Letter to the Editor

Moderator responds

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to Dick Trail's Oct. 6 column titled "McCook's town hall meeting." In this column Mr. Trail referred to the open public meeting as a "carefully scripted meeting" and mentioned that "participants had to submit questions before the meeting and then those were sorted so that Senator Ben was only exposed to non-controversial topics." I served as moderator for the public meeting and wish Mr. Trail would have asked me about the meeting. First of all, those in attendance were given the opportunity to submit questions before the meeting, but more than half of the questions answered were from the floor. I will admit that due to time constraints not all of those that had a question from the floor or submitted questions were selected, but I did my best to pick from all sides of the room and also mix in submitted questions.

These submitted questions were not sorted through to side step controversial subjects, but to make sure that questions answered by Senator Nelson were covering a wide range of topics. Many questions were duplicates or very close in subject to a question answered from the floor, so sorting through submitted questions was for the benefit of the audience. Those in attendance witnessed responses to a wide range of questions and certainly all of them were not easy to answer.

Jim Ulrich

President & CEO

Community Hospital

McCook

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