tonight on cox cable channel 4, the cenla business league hosted a local political debate. it was held in the alexandria, louisiana city council chambers. the debate started with the candidates for city council: councilman myron lawson and his opponent dr alex slatkin, councilman everett hobbs and his opponent darrell hickman, councilman harry silver and his opponent marc lampert.
and the mayoral candidates delores brewer, joe fuller, alice red hammond, jacques roy, dr john sams and charles frederick smith. roosevelt johnson didnt participate.
you can write the central louisiana business league here: cenlabusinessleague@cox.net
more later...
added 9:52 pm cdt thursday 17 august 2006 the city council debate which was first started a few minutes past 6pm and ran until 7:17 pm then they took a 10 minute intermission and resumed with the mayors debate around 7:30.
the central louisiana business league did a very good job putting on the debate. the debaters all spoke well. councilman lawson seems like a nice guy and he gets emotional when he talks about alexandria and family and church and things like that and thats good. where we disagree with him, for example is in one part of one of his orations he summed up his involvement in sports and all the sports teams he has sponsored and started and the city and others are involved in. what he was doing by talking up sports was to subtly remind everyone of the proposed downtown sports arena; we still disagree with him and everyone else out there that is dangling this thinly disguised as a diamond, lump of taxpayer coal.
what possible economic advantage could a downtown sports arena have for alexandria and central louisiana? its probably something that will never ever be built anyway. what after the city gets through paying all the studies and architects, surveyors, engineers, consultants and so forth. the city moreso needs a pier downtown than a sports arena. do you know you can always get a job doing something around a pier? for instance you can work for tips tying and untying ships. then you can make money fetching the newspaper or a meal or supplies for the sailors. we have a burgeoning concierge industry right there. a pier would generate more money more steadily for alexandria's economy than a sports arena. people around here dont go to stuff like that anyway, and you can only have so many monster truck shows. so get real.
councilman silver seems reasonable and his live and let live attitude is certainly a good philosophy. marc lampert did well too. councilman hobbs spoke well and so did his opposition mr hickman.
more later...
added 10:12 am cdt friday 18 august 2006 the mayoral debate went about as planned click here to read jim leggett's piece in the town talk called political posturing.
more later...
in the meantime read what they are saying on: cenla antics:
biff said...
ok, got that behind me. i'm going with lampert and slatkin.
Anonymous said...
I don't like him personaly, but Sams is the only one telling it like it is. He doesn't sugarcoat anything!
Civil Sentient said...
I went to the debate, got there 15 min early, Lamar took the last seat and I wasn't about to stand that long. so I went to Finnegans and had a pint.
Who did what, who said what and who made who look like a fool? Gimmie a report ya'll!
