The 304 Collective, in partnership with the Marion County Chamber of Commerce, will present a series of Facebook Live events to allow the community to meet the 2020 candidates for the City Council of Fairmont WV.

Fairmont City Council Candidate Forum

If you’re checking in from elsewhere in the state or nation, I want to encourage you to use this as your reminder to research your local candidates.  So often, the noise of national and state level elections tends to drown out everything else.  Those offices are indeed important; however the decisions made in the voting box at the local and municipal level often have the biggest and most immediate impact on our day to day lives.

Because offices and election procedures differ so much from one municipality to another, it is more complicated to learn about the offices and those who are running for them.  So if you’re not already familiar with how offices are filled in your local area, I hope you’ll start to search that information out and get to know your local candidates.

Fairmont WV City Council Candidate Forums

For my local readers, we’re pleased to be able to share information with you on the upcoming City Council elections for the City of Fairmont.

The City of Fairmont is governed by a 9 member City Council; one member from each of Fairmont 9 districts.  Residents of Fairmont will vote for a member from each district (they are not restricted to voting only for the representative for their own district).

Council Members are elected for 4 year terms. The following are the districts that are up for re-election this year, and the residents who are running for those seats.
*denotes current Council Member running for re-election

DISTRICT 2
Anny Bolyard
David “Alex” Knapp
Sharon Harvey Mallow
Scott Straight

DISTRICT 4
Terry Burton
*Brad Merrifield
Rick Garcia

DISTRICT 6
Daniel K “Dan” Weber
*Dora Kay Grubb
Gia Deasy

DISTRICT 7
*Phil Mason
Blair Montgomery

Each candidate will have the opportunity to sit down with a moderator and share their background and what they hope to do for the City of Fairmont, if elected. Candidates will all be posed the same questions, have time to share any extra thoughts they have, and can answer relevant questions from the community!

We hope you’ll join us at 7pm, various evenings throughout September, as we welcome these candidates to our studio and present local opinions to the community in a COVID safe environment. It’s Facebook Live, so these will be on the 304 Collective Facebook page (simulcast on the Marion County Chamber’s Facebook page) with a “just in case” stream happening over on Marion County WV Chamber of Commerce YouTube as well.  I’ll update this post with links to each candidate’s event as they happen.

If you have questions you would like posed to the candidates, leave them in the comments here, or on their Live events!