Tag: American Fork Hospital

2019 City Council Candidate Audio and Notes

10/22/2019 / David Rodeback

On Wednesday, October 2, 2019, the American Fork Chamber of Commerce hosted a meet-the-candidates event for the American Fork City Council race. As usual, of late, it was in a meeting room at American Fork Hospital. This post presents audio recordings from that event — one question at a time, to be easily digestable — and adds some notes from another event a week later, on October 9, at the American Fork Library.

Meet American Fork City Council Candidates

10/06/2017 / David Rodeback

Our best opportunity to meet and grill American Fork’s four city council candidates is tomorrow morning, Saturday, October 6, at 9:30 a.m. It’s provided by the American Fork Chamber of Commerce (thanks!), and hosted by American Fork Hospital (thanks!) in their comfortable Education Room.

Neither mayoral candidate is able to attend but — forgive me, if you feel the need — the city council race is the interesting one anyway.

The easiest access is the emergency entrance at the front of the hospital. Once inside, I suggest you decline any proffered medical care — they charge for that — and find the Education Room back a bit and to your right. If you don’t arrive especially early, there should be signs to guide you. If there aren’t, just poke your head into rooms until you see something that looks political, or the staff becomes so distressed that they offer to escort you to your destination.

At 9:30 a..m. we get to chat with candidates informally. At 10:00 a.m. the formal question-and-answer period will begin. I’d anticipate it lasting 60 to 90 minutes.

You’re welcome to e-mail your questions in advance to chamber@afcity.net or submit them in writing at the event itself.

Also, I’m expecting a cookie — but I remember when it was pancakes.

In case you’re just arriving at the party, the four city council candidates on your November ballot in American Fork will be (in alphabetical order by surname, not necessarily my preference): Kyle Barratt, Barbara Christiansen, Staci Carroll, and incumbent Jeff Shorter. We voters each get to vote for two, and the two winners fill the available seats.

You’ve been wanting to get involved, and this is a great place to start. Even if you don’t know what to ask or what the issues are, come and observe and learn. The hot seat is for the candidates. The audience can relax, listen, and nibble the aforementioned cookie.

We plan to post audio here after the event, as we’ve done before, for those who can’t make it. For the rest of you . . . see you there! Bring the kids! Especially the teenagers! But don’t let them run laps around the room while everyone else tries to listen to the candidates and avoid unkind thoughts about their — ahem, the children’s — parentage. This isn’t a church dinner.

American Fork – Primary – City Council Candidates Audio

07/31/2017 / David Rodeback

Here’s the audio I recorded from the city council candidates’ portion of Saturday’s meet-the-candidates event at the American Fork Hospital. But first, some disclaimers and housekeeping.

The audio isn’t professional. You get what you get from my little Sony voice recorder. I used Audacity for dynamic range compression, noise suppression, and enhancing the audio of candidates who spoke much more softly into the microphone than others. The photos aren’t professional either.

I’ve split the audio into sections, by question, etc., and I haven’t deleted any part of any candidate response. Obviously, there’s no fact-checking built into any of this.

If you want my notes, commentary, and analysis, they’re in a separate post, so readers who wish to avoid them can do so easily

Attendance was about 50, not including candidates. The moderator was State Auditor John Dougall. Questions came from the audience.

Audio from the mayoral candidates‘ portion of the event is in a separate blog post, and the American Fork Chamber of Commerce, which hosted the event, has posted a video recording on YouTube. Here also is the Daily Herald‘s report of the event. (Apologies for the unpleasant ad experience there.)

Six of eight candidates who filed were present. In seating order:

Barbara Christiansen
Staci Carroll
Kyle Barratt
Doug Richards
Jeff Shorter (incumbent)
Ernie John

American Fork – Primary – Mayoral Candidates Audio

07/31/2017 / David Rodeback

Here’s the audio I recorded from the mayoral candidates’ portion of Saturday’s meet-the-candidates event at the American Fork Hospital. Purists might not call it a debate, I suppose, but it’s as close as we tend to get in our politics.

Here are a few disclaimers and some housekeeping.

The audio isn’t professional. You get what you get from my little Sony voice recorder, with a little help from Audacity for dynamic range compression and some noise suppression. The photos aren’t professional either.

I’ve split the audio into sections, by question or statement, and I haven’t deleted any part of any candidate response. Obviously, there’s no fact-checking built into any of this.

If you want my notes, commentary, and analysis, they’re in a separate post, so readers who wish to avoid them can do so easily.

Attendance was about 50, not including candidates. The moderator was State Auditor John Dougall. Questions came from the audience.

Audio from the city council candidates‘ portion of the event is in a separate blog post, and the American Fork Chamber of Commerce, which hosted the event, has posted a video recording of the event on YouTube. Here also is the Daily Herald‘s report of the event. (Apologies for the unpleasant ad experience there.)

Only mayoral candidates Brad Frost and Carlton Bowen were present at the event. The third candidate in the race, Daniel Copper, was absent. No explanation was offered, and no opening or closing statement was read for him in his absence. Continue reading

Meet the Candidates for Mayor and City Council

07/28/2017 / David Rodeback

Tomorrow — Saturday, July 29 — is an event you may not want to miss: a rare opportunity to meet the candidates for American Fork mayor and city council before the August primary election reduces the field.

(The photo is from a similar event in 2015.)

Who, Where, When

As it has before, the American Fork Chamber of Commerce is hosting the event at the American Fork Hospital, at 170 N 1100 E in American Fork. It will be in the new education room in the surgery and emergency building. I suggest allowing a few extra minutes to find it, if you haven’t been there before.

Here’s a link to the Facebook event.

State Auditor John Dougall will moderate the event. He’s an old, skilled hand at this and a familiar face.

What, How

From 9:30 to 10:00 a.m. there will be an informal opportunity to meet and speak with various candidates.

At 10:00 a.m. the mayoral candidates will answer questions in a debate format.

Beginning about 10:30 or 10:45 a.m., the city council candidates will do the same. Continue reading

Meet the Candidates in American Fork

07/19/2017 / David Rodeback

I’m hearing that we have two public opportunities to meet the candidates for American Fork Mayor and City Council before the August 15 primary. I’ll have more information soon, perhaps, but for now . . .

July 29 Debate

A debate is scheduled for Saturday, July 29, at the American Fork Hospital meeting room. This is sponsored by the American Fork Chamber of Commerce.

Meet and Greet: 9:30-10:00 a.m.
Mayoral Debate: 10:00-11:00 a.m.
Council Debate: 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon

The public is invited.

August 7 Concert in the Park

Candidates will be at the August 7 Concert in the Park, at the Amphitheater on Monday, August 7, 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. The concert itself is free, and the public is invited.

If you see me at either event, come say hello.

On Your Own

There’s no substitute for speaking with candidates in person, but as the election approaches, you’ll find information, links, and commentary here at afelection.info, as well as notes and probably audio from the debate. You can make your own contacts too, of course. Here is contact information for mayoral candidates and city council candidates.

Be sure to thank them all for running. It’s not a small thing.

Thank You! (and some American Fork results)

11/04/2015 / David Rodeback

Results

Preliminary voting results for American Fork City Council (from the Daily Herald, because the county doesn’t have them up yet) are these:

Brad Frost (incumbent): 2,198
Kevin Barnes: 2,057
Robert Shelton (incumbent): 2,028
Allen Simpson: 1,080

So Frost, Barnes, and Shelton take the three available seats. This is the result advocated here at afelection.info, and the margin is gratifying.

Proposition 1 (a county-by-county measure to fund roads and transit with a 0.25% sales tax increment) predictably failed by a large margin in Utah County. It appears to have passed in several counties where it was on the ballot, but failed in nearly every county (excepting Weber County) which is served by UTA — counties where 40% of the proceeds would go to UTA.

Many American Forkers watched the Orem City Council race with interest, because Debby Lauret, who led the American Fork Chamber of Commerce for several years, was making her second bid for city council. This time she won, finishing second in a field of six candidates for three seats. Congratulations, Debby!

Thank You!

All the candidates deserve our thanks. Serving on the city council is a lot of work with few rewards, and campaigning, though a shorter gig, is no picnic. Let’s also thank Councilman Clark Taylor, whose term will soon end, and who did not seek reelection. Few people ever see most of the heavy lifting a city councilor does, but I’ve seen some of his.

I think the voters deserve thanks too. Someone will whine about the turnout, because someone always does, but more than 2,000 American Forkers went to the polls. I’m inclined to thank voters for cutting through the rhetoric — some of it quite deceptive — and choosing three excellent, reasonable, highly qualified leaders. Believe it or not, good sense brings its own economies.

Thanks to Kelly Smith and her American Fork PTA Council, the American Fork Chamber of Commerce, American Fork Hospital, the American Fork Youth City Council, residents John Mulholland and Brian Rawlings, and everyone else who worked to inform the voters.

Thanks to you too, our readers here, and to the many people to passed around the information they found here, by social media, e-mail, in print, and by word of mouth.

Eleven days before the election, Rod Martin texted me. He wanted to talk about doing something more to help inform the voters. Ten days before the election, we met after a meet-the-candidates event and decided that he would get some signs made to point to some web content. The web content would be my job. The domain afelection.info was available, so we decided to put it here. By Wednesday, six days before the election, some of the content was ready (thanks to WordPress) and the signs were printed.

Between then and Election Day (inclusive), we had 1,168 visits to the site by 816 unique users, almost all in American Fork. 3,058 page views tell us that many visits were to multiple pages, and an average session duration of about four minutes tells us people were reading. Above all, these numbers tell us that voters care about the facts, which is a very happy thing.

Both Rod and I have been surprised at the number of American Fork voters who have gone out of their way to thank us — many of them in person — for doing our very small part this year. Our favorite recurring themes were expressions of satisfaction that someone was putting out accurate numbers in context and clearly explained, against some of the other numbers that were flying around; and this welcome refrain: “I read every page.”

We also thank you for urging us to keep the domain and the site and do this again in two years, for the next municipal election, and for the welcome offers of help in doing so next time.

We may post some content before the next election cycle, if we think there are things the voters should know but aren’t hearing about what’s happening at the City. We’d welcome help with that too.

In any case, we’ll do our best to be a reliable source of information in context, and to explain complicated things clearly. As we have already done, we’ll supply some general, nonpartisan information and some analysis and commentary which will likely be . . . less nonpartisan.

If we see a spade, we’ll call it a spade, even if other folks — presumably nice folks — are convinced they see a rake or a hoe or a rainbow. We’ll never manage fully to detoxify our local politics, but we think good data helps good people make good decisions. Slowing down the spin and adding context and perspective are good things.

So keep your sign or return it to Rod at World Class Auto, and we’ll use it again.

Meanwhile, may we respectfully suggest that it’s time to start recruiting fine candidates for the 2017 election, and time for possible fine candidates to start preparing seriously, if they’re not already?

Best wishes to all. Well done. And thanks again.