One Question Sparks Debate At Candidate Forum
Candidates for Mahaska County offices were on hand at Smokey Row Tuesday evening for a candidate forum hosted by area media
Oskaloosa, Iowa – The Primary election is fast approaching, and the candidates for the single open seat on the Mahaska County Board of Supervisors took time out of their schedules to attend a forum hosted by CRI, The Oskaloosa Herald, KBOE Radio and Oskaloosa News.
The five candidates include three Republicans and two Democrats. The Democratic candidates consist of Denis Currier and Tom Rielly. The Republican candidates are Alvin Meppelink, Mike Vander Molen and incumbent Henry ‘Willie’ VanWeelden. There, the candidates faced an opening round of two questions, that were given to them in advance, which was moderated by Deb VanEnglenhoven, publisher of the Oskaloosa Herald.
Also attending was Mahaska County Auditor Republican candidate Sue Brown, who is currently running unopposed.
All candidates answered the prepared questions that had been sent to them before the forum. Jonathan Gregg with CRI opened up the questioning to the candidates, who had not prepared an answer for the questions. The plan had been originally for the panelists from the respective media outlets to ask a single question, but with a lack of questions from the audience, multiple questions were eventually allowed. Roads and their impact upon our lives was a large theme every candidate built upon during the evening, and CRI will feature the entire conversation on their website, and will also be broadcasting it on MCG in the upcoming days.
Jonathan Gregg of CRI kicked off the panel’s questions. “My question deals with image and perception. With that in mind, it has been a very interesting year for the supervisors and the county in general. Supervisor VanWeelden was on trial for fraud. During the trial, you had two current Supervisors and one former Supervisor either denying or accusing one another of doing wrong. My question is, how do you think this trial, regardless of the verdict, how do you think this trial has affected the county’s image, if at all, and how could you, as an employee of the people, work to improve the image of Mahaska County Government?”
VanWeelden who was the first candidate facing that question has also been the person at the center of a recent trial covering three charges, including fraud. He had recently been awarded a new trial based upon newly discovered evidence.
VanWeelden told Gregg, “I guess I’ll start with– I have no comment. My understanding was this was not coming up this evening, so I’m very disappointed in this. Everybody that reads the papers knows what is going on and I have no comment. I can’t comment at this time.”
“I think I agree with Willie on this, this probably isn’t the best forum to have discussion about that,” said candidate Mike Vander Molen with candidate Meppelink echoing the same sentiments.
When it comes to large scale projects and using bonding capacity to complete those projects, the candidates views differed with VanWeelden being in favor of using bonds to help finance large projects. Vander Molen wants to keep debt down and to prevent problems in the future by overspending, with Rielly saying he’s more of a ‘pay as you go” person with both VanWeelden and Rielly in favor of increases in gas taxes to help fund road projects. Rielly chastised both Chet Culver and current Governor Branstad for not doing more to help raise more funds for road projects.
Absentee voting is ongoing until June 4th, with the Mahaska County Courthouse being open this Saturday from 9 am til 5 pm to accommodate voters. The primary is Tuesday, June 5th.
