A two hour political forum sponsored by the Fall River Herald News got rowdy at one point tonight when several people were escorted out of the building by a police officer after being overheard by the moderator using profanity.
The forum centered around a Q & A session with the five (5) mayoral candidates participating in a three minute opening and closing speech.
Topics in between included the same redundant issues: How the candidates would handle meeting net school spending by 100 percent – to how they would create jobs – to the importance of economic development and their strategies to bring new businesses to the city that pay their employees a decent wage.
But somewhere in the middle of the forum when candidates Jordan Silvia & Mayor Sutter were involved in a heated exchange the moderator requested police to escort a man and two women who were overheard using profanity out of the building. They went peacefully.
Most of the candidates were respectful to one another, although Candidate and City Councilor Jaziel Correia accused Mayor Sam Sutter of wasting taxpayer money by hiring part time employees and paying them full time salaries.
Mayor Sutter’s response was that he hired these people for less of a salary than what other comparable cities were paying for the same positions, thereby saving the city money. Mayor Sutter also gave statics on how he helped ease the financial burden of the city and helped move economic development along by continuing to bring businesses into the city, specifically Amazon which expected to be located at the industrial park.
All the candidates agreed that funding the school budget was a priority. All agreed that economic development was important to the city and all agreed that something has to be done about the recurrent drug problem here.
Robert Alexander’s platform was mostly about making sure the students in Fall River were getting the best education possible. He also said, “I want to bring us out of the financial hole that the elected lawyers (over the last and current administration) got the city into.”
Candidate Richard Renzi mentioned several times he was running for office for the third time because he wants “To give the voters options on getting another mayor into office.” When asked about what ‘fat’ could be shaved off the budget he said, “The School Department budget.”
The forum was well attended, and people were actively listening calling out to support the candidates even though the audience was asked several times not to comment or clap during the forum, which ended on time at 8:00 p.m.
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