Candidates for the Mountlake Terrace City Council got to speak to a room full of about 50 residents on Thursday night at the candidates forum sponsored by the MLT Seniors. The event was hosted by the Mountlake Terrace Library and MC’d by Brady Wright. The candidates each were given a couple minutes for an opening statement. The MC had prepared a number of questions for the candidates and questions were taken from the audience as well. At the end of the forum each of the candidates were able to give a closing statement.

Many events like this are in a debate format that tend to get heated but Thursday’s event was anything but that. Many people likely went in to the event undecided as to who they are going to vote for, some still may be. For the most part, all of the candidates seemed to have similar visions for the city so the choice may not come down to differing views on city issues but other factors such as experience, fresh ideas or who has the most desire to truly represent us, residents of Mountlake Terrace.

Not present were Jasmin Contreras, who had a recent death in the family and couldn’t make it, and John Zambrano, who, oddly enough, created and distributed flyers for the event but did not attend. The reason why was unknown.

Questions from the audience had a wide variety of topics:  east-west transportation routes in the city, affordable housing for seniors, candidates view on Ref. 71, concerns about Roger’s closing and more.

However the vote turns out, it seems as if we will still have a city council that is fairly united in it’s vision for Mountlake Terrace.

We will have video clips of the forum on MLTnews.com likely by Monday so come back to watch.