DURHAM Early voting opened Monday in the city's mayoral and three City Council races, and Tuesday night all eight candidates made their pitches to about 30 voters at a forum held by the League of Women Voters.
Incumbent Mayor Bill Bell and council members Cora Cole-McFadden, Howard Clement and Mike Woodard talked about experience and achievement during their times in office.
Challengers Steven L. Williams, Donald Hughes, Matt Drew and Allan Polakcq talked about "difference," "new leadership," "fresh air" and "different kinds of experience," respectively.
Questions had to do with taxes and fees, water and sewer infrastructure, crime, federal stimulus money and merging the city and county governments.
Clement and Drew, opponents for the Ward 2 council seat, both said they favored merger, a recurrent issue since the 1920s. The other candidates were more cautious, with Woodard and Bell pointing out that planning, inspections and tax administration have been merged already.
Polak, opposing Woodard for the Ward 3 council seat, seemed caught unprepared for the federal stimulus question, saying he was not familiar with any coming to the city. Woodard and the other incumbents ticked off appropriations received for resurfacing several streets, new hybrid buses and bus shelters, energy conservation and law enforcement.
Drew, after calling for fiscal responsibility at all government levels, criticized a $1 million incentive the council approved Monday night in hopes of a Research Triangle Park expanding its Durham operation, saying the money would be better used on the city's decaying water and sewer lines; and Hughes, opposing Cole-McFadden in Ward 1, criticized the council spending $500,000 on a skateboard park that produces no revenue.
To reduce crime, Polak called for a "zero-tolerance" policy, Williams called for more money for recreation centers, Drew for abandoning the "war on drugs" and Hughes for vocational training. Both Drew and Hughes alluded to the recent police department overtime scandal. The incumbents talked about measures already taken, such as higher bails and mentoring children.
"We have worked as best we can," Bell said, "to address this problem."