Four candidates debate city issues facing future Fayetteville City Council members on September 30, 2010, at the Episcopal Church at the intersection of Dickson Street and East Avenue

Adam Firecat and Mark Kinion are seeking the Ward 2 position being vacated by Kyle Cook, while Rhonda Adams and Jeff Dickey are seeking the Ward 4 council seat being vacated by Shirley Lucas. Adella Gray and Justin Tennant (watching the debate from front-row seats in photo) are running unopposed for council positions. Gray is the incumbent for a Ward 1 seat, while Tennant is unopposed to fill a Ward 3 seat being vacated by Robert Rhodes.

Strangely, the debate was held in a church meeting room with motorcycles roaring in the background while the City Council meeting room a few blocks away from the main activities of the predictably noisy Bikes, Blues and Barbecue festival sat dark and empty. Not so predictable, but not unprecedented, the Government Channel went off the air (cable, satellite and Internet) during the time the debate was going on and stayed off until 9 a.m. the following morning!
Three government channel employees were working cameras and sound equipment at the debate offsite and apparently none realized the station was off until the morning.
If the debates had been held in the council room, only one worker would have been required to operate the automated, coordinated cameras from the control panel and money would have been saved and more seating would have been available. Even more significantly, the telecast could have been LIVE and maybe the fact that the station was offline would have been discovered and corrected so that 12 or more hours of normal programing would not have been lost.
For the coming week's schedule listing the times the debates will be shown on Government Channel, please use the following link, which is the link for last week's schedule and may be updated sometime today.