CANDIDATES TO SPEAK AT LEAGUE FORUM

Candidates for the Cape Girardeau Board of Education and the Cape Girardeau City Council will participate in a public forum Thursday night at 7 p.m. in the council chambers at City Hall.

Sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Cape Girardeau County, the forum, according to Voters' Service Director Yvonne Ketcham, will provide candidates "the opportunity to express their views to the public." Glenda Quinn will be the moderator.

Invited to participate are: City Council candidates R. Melvin Gateley, Loretta Schneider, Melvin C. Kasten, Albert M. Spradling III, and Lawrence Godfrey; and school board candidates Lyle Davis, Kathy Swan, Ed Thompson, and Jeff Daniel.

Following established league policy, the speakers will appear in alphabetical order and each will be allowed a two-minute opening statement; questions from the audience will be written out and will be screened by a league committee to avoid repetition and to assure that the question may be addressed to all candidates; each candidate will be given an equal amount of time to answer each question, and the order of answering will be alternated.

In addition, Ketcham explained, candidates may neither wear nor hand out any type of campaign material on the premises.

The League of Women Voters is a non-partisan political organization whose purpose is to encourage the participation of an~ informed citizenry in government at all levels. Forums such as this, Ketcham said, are aimed at giving the public an opportunity to become acquainted with the candidates and their views ~~on salient issues.