2015

Welcome to the open thread for the Hillsborough Town Board candidate forum happening on September 27, 2015. Comments on this post will open at that time.

There are five candidates running for three seats:

• Mark Bell
• Ashley DeSena
• Evelyn Lloyd
• Brian Lowen
• Cindy Talisman

You can observe the forum at http://orangepolitics.org/elections-2015/forums/hsbotb.

We hope you'll use this open thread to post your thoughts and reactions. Also, if you want to propose additional discussion topics, you can reach the editors during the forum via Twitter, Facebook, or the contact page. The forum moderator will have final say in question selection.

Though most of the Orange County's public bodies will be taking a break this week, the Chapel Hill Town Council will meet tonight to review a concept plan for new development on Rosemary Street and discuss several LUMO changes and special use permits.

Election season is also in the full swing. Be sure to join us Sunday night for our forum with Hillsborough Town Board candidates and check out our calendar for the list of other forums this week.

CHALT, the special-interest political action committee formed earlier this year, hosted the first Chapel Hill candidate forum last night at the Seymour Center.

Questions asked at the forum centered on development issues. Questions were often long and leading, including questions with factual errors and missing context. It seemed that questions were designed to promote a specific viewpoint rather than to give candidates a chance to share their views and vision for our town. Candidate pushback about the biased questions even led to the moderator, Theresa Raphael Grimm, to comment that she was only the messenger and had not written the questions – a CHALT committee had, she told the audience.

A Storify of the tweets from the forum is below, in case you missed it.