The Rules of the Debate

A debate will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 16 at the Wells Inn, Sistersville between the candidates running for Mayor of Sistersville. Bill Rice, Mark Walker and David Fox will interact with the audience in accordance with the following guidelines:

Each candidate will be given 3 minutes at the beginning of the debate to introduce himself to the audience. The debate will begin shortly thereafter.

All questions will be submitted in written form by the audience when they arrive at the Wells Inn and pulled at random by the moderator as they are asked. No questions will be accepted from the floor during or after the debate.

All questions used must:

· Be structured to cover all candidates. No candidate specific questions will be accepted. · All questions must be civil and non-threatening. · Handwriting must be legible enough for the moderator to read. The moderator will not attempt to clarify any question. · The moderator will read each question quietly before reading it aloud to ensure that every question conforms to the rules. Non-qualifying questions will be made available to the candidates after the debate to ensure fairness.

Each candidate will have 2 minutes to answer each question in turn and all candidates have been asked to respond directly to the question and not allow their answer to expand to other topics.

At the end of the allotted questioning time, each candidate will be given 3 minutes for summation.