On July 28 from 6:30-8PM, the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana will host a panel discussion with the qualified mayoral candidates. So far, five candidates have announced intent to run in this year’s election – Mayor Adrian Perkins, Mario Chavez, Tom Arceneaux, Darryl Ware and Tracy Mendels. As additional candidates qualify for the 2022 mayoral race, the YMCA will extend invitations to the additional candidates to participate in the July 28 discussion.
The event will be held in the gymnasium at the BHP YMCA and will be free and open to the public.
The exact format of the event is still being determined but it will not be a debate. The YMCA will give each candidate a certain amount of time to talk about why he/she is running for Mayor. Then, depending on the number of qualified candidates, the YMCA will have one or two questions for each attendee.
The YMCA is asking if anyone in the public has a question it would like the YMCA to consider as one of the questions for the candidates to please email the question to [email protected].
The panel discussion is a new initiative for the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana but follows in the tradition of YMCAs around the world that since the late 1800s have sponsored lecture series similar to those of the lyceum. The YMCA of Northwest Louisiana plans to organize a number of community-focused discussions over the next year.
Alongside its periodic panel discussions, the YMCA of Northwest Louisiana is conducting weekly interviews with a wide cross-section of individuals in the community. The YMCA is calling its new initiative, “Shreveport-Bossier: My City, My Community, My Home”. The new initiative is highlighting the positive aspects of Shreveport-Bossier to foster more engaged and hopeful thinking in the community.
To locate the interviews that have been published to date, you can visit the YMCA’s YouTube channel, YMCA of Northwest Louisiana. New episodes of the podcast interviews are published every Thursday.