Voter issues and questions for School Board and City Council candidates

Voter issues and questions for School Board and City Council candidates

Type: 
Research & Studies

Earlier this summer, LWVP newsletter readers provided 33 responses to our poll regarding issues and questions for City Council and School Board candidates. Four LWVP board member volunteers then ranked 20 questions from the poll and submitted the top 8 to the Voters Edge website (https://votersedge.org/ca). In this post, we highlight the 3 most important issues and list the top 4 questions for each race. We also attach more detailed summaries of the poll and of the ranking process as well as the questionaires used.

The list of issues in the poll were taken from a July 19th, 2018 post entitled "TIME to RUN: Contested or Uncontested Piedmont City Council and School Board Elections" on the Piedmont Civic Association website. This list of issues is licensed under a Creative Commons License and was sorted alphabetically. 

For the 33 respondants, the top 3 issues for city council candidates were:

  1. citizen involvement – open participatory processes
  2. environmental matters, and 
  3. taxation increases

The top 4 questions were: 

  1. What plans do you have to support the many different populations of Piedmont with city programs and city facilities? And, how do you plan to promote and actively support inclusive practices within city government?
  2. How will you be responsive to citizens and to support and improve citizen involvement in city government?
  3. How can and will you mediate between different interest groups in Piedmont, including evaluating how representative the concerns of vocal minorities might be?
  4. How should the city decide whether and how to plan and pay for a new swimming pool or pools? How important is this to you?

For the 33 respondants, the top 3 issues for school board candidates were:

  1. personnel selections
  2. school construction within constraints of bond funding limits, and
  3. revenues sufficient to support operations and programs

The top 4 questions for school board candidates were:

  1. The district has a history of hiring staff and teachers with personal connections to Piedmont and current district staff. How will you reassure city residents that new hires are the best choice for students and the school and that hiring is not unduly influenced by personal connections?
  2. How could and would you increase transparency in district decision making?
  3. How could and would you continue or improve the recruitment and retention of excellent teachers?
  4. If elected, what would be your budgeting priorities? How can the school district prepare for increased pension liabilities? Can you identify areas in the budget when savings are possible?

Please contact crkrenn(at)gmail(dot)com with any questions. (And, please replace "(at)" with "@" and "(dot)" with ".".)

Attachments: 
AttachmentSize
PDF icon Survey Summary202.18 KB
PDF icon Ranking of questions for the candidates72.44 KB
PDF icon Survey Questions293.06 KB
PDF icon Ranking Survey175.26 KB