 Good evening everyone. My name is Lauren Miladeo and I'll be moderating tonight. I'm a freelance writer who often writes for The Bridge and I live in Moortown. Tonight's forum is one in a series of forums sponsored by Orch Media and The Bridge. And the goal of these forums is to give candidates an opportunity to share their views with the community and share with voters why they believe they should be elected. We had three candidates tonight scheduled to be with us tonight. Unfortunately two of them could not join us so we're going to do a slightly modified and shorter format from our previous candidate forum evenings. Wayne Townsend who is here with us tonight will answer a couple of questions. And we also have Wayne giving us a statement from his colleague Jackie Clark who unfortunately could not join us tonight. Additionally we can take calls from the public if anyone would like to call in with a question. The number is 802-224-9901 again 802-224-9901 and we do welcome any questions from the public. With that I will ask again Wayne Townsend our candidate who is joining us here tonight. Wayne is a Republican from Randolph and Wayne if you'd like to start with your opening statement. Hi I'm Wayne Townsend and unlike my opponents that are sitting representatives I will show up to represent you and keep you informed. I was born at Randolph Hospital right in Randolph Vermont and I grew up on a dairy farm just down the road. We're into my teens when farming got tough and my father was forced to sell the cows and take a job. As my heart was always in farming when I got out of school my dreams were to run my own dairy farm but I couldn't afford to so I started a forestry business starting out selling firewood and building up a company until I saved up enough to start my own farm so I started a farm and I farmed until my money was all gone and then I moved back into forestry where I rebuilt up a forestry company until my little girl was struck down with brain cancer and the doctors gave my little girl three months to live so I had some quick decisions to make. I said for one that's not an option and for two I need to be there for my daughter so the battle lasted for four and a half years so I sold off my forestry equipment that I built up over the years until we beat this and she's still with us today and we beat cancer. So now I took a job with Hearth and Holmes Technologies. I melt iron 12 hours every night, a lot of weeks, seven days a week and I'm looking to represent all of you folks because I understand some of the real struggles that we all face in life and some of the tough policy situations that we've endured and things that we need change on. We need to bring some affordability, accountability and protections for our children within our schools to protect their safeties so that's my opening presentation and now I'll switch over to my running mate. Jackie Clarke was unable to join us this evening because she come down ill so I'm going to read this as if I was Jackie because that's how it's written. Hi I'm Jackie Clarke running for house. I've been a registered nurse for over 35 years, farming for 30 years and I'm a mother and a grandmother. I want to make Vermont more affordable. I will fight against bureaucratic waste and taxes and programs like One Care Vermont which costs Vermonters 25.6 million more than they pay for free Medicaid model including 12.7 million and unaccountable expenditures per our state auditor. We pay 37 million in extra rates to fund solar panels and EV cars. I oppose new heating oil taxes and sales, taxes on groceries, school spending is too high. We have some of the most expensive schools in the country yet proficiency scores are plummeting and that's why I support school choice. With rising crime I want to make our community safe by ensuring criminals are prosecuted and stop the flow of opioids into Vermont. I support small farms. Nothing will do more to benefit the environment than shifting from industrial to local food production. Local agricultural provides clean healthy food for our communities, jobs for Vermonters and preserves our agrarian culture. Please vote for me, Jackie Clarke, to work for you. That was on Jackie's behalf. Thank you, Wayne, for both of those statements. And I should have said at the beginning but I'll say now. Tonight's forum is featuring Wayne who is a candidate for the Vermont House of Representatives, Orange Washington Addison District. There are two seats up for election. The candidates in this race are incumbents Jay Hooper who is Democrat from Randolph Center, Larry Satkowitz who is a Democrat from Randolph as well as Jackie Clarke and Wayne Townsend. So now we're going to move on to a couple of questions and again this would normally be going back and forth but we're going to focus on Wayne. So first off I'm not going to give this question any context because I just kind of want you to jump in wherever you see most of it. What would you say is the most important issue for your district and when you are in the state house how are you going to use that role to improve things for your district? I think right now one of the key topics for everyone is affordability. So I think that we're at a point where the free money that people think are free which is free money that comes from our federal government has about come to an end. So I think this next legislative session things are going to be a little bit or a lot tighter than they have been in the past. We're going to need to make some strong cuts where we can make cuts and without putting the burden on to people because we have to protect all as a whole because we're representing all of the people and not some of the people. So there's other things that are driving inflation. We know that people can't afford things like heating oil, their groceries, their medications. So some of our legislatures from opposing party wants to submit a clean heating tax which we know that you cannot afford. So like me and my run and mate Jackie we oppose a heating tax and we will not support it but however we are all for protecting our environment. We understand the need for clean air, clean water and to protect our environment for our future generations. But I think affordability is going to be one of the key issues along with some many other key issues that we have within our state. Okay, thank you. Excuse me. Okay, we'll move on to our next question. Vermont is known to be a progressive state but marginalized communities experience threats here just as they do in other places. In view of recent local events that have targeted Vermont's LGBTQ plus communities such as threats surrounding drag queen story hour events and the vandalizing and burning of rainbow and trans flags. Would you support legislative action to strengthen Vermont's bias hate crime statutes? This has been a real hot issue for especially in my local community. I think we as representatives are we're supposed to as representatives understand that we need to represent all people and bring them all the protections that they need. However this situation could have been handled a lot differently in my local community. I'm sure a lot of my viewers are aware of what's going on in Randolph with watching the news and stuff. And the thing is when you take the oath of office you're to uphold the Constitution and protect your people the best that you can. Well these young ladies have a constitutional right to speak up for themselves when they feel that something is not that they feel uncomfortable with. And I think that also nobody in our community is trying to run anyone out of our community. I think there was some safeguards that we could have put in to make things fair for both sides. Our transgenders could have been given their own private bathroom or facility that they could use so that they wasn't anybody making them feel uncomfortable. And also so that they wasn't invading our young ladies' privacies. So I think that we could do a lot of simple things. But at the end of the day we have to remember we all live in these communities together. We don't want to run anyone out of our communities and we can't take the violence on this because there's been some outside threats from out of state. Our local community members we got a lot of good people in my area. We just want our girls to feel comfortable and protected within our schools. Thank you. And I agree with you that all of the girls involved in that situation, whether they were cis or trans, absolutely deserve to be protected. I agree with you on that. Okay, so those were the questions that we had prepared. I will again read off the number for the call in questions. If we have any of those, the number again is 802-224-9901. We don't have any call in questions at this time. But we do have time for closing remarks from Wayne. Do you have closing remarks you'd like to offer at this time? Well, like I said, I'm Wayne Townsend and I'm looking to represent all of you. I understand we have some extreme struggles that we're going to face in this next legislative session with affordability, protections, meaning protecting our communities by standing behind our law enforcement and try to curb the opioid epidemic that is plaguing our towns and cities. We also need to bring some safeguards for parental rights and assay to what is going on with our safety of our children and what the school system is allowed to do within our school systems. They seem to think that they can do things without parental rights or having parental parents having to say in what's going on with their children, which I will not stand for any of that. I'm all for parents' rights and assay into what's going on. I'm also disappointed that for decades we have all stood for women's rights, not to see them undermined by a new ideology that's undermined and taken away their rights and protections of their privacies and stuff, but also know that we need to be considerate of other's feelings within our communities and try to work together. I think we need more round table talks to bring all ideas to the table so that we can address these issues in a manner that's going to be beneficial for everyone and nobody's looking to take one side one way or the other. It's just we have strong concerns of the safety and well-being of our children and want their privacies protected. After all, they're our future generation, so we need to stand behind them. Also, I'm a strong constitutionalist, so when it comes to the rights of standing up for our constitutional rights, I'm a firm candidate that will stand behind these rights and not allow them to be infringed upon. Thank you. Thank you very much. I will read that number out one more time in case we do have anyone who wants to call in at the last minute. Again, that number is 802-224-9901, and I'm not seeing any questions coming in. So, at that point, I think we can conclude for this evening. I should also mention that another candidate, Larry Satkowitz, who is a Democrat, has provided a video since he cannot join us tonight, and that will be available on Orca's website for you to view as well.