It takes a lot of, well, gumption to put your name on a ballot.
It also means you accept a certain responsibility – to uphold the law, to be responsive to the public, to be available for questions from potential constituents.
Four candidates for the Buda City Council – Wayne and Amy Proctor (husband and wife), Lorraine Gerami and Beverly Araki – don’t seem to be taking that responsibility seriously. It’s hard to tell whether they really think they’re above the community they say they want to serve, but that’s how they come across so far. And that spells trouble for Buda.
The first problem with these four – who seem to be loosely allied – candidates is lack of communication. Six candidates filed for two positions on the council. Two candidates, incumbent Wiley Hopkins and hopeful Angela Kennedy, have answered questions, offered to attend debates and agreed to meet with a broad range of voters.
The good vibes end there.
Gerami and Araki placed their names and addresses on the ballots, but put nothing else on their application forms. While they did meet the bare minimum required by the law for filing, they declined to provide telephone numbers or email addresses for themselves or their campaigns. They do not respond to letters written to them, they have not responded to letters brought to their door by the Buda Area Chamber of Commerce (BACC) and the Hays Free Press. They don’t participate in the process.
That’s not good for voters.
The other two, Mr. and Ms. Proctor, should be commended for sharing contact information but have communication problems of their own. Neither has responded to repeated requests for interviews or to answer a questionnaire sent to them from this newspaper. This lack of communication leaves a lack of understanding of their issues by local voters.
This problem makes one wonder – why did these folks enter the race in the first place? Part of being a candidate is giving the voting public a chance to see how you would vote and what your ideas are. If you don’t participate in the process, then voters are going into the polls blind. And if you get elected, the demands for time and opinions and information will only increase.
The BACC, for example, has worked diligently to put on a debate for the voters of Buda. Hopkins and Kennedy agreed to participate in the debates and also have answered the newspaper’s questionnaire.
There has been no response in any way from either Gerami or Araki to questions and requests for interviews. None. Nada.
The Proctors, on the other hand, have decided that they will put on their own debate.
Really? For one candidate only to put on a debate, claiming that he (Wayne) would appeal to a “broader section of the public for a candidate forum,” is ludicrous. It seems a little slanted toward this candidate, in that he is not unbiased. It seems that’s just his way of trying to control the audience – and the questions – so that he doesn’t have to answer questions that he hasn’t previewed, as he would in an event sponsored by the chamber, which is accepting questions from ALL residents of Buda.
If you won’t speak to the public and are reluctant to take questions without having them written out in advance, would you really be worthy of serving the better good of Buda?
We think not.
