(Liveblog Replay) The Iowa City City Council Candidates Forum

An Iowa City City Council candidates forum was hosted by the Daily Iowan Wednesday night in the Illinois Room of the Iowa Memorial Union.

Candidates , Richard Dobyns, Richard Finley, Mark McCallum, , Jim Throgmorton, and  were in attendance for the event, which lasted from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.

The full forum can be found in my notes below, but if you don't want to read all of that here is a summary:

• There was much more agreement than disagreement during this particular forum. Many of the candidates used the time to formally introduce themselves and why they are running.
• The candidates were asked about their thoughts on the 21-only ordinance passed into law last year. Even the candidates who didn't much like the ordinance said that the situation downtown had gotten out of hand, and that the ordinance isn't going away.
  
  All of the candidates agreed, though, that there aren't enough good alternatives for students and entertainers to take the place of the bars, and that problem should be studied. Several candidates, including Mayor Hayek, said the ordinance should be tweaked further.
• The candidates were asked several questions about including low income communities into Iowa City as a whole.
  
  There was also broad agreement for candidates on this issue, as they said that improving public transportation and spreading out affordable housing would help solve the problem.
• The candidates were asked about the problem of unscrupulous landlords taking advantage of tenants in town. The candidates again broadly agreed that a lot of the tenant-and-landlord relationship is dictated by state laws rather than city ones, so this limits what can be done by the city, but that city council members should listen to tenants who have grievances and try to help them the best that they can.

Click here to view my notes from the forum.

Click here for the Press-Citizen story on the forum.

Click here for the Gazette story on the forum.