School board candidates’ forum fizzles

The Pike County Courier expected to host an editorial forum for the school board candidates next week. In 2017 the paper hosted a reasoned forum for all the candidates for mayor and council.

The paper does not editorialize or endorse candidates. Our job, as we see it, is to let people know what’s happening in the community and then have people make up their own minds.

This year our plan was to host the candidates’ forum outside, with no audience but broadcast live on Facebook and Zoom.

When we reached out to candidates EK Guyre, John Johnson, Meg Rosenfeld and Rosemary Walsh each responded, working with us on scheduling.

Despite repeated emails to their official email addresses, calls to their place of work and letters, Jessica Decker, Pam Lutfy, Felicia Sheehan and Derek Smith never responded. Instead they put together a “meet and greet” event for just themselves on the precise date we had invited them for, one hour after our proposed time.

Lisa Emery, the candidate for mayor, on the other hand, did politely decline our invitation to participate in a mayoral candidates’ forum with Sean Strub.

In lieu of our inability to put people together in one spot, we’re going to pose some of the questions we planned to ask at the forum, and publish the answers in next week’s edition.

We hope all the candidates for school board will accept the offer of free space to help inform our readers – who are voters. Eighty five percent of community newspaper readers vote.

We trust next week’s Q&A in print will move the ball forward.

Editor’s note: Jeanne Straus is the president and publisher of Straus News, which publishes the Pike County Courier and eight other papers in the tristate area.