Interviews With Middletown City Council Update

I have been conducting interviews with Middletown City Council Candidates for a few months now. But not everyone knows how this all came about . Back on June 25, 2009 I meet with council woman Ford while covering the Douglas park Splash Pad ribbon cutting. As she and I spoke I mentioned I would love to interview her about the upcoming election and find out where she stood on some issues in Middletown. She agreed and was excited about the idea.

The next day as I set in the office talking to a coworker about my plans to do the interview with council woman Ford, we decided that to be fair, I should offer all candidates the same opportunity. That night I started making phone calls to all those who had pulled petitions to run for city council.

On July 10, 2009 I posted the first interview, the one given by Leslie Ford. Since then I have posted 7 other interviews by those running for Middletown City Council. I have also keep updates on those I have contacted, but have not had responses from. The latest update being about First Ward council member and candidate Jim Armbruster

Since beginning this project I have spoken with and met many people involved with Middletown City politics. I have encouraged all of them to come join our forum and give the citizens a chance to ask some questions of there own. As of today the only sitting council member to join the discussion is Anita Scott Jones (for that she deserves our thanks and respect). We have had others join as of late: Andrew Smith, Daniel Picrad, Robert Thoroughman, Josh Laubach, Doug Adkins and long time member Paul Nagy.

I would like to thank all those for joining and I would like to thank our members for playing nice....thus far My goal is to encourage those in control of our city to come to MiddletownUSA.com and answer questions posed by you, our readers, with no fear of being attacked on a personal level.

I am still waiting for replies on doing MiddletownUSA.com's interview from Jim Armbruster, Tony Marconi, (Who I did speak to, and sent the questions to) John Soppanish (who I have spoken to more than once and he would rather do the interview face to face, that is coming soon)

Thanks for all the comments.

I agree with Vivian. Thanks Randy for providing the opportunities to involve the city leaders that care enough to provide input and conversation with us concerned citizens.    I applaud Ms. Scott-Jones for her participation. Any other sitting council or school board members that wish to communicate with Joe public???? Since we can't talk to you in Council meetings in this format and since there are no longer any "Conversations with Council" (where did the Java Johnny conversations go Mr. Marconi?), this is the only open forum available.

Let's go one step beyond Council and the School Board- How about an open community forum with the City Manager and some of her people? OR, would that be too confrontational??? How about it , Ms. Gilleland?

I must join this group in saying thanks for getting those candidates and elected officials to speak to the MUSA community.