City council comes to BSU

City council members have small debate

By Luke Landgraf

Word count:607

October 28th was the Thursday before the big election; Student Senate held a debate for the nominees for major roles in the local Bemidji government.  City council members and mayoral nominees came to BSU campus to inform the public and the students of their opinion.  Most of crowd attending the debate was BSU students, so most of the questions were orientated toward the BSU crowd.

The first part of the debate was the City council nominees opening statements and debating among each other, and that was the first hour and a half.  The second half of the debate was the mayoral opening statements and they started taking on questions.

The debate consisted of two question that came from the announcer and each nominee had two-three minutes to answer the question to the best of their ability.  After the formatted questions were asked the nominees took questions from people in the crowd.

There were six city council nominees for three positions.  Linda Lemmer and Jim Thompson for the at large position.   Rodger Hellquist and Richard Sathers for ward two candidates.    Jerry Downs and Rita Albrecht for ward four candidates.  For the mayor candidates there was Dave Larson and Ron Johnson.

“We don’t get to see debates every day, so it was really neat seeing the one that was here on campus,” said Paige Timm who is the freshman member of student senate.  “It was cool to see how candidates present themselves in a debate,” said Timm “ it was also interesting how they responded to each question on the spot like that, doing that is kind of difficult.”

The types of questions that were brought up during the debate were very diverse. Many of the questions involved students voting rights and how many residents don’t believe that they should be voting for members of the Bemidji community.  The residents think that students shouldn’t vote here because most students don’t live here year around. Most of the candidates said that they either didn’t realized that there was a problem with the people here having students vote.  Or they talked about how much income the students bring to Bemidji so they should be able to vote here.  BSU brings in a revenue of about 50 million dollars a year according to Richard Sathers who ran for second ward.  Other topics that were brought up included: the lakeside property, budgeting, and how Bemidji can go green.  Each candidate had their own spin on their responses.

Most of the candidates that were running for city council were involved in the Bemidji community at one point.  Those four candidates either went to school here at one point whether it was BSU or Bemidji High School.  Another candidate was a fire fighter and a cop here in Bemidji but all of the candidates that ran for these positions take active parts in the community.

“Some of the topics the candidate talked about were really interesting,  some of the topics really hit home and others were kind of lame,” says Tom Lalond who attended the debate.  “I never really knew that some of the people in Bemidji had a problem with us voting. That’s kind of disappointing because we are a big part of this community,” said Lalond “it was cool to see a debate though cause you don’t really see those kind of things live.”

The debate took place in Hagg Sauer 100.  The Candidates were seated up on stage in front of the audience.  The Candidates took questions from many of the people that were in attendance.