May 2: Election Day

Okay, change of plans. I intended to talk about Webb/Miller, but, as I looked at the calendar in the kitchen, and exclaimed, "Oh crap! Tuesday's election day," I decided I'd talk about the Bristol City elections.

As you may or may not know, I'm an officer of election this year, and I've found out I'll be the guy marking numbers off as voters come in. And, as it's a city election, I'm sure it'll be a busy day. Right.

So, we have City Council elections and School Board elections. Three seats are open on the Council (Councilwoman Vicie Dotson and Vice Mayor Paul Hurley are retiring). The candidates running are incmbent Mayor Doug Weberling, former Mayor "Bulldog" Jim Rector, businessman Frank Goodpasture, and Fred Bowman. On the School Board, we have three open seats, and the candidates are incumbent members Randy White and Virginia Goodson, and businessmen Eric Clark and Ted Castle (an interesting note, Castle's dad was the preacher who baptized my dad, in Molls Creek).

I've already announced who I support, but, I'll do it again since everybody is so eager to know:

City Council:
Doug Weberling
Jim Rector
Fred Bowman

School Board:
Randy White
Ted Castle
Eric Clark

As far as I can tell, there are at least two Democrats running for the council (Weberling and Rector), one Republican (Goodpasture), and, apparently, one guy who is running because he wants to change things (Bowman). White and Castle are the only Democrats running for the School Board, but I'm voting for Clark, too, because he graduated from my high school (White teaches there right now, and Rector is a former Vice Principal there).

At the recent candidates forum, Goodpasture spoke out against and criticized basically every funding plan the city had launched. One big thing he hit was the "Red Lobster scandal," where the city paid Red Lobster something like $100,000 to build at Exit 7 (if you've been through SWVA, you know about Exit 7). They got their investment back in a couple weeks, and Red Lobster now pays around $350,000 in taxes per year (which just doesn't sound right, but that number is according to Weberling). But Goodpasture is against that. He's also againt the Birthplace of Country Music Museum, the new Science Museum they're planning, and the Rhythm and Roots Festival. He also basically said we should leave all of our traffic problems downtown to the next generation to deal with. I was not impressed.

As I am now staring down the barrel of an 8 page, typewritten Psychology paper on Sigmund Freud's theory of psychoanalysis and his main case studies (he had some seriously distrbed people, by the way), that was do Thursday, I guess I better get to work.

-Neal