Dear Friends & Neighbors-
October is my favorite month at the Town Hall with Oktoberfest and the Scouts Haunted Hotel & Trail. This year is an election year, so we also have our traditional Candidate’s forum back in the Hall this year (also with a streaming option).
The board had a long discussion this month about how much campaigning we wanted at the Oktoberfest event, and our unanimous verdict was that we wanted the event itself to be free of campaigning to allow the event to be a celebration of our community. Candidates are welcome to attend as registered guests, but are being asked to refrain from initiating conversations about the election and/or their candidacy, and to not display or distribute any campaign literature, promotional material, etc. If a guest asks a candidate a question about the election or their campaign, they are free to answer, and if a guest wants to get fliers or promotional material from the candidate, they can do so away from the event itself, such as from the candidate’s car. If any guest feels that a candidate is acting inappropriately, please contact any member of the OTC board to intervene; we are identifiable from our snazzy new name tags.
The Oktoberfest is being presented by Lauren and Debbie McCauley and I thank them for their generous support of OTC’s preservation of the historic buildings and promotion of our community. These events can only happen with the time and talents by our great membership, Thank You! This year we are offering a small discount on admission tickets for volunteers, and we need more volunteers, especially serving food. Please consider helping, a sign-up sheet is available here. We are strongly encouraging attendees to buy tickets on-line at our website, olivenhain.org/oktoberfest, which will allow an expedited check-in process that by-passes the ticket purchase line.
The candidate’s forum will be on October 5th at 6:30 in the meeting hall, and a link to the live stream will be available on the OTC website, www.olivenhain.org. Questions may be submitted to candidateforum@olivenhain.org, preferably by 5 pm on Monday. There will also be an opportunity to submit questions after this time or by cards available at the event, but it provides the moderator, Carol Knight, and her team less time to curate. Each question will be addressed to all the candidates for either the District Representative, Mayor, or both. All candidates will provide brief opening and closing statements.
The Scouts will also be running their annual Haunted Hotel & Trail event the last three weekends of October (14-15, 21-22, & 28-29). This is a great family friendly tradition, and we are happy to support the Scouts presentation of this wonderful community tradition.
Yours in Community, Dan