La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

October is coming, with election ballots mailed Oct. 13. In greater La Conner, three town council seats and the Fire District 13 commissioner position 2 are contested. Do you have enough information to make your choices? What are the important issues facing the town? Do you want to ask the candidates questions and hear them explain their positions?

You can ask questions and watch candidates for council respond in a pre-recorded online forum organized by the League of Women Voters of Skagit County and the La Conner Weekly News. They have partnered to organize a Zoom format forum that will be recorded the weekend of Oct. 9-10 and posted on the League’s website by Oct. 15.

The League of Women Voters of Skagit County has organized and sponsored 14 candidate forums using the Zoom platform since the start of the pandemic in 2020. This includes last year’s primary and general elections and this year’s primary. Chapter President Wende Sanderson stresses, “One of the key benefits we’ve heard is that through the recordings, citizens have the flexibility to watch the forum at their convenience and on their own schedule. And community members are still able to ask questions by submitting them to the Weekly News.”

In this pandemic era, Sanderson understands “creative approaches are called for in these times, and often result in features, like the recording for later viewing, that make the new approaches even better in some ways than the old way of doing things.”

Susie Deyo, La Conner School District board president, will moderate the forum.

Residents can submit questions to the Weekly News at [email protected] or drop them at the Third Street office. Use “candidate question” for the subject line.

Election day is Nov. 2. Ballots must be in a county ballot box or postmarked by 8 p.m.