NAACP hosts political candidate forum at State Street Baptist Church

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – Candidates in this year’s local election made their way to State Street Baptist Church Monday for a forum for the community.

Starting off,  the night hosted by the NAACP was the two mayoral candidates, which include current mayor Todd Alcott and former state representative Patti Minter.

One of the questions they were asked was how they plan to continue the growth of affordable housing in the city.

“Smart growth means that we plan our infrastructure before we start building. I read the Bowling Green Housing Study, which is over 200 pages long, and it tells us that we are already behind. We need to be adding 3,000 units of housing every year right now to meet the need that we have,” Minter says.

“Our commissioners have all ran that we wanted to help affordable housing but what does that mean for our community? What we believe it means is it’s a continuation of an $800,000 grant and Habitat for Humanity, $100,000 grants… and to live the dream and seeing affordable housing that you and I would want to live in,” Alcott says.

Following the mayoral debate, a group of city commissioners got to speak to citizens as well. Here’s some of what they had to say when introducing themselves to those who may not know about them:

“For me, my campaign has always been about ohana, and ohana basically means family, and family means that no one is left behind or forgotten. So that’s the thing that I want to do, is make sure we’re building affordable housing, to make sure we’re building more businesses, to make sure that things are a little bit better,” current city commissioner Carlos Bailey says.

“I retired so I could be of service to my city and my community. I work with Feeding America at Lampkin Park. I’m at the free grocery store. I volunteer with the homeless,” candidate JohnAlma Barnett says.

“I do this work because my family, we had a lot of challenges growing up. I experienced homelessness and hunger and seeing my parents work day and night, only to see their dreams get crushed over and over again. It lit a fire in me,” current commissioner Dana Beasley-Brown says.

“Because I love serving the people of our community. I signed up to run for commissioner again, and I’ve been fortunate enough to serve… like I said, currently my second term, and I would appreciate getting a third term this second go around,” current commissioner Melinda Hill says.

News 40 will have more coverage of these races leading up to election night on Nov. 5.