Audio from City Councilor-At-Large Candidates Forum

Eight of the nine candidates for the Boston City Councilor-At-Large showed up to a candidates forum on Wednesday night, October 10, 2007 at the Brighton Elks Lodge.

Two-thirds of the questions were prepared in advance by the moderator and a committee of the event sponsors -- the Brighton Allston Improvement Association and the Allston Civic Association -- while one-third were submitted by members of the audience at the beginning of the evening.  Candidates were given one minute to respond to each question, two minutes for introductory remarks at the beginning, and another two minutes for closing remarks.  The event went over its allotted time, just like BAIA meetings often do.

Audio of the event, in MP3 format, can be heard by clicking through the links below.  Each file contains one response from each candidate.

1. Introductory Remarks
   
2. Housing / Open Space / Public Safety
   
3. Casino Gambling
   
4. Institutional Expansion
   
5. Public Schools
   
6. Zoning / Licensing
   
7. Audience Questions, Round 1
   
8. Audience Questions, Round 2
   
9. Closing Remarks

The order of the candidates for the introductory remarks was:  Matt Geary, David Wyatt, Councilor Stephen Murphy, Marty Hogan, Councilor Michael Flaherty, Councilor Felix Arroyo, John Connolly, and Councilor Sam Yoon.  The first candidate to respond to subsequent questioning rounds was rotated.

Many thanks to Harry Mattison, of the Allston Brighton Community Blog, for hosting these audio files on his HarvardInAllston website.  Thanks are also due to:  the event sponsors, BAIA and ACA, and their presidents, Dick Marques and Paul Berkeley; the organizing committee, including Abigail Furey, Donal Carroll, Jason Karakehian, and Mark D. Trachtenberg; Bill Mills and Boston College's Office of Governmental and Community Affairs for providing the sound system; the audience, for providing many interesting questions; and the candidates for showing up and giving many insightful answers.

A transcript of the forum, or at least a partial one, should be available here in a few days.

Boston Globe Endorses Schofield for A-B District City Councilor

The Boston Globe editorial page today announced their endorsement of Tim Schofield for the Allston-Brighton District 9 City Council seat. The editorial noted his "combination of legal acumen and commitment to the community," and thought his "zoning experience and knowledge of settlement agreements would be a clear win for the neighborhood" when confronting institutional expansion issues.

I am not suprised with the announcement -- which I had privately predicted -- because I think that Schofield's background and temperament match those of candidates historically endorsed by the Globe. Watch for the Allston-Brighton TAB to come out with their own endorsement in this Friday's edition -- they recently had the candidates over for a forum, and had a reporter at Monday's forum.


Audio Recording of 9/17 A-B City Council Candidates Forum Posted

The audio recording from the one-and-one-half hour forum was put up last night on the "Election 2007 Coverage" near the top of the Brighton Centered Blog under "9/17 NEW audio recording" (mp3 format; 31 MB so it takes a while to download). For those using RSS readers or aggregators, you may have to follow this link to load the full webpage in a browser. Many thanks to Harry Mattison for webhosting of the audio recording on his HarvardInAllston website.