Candidates from Troy and Brundidge were in attendance at the NAACP’s “Meet the Candidates” forum Thursday night to answer questions from the community about their platforms.

Every Troy candidate running in the District 1, District 5 and mayoral races was at the forum. Brundidge mayoral candidates Lawrence Bowden, Cynthia Pearson and Charlie Harris and District 4 candidate Jimmy Ramage also attended.

More than 100 citizens packed the courtroom for the forum, the majority of whom reside in District 1, the most contested seat on the Troy City Council.

“I was extremely impressed at the turnout,” said political columnist Steve Flowers, who served as one of four panelists at the forum. “It shows good civic involvement from the community, especially from District 1.”

Joining Flowers on the panel were WTBF Programming Director David “Doc” Kirby, New Life Christian Church Pastor Anthony Askew and attorney Ashley Mallory. Susie Copeland moderated the forum.

There was a bit of confusion at the beginning of the forum about how best to handle questions, as the original intent was to ask one question to one candidate. However, many of the questions written down were general questions that needed to be asked to all candidates. Flowers suggested during the forum that each candidate get a chance to answer those kinds of questions.

“It ended up better that way,” Flowers said after the forum. “It was more fair for all of them to get a chance to answer the question.”

A question about the budget in each city caused some conflict, as candidates that were not currently serving in the office said that they didn’t have the same access to that information as incumbent candidates.

Incumbent Troy Mayor Jason Reeves finally answered the question about the budget after several candidates were unable to do so, stating the city has a budget of $42 million for utilities and $23 million for the general fund.

The panelists informed Copeland that they should have addressed the question only to the mayor in the first place, but Copeland disagreed.

“Just because you haven’t sat on the council before doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be asked about the budget,” Copeland said. “If you don’t know the budget, maybe you shouldn’t be running for office. It’s called research.”

District 5 resident Helen Coleman said that she thought the forum went well. She submitted a question about allowing the use of the Academy Street High School for events instead of letting it deteriorate.

“I was happy to get my question in and get an answer that they’re looking into using it,” Coleman said.