Chuck Calk, Chuck Shaheen battle it out before the Dec. 1 Runoff.

WARNER ROBINS — The city’s remaining candidates for mayor sparred over the proper ways to enhance diversity and tackled panel and audience questions during a forum that mostly focused on minority issues.

For his part, mayoral candidate Chuck Chalk said he intended to look into whether there was a problem with the city’s hiring practices, and spoke of bringing in an outside agency to address the issue.

“We can make wrong to right real quick ... in a process by us that’s not easy to identify,” Chalk said. “If we can fix it, we’ll fix it.”

Mayoral candidate Chuck Shaheen said the city already is past that point.

Shaheen and Chalk, 43, are the remaining contenders to replace outgoing Mayor John Havrilla, who took over the city’s leadership after the death of Mayor Donald Walker in September. The runoff election will be held Dec. 1.

The latest meeting for the duo came Monday night inside Agape Outreach Ministries, the church led by the Rev. Daron D. Lee, who ran unopposed for the Post 5 City Council seat vacated by Clifford Holmes Jr. as he unsuccessfully ran for mayor. The event was put together by the Houston County Voters League. More than 100 people filled the small church’s pews.

During opening statements, Chalk held up a bag of cotton candy, which he said looked good and had nice colors, but held no nutritional value. It was what residents should be considering the standard to surpass when seeking answers of their next leader, he said. He tried putting the cotton candy theory to use early when he apparently didn’t like an answer Shaheen gave on measuring whether city departments were meeting the mayor’s objectives. He yielded his remaining time to Shaheen to answer the question. Shaheen reiterated his original answer.
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