Last Thursday, the League of Women Voters of SouthHampton Roads held a mayoral roundtable at the Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center up in North Suffolk.

As I have said before, being the city reporter has been a great advantage going into this electoral season. I’ve been able to watch the candidates up close and follow their respective campaigns as the weeks go on. After each event or interview or just chance run-in with the candidates, I, personally, feel more educated and aware as to who they are as people and as potential leaders of this city.

That’s why last week was a little disconcerting for me.

First of all, I was none too happy that I was missing the season premiere of “The Office” to go drive in Thursday night’s torrential downpour for this forum, but that’s neither here nor there.

The real problem was that at last week’s forum, each candidate was given just one minute to answer questions ranging from education to affordable housing. One candidate would get a 30 second rebuttal time, if he or she was the first candidate to get the question.

One minute to sum up an action plan tackling some of the city’s biggest issues. It was easy to see some of the candidates struggle to solve such big issues such as gang violence in 60 seconds. And, the candidates who were calm under the pressure of the clock didn’t reveal anything practical in their responses.

It’s just not fair, nor is it educational.

I understand six candidates getting carte blanche to talk about an issue could be a recipe for disaster, but I also think not knowing precisely where they stand on these topics could be equally terrible for the city.

We need to have a forum where we can hear educated discussions from our candidates on the big topics, not who can produce the best sound bites.

While sound bites make my job easy, they surely don’t make the voters’ job easy.

Here at the paper we’re running a candidate questionnaire each week to get more of a feel for the candidates, and each week I’m just as torn. For space issues, we have to limit the answers to 100 words per topic, and it’s difficult to squeeze in everything the candidates want to say.

There will be a third forum later on this month, and I hope organizers will take the time to think about giving our candidates an atmosphere to tackle a couple of the hard questions. Let the candidates dictate their answers, not a clock.

Lauren wicks is a reporter for the Suffolk News-Herald. She can be reached at 757.934.9613 or at lauren.wicks@suffolknewsherald.com