Wednesday night’s mayoral candidate forum got off to a late start, but no one seemed to mind. It was almost 6:30 p.m. and children were still filing in and out of the Downtown Optimist Club, grabbing handfuls of blue corn chips before returning to their basketball game outside.
Finally the room settled down, and the Central Columbia Get Out the Vote forum started. The group of nearly two dozen people sat in a circle and threw out concerns whenever they got a chance.
“I see this forum as part of that long tradition” of voter registration and education efforts by Central Columbia, began mayoral candidate John Clark. His opponent, Mayor Darwin Hindman, did not attend.
Hindman said he could not attend because of personal obligations.
Asked for his opening statements, Clark started by naming the things he believed in.
“Everyone in the city of Columbia is in this together” regardless of geographic, ethnic, income or social differences, Clark said. He explained the three E’s of his platform: economic growth, environmental responsibility and equity.
Clark focused on growth as the topic about which he was not often asked.
“We need to focus on true, smart growth,” Clark said.
Clark called the city’s current annexation efforts a “run amok annexation policy” that defied the results of a previous election when voters turned down aggressive annexation efforts.
“We don’t need to have all this population development inside the city,” Clark said. “I do not believe the city should grow one more square inch or one more person by annexation until we have in place good planning and good fiscal planning for infrastructure.”
When the group expressed their concern for youth in neighborhoods, Clark stressed the importance of empowering neighborhood associations across the city.
“That’s a whole new avenue for people who live in neighborhoods, including kids,” Clark said.
Forum participants also discussed maintaining inner-city neighborhoods and voter education efforts with Clark.
Clark ended the forum by stating his support for community policing.
“Community policing has fallen by the wayside,” Clark said. “But there are people here who remember how it could be.”
He said the installation of a civilian review board could strengthen relationships between residents and the Columbia Police Department.
As the forum concluded, Glenn Cobbins, the outreach director of the Imani Mission Center and an organizer of the event, got up to address issues in the First Ward.
He stressed the importance of education in the community, saying that night’s barbecue “at a table of brotherhood and sisterhood” was just one way of getting the vote out to neighbors.