Thomas Lynn | The Valdosta Daily TimesTyra Howard, Eric Howard, Dexter Sharper and Sandra Tooley attended the candidate forum at Serenity Church Sunday night.

VALDOSTA — Three candidates running for office in the Valdosta city election showed up for a public forum at Serenity Church Sunday evening.

The three candidates who attended the event and answered questions from the public were Incumbent for city council District 2 Sandra Tooley, Eric Howard running for District 4 and Tyra Howard running unopposed for school board were the only candidates to attend the forum.

The candidates gave opening remarks and then took questions from the audience. Tooley answered a question about the difficulty of bringing public transportation to Valdosta. She said she thinks that it would work here and that it would bring jobs, but there are some who oppose it.

“I see it coming. I really do,” Tooley said. “But there are those who don’t want it. We just need a majority, though, to make it happen.”

Eric Howard said public transportation failed to come to Valdosta before from a lack of support from the public. He said more people needed to get involved to push elected officials to act.

“We have to show up. I have fought with this, myself. I can tell you that whether I’m elected or not, I will show up from now on,” Eric said.

State representative Dexter Sharper also attended the forum and addressed public transportation. He said that unless someone has struggled to find transportation, that person will not understand the need for it. Most elected officials have always had their own vehicle or mode of transportation, he said.

“They don’t know the struggle,” Sharper said. “Sometimes it takes a change of the guard to get people who can relate. That’s why you have somebody running saying they know what it’s like to walk and hitch to get to the job.”

The candidates were then asked if they would support naming a road in the city after President Barack Obama. They all agreed. Eric Howard said he would also support naming a major highway north of town after Martin Luther King Jr. There is a road south of town already named after MLK Jr.

After the forum, Rev. Floyd Rose said that despite 51 percent of the Valdosta population being black, black people don’t hold what he called “a single position of power” inside the city. Currently, there are four members on the city council who are black.

“We think that that is wrong. Now some of that is also our fault, because we haven’t gone out and voted,” Rose said. “But even when we do go out and vote, nothing changes, and it’s been that way since I’ve been here.”

Commenting on the low candidate attendance at the forum, Rose said there might have been a problem with the sending out of invitations, but he said he wasn’t sure.

Early voting for Valdosta municipal elections ends this week, and Election Day is Nov. 7. 

Thomas Lynn is a government and education reporter for The Valdosta Daily Times. He can be reached at (229)244-3400 ext. 1256