Fairbury hosts candidate forum ahead of 2024 Election

FAIRBURY, Neb. - A crowd of a couple dozen was on hand inside Fairbury High School on Wednesday night to watch as a total of eight candidates for local offices spoke to the public for perhaps the final time before Election Day next month.

The event was co-sponsored by the Fairbury Rotary and the Fairbury Journal-News, and emceed by representatives of those two organizations, Lana Likens and Timothy Linscott.

Candidates for five different local offices were present for the event: mayoral candidates Spencer Brown and Kelly Davis; Fairbury City Council Ward 1 candidates Charley Endorff and Cat Lovgren; Ward 2 candidates Bradley Kuzelka and Mary Renn; and Ward 4 candidate Josh Jacobi (his opponent, Jaime McDaniel, was not present for the event). Danielle Schwab, who is running unopposed for the County Commissioner seat that is opening up, was present as well.

Every candidate was asked the same set of three questions, which they all received in advance: what do you think of hard spending caps in local government? What is the biggest challenge facing your constituents? And how do you plan to further your community if elected?

Nearly every candidate discussed the challenges associated with rising costs and acknowledged a need for increased transparency in local government, and incumbent mayor Spencer Brown framed this race – both his and more generally – as a contest between the old guard and new ideas.

"We have a great group that works at the city," Brown said in his address. "We need to keep them, we need to maintain our current staff, and we need to recruit new people into town, and then we need to keep them."

"I always try to promote Fairbury as a great place to live and raise a family," his challenger, Davis, said. "I could just scream when I read on social media that people are tearing Fairbury up and talking about it in a negative way. Going back to an old slogan from the '60s, 'Fairbury is a great little city, by a damn sight.'"

Stay tuned, we’ll have plenty more coverage from this event and the lead-up to the 2024 Election here on Ol’Red and News Channel Nebraska ahead of Election Day which is coming up soon on November 5. Reporting in Fairbury, I’m Tim Hackett.