at 6pm in Council Chambers at Porterville City Hall. Our partners in putting on the events will be KTIP Radio and The Porterville Recorder, with KTIP carrying the live broadcast that eve- ning. Video will be available afterward on both the Recorder’s online site and
iporterville.com.

We are sincerely hoping that these events will be for the benefit of the can- didates and the public. We want the questions to provide the information the voters would like to know. If anyone has suggestions for questions that should be asked at either event, please get them to the Chamber Office. We are not interested in questions that promote the asker’s ax to grind. Of course, the more candidates, the harder it is to use the time wisely. We will try our best.

We will vote on these candidates in the June 8th primary. In the last City Election, a little over 3000 people voted and it only took 1600 votes to get elected. This was just over 3% of the 50,000 people in Porterville. The more candidates there are, the more there is a possibility for unwise results.

Of course there will be statewide propositions on the ballot. The California Chamber has already posted the recommendations for these issues (check the web site www.calchamber.com). Your Governmental Affairs Committee has some doubts about at least one of those positions and will be taking the issue to the Board of Directors for discussion on the opposed view.

But can you believe it? There are five propositions and not even one bond measure. Maybe someone is listening.
Procedure to Submit Candidate Forum Questions

Questions will be accepted until 5 p.m. Monday, April 19th. They may be submitted by mail, fax, email, or in person utilizing the information below. Please include your name and contact information.

Porterville Chamber of Commerce, ATTN: GAC-Forum, 93 N. Main Street, Porterville, CA 93257; (559) 784-0770 fax; info@portervillechamber.org with GAC-Forum noted in the subject line.