Los Gatos Weekly-Times

KCAT and the Weekly-Times team up for candidates' forum

Los Gatos Town Council candidates will meet the press Tuesday, Oct. 13, at a forum sponsored by the Los Gatos Weekly-Times and KCAT-Channel 6, the Los Gatos public access station, which will broadcast the forum live at 7 p.m.

Candidates Paul Merchain, a real-estate consultant; Joe Pirzynski, a teacher, counselor and planning commissioner; and incumbent councilmembers Randy Attaway and Steve Blanton will be given a chance to make opening statements, then will take questions from a panel. The four candidates are running for three open seats.

The hour-long broadcast will be moderated by George Sampson, KCAT station manager. Weekly-Times editor Dale Bryant and reporter Jeff Kearns will question the candidates.

"We see this as a very good use of the community-access station in Los Gatos," Sampson said. "By bringing issues of a purely local interest to a purely local audience, we hope the broadcast will play a significant role in helping the voters decide which candidates they're going to support."

The forum will also serve as an information-gathering tool for the newspaper's cover-page election preview on Oct. 28.

"The idea was to find a forum that would be a little more spontaneous than the previous ones," Bryant said. "We discussed this on staff, and when the idea of working with KCAT came up, it turned out George [Sampson] was thinking about doing the same thing.

"My idea was to try to make this more free-form, where candidates are forced to think on their feet instead of handing in statements or filling out questionnaires," she added. "It's important to know not only what the answers are, but also to see how they think on their feet and how they handle themselves with the other candidates."

The forum will be rebroadcast before election day at the following times: Thursday, Oct. 15, at 8 p.m.; Monday, Oct. 19, at 6 p.m.; Friday, Oct. 23, at 6 p.m.; Monday, Oct. 26, at 7 p.m.; Tuesday, Oct. 27, at 8 p.m.; Wednesday, Oct. 28, at 8 p.m.; Thursday, Oct. 29, at 7 p.m.; Friday, Oct. 30, at 6 p.m.; and Monday, Nov. 2, at 8 p.m.

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