Letter: Get the full story on West Richland candidates

This letter is in response to the Herald’s Oct. 13 editorial “West Richland needs people with vision.”

I have lived in West Richland for 43 years and been involved in city government for many of those years. Except for Kate Moran, I personally know all West Richland candidates running for office this election and believe the editorial board misrepresented the facts. It also divided the candidates into two groups, depending on which mayor candidate a voter supports.

There are not two groups of candidates running for office in West Richland. However, there is a group of Citizens for Responsible Government in West Richland. This group invited all candidates to provide written answers to 17 questions about important city matters along with mission and vision statements to be published verbatim. No candidate was allowed to see responses of another candidate before responding. Not even the group had access to this information prior to publication. That way each candidate’s response was completely independent, and the group selected from this publication the candidates they wished to support.

Before voting, I strongly encourage all West Richland residents to read about candidates for all positions online at wrvoter.info and disregard the Herald’s Oct. 13 editorial.

This story was originally published October 20, 2017 at 5:20 PM with the headline "Letter: Get the full story on West Richland candidates."