Members of the Strong Towns movement know that when they join us, they’re not only helping Strong Towns pay the bills. They’re telling the world that they believe everyone—from citizens to leaders, professionals to neighbors, and everyone in between—must contribute to building financially resilient cities, towns, and neighborhoods.

And the best part? Even after they join, Strong Towns members continue to act on that belief everyday, across the nation, in ways that best suit the challenges they face in their unique places.

They run for local office. They join committees. They start Local Conversations groups. They walk around the neighborhood with their friends, observing and explaining why, for example, a certain street is dangerous and is holding back its neighborhood’s potential. (You know you’ve done it.)

Strong Towns members don’t just profess the movement—they live it.

In this article, I’d like to share with you a story of how one member—Kent Hutchinson, primary organizer of the Local Conversation group Connect Nacogdoches—put our work to use in his own city. Inspired by a Strong Towns article, Kent interviewed city council candidates in Nacogdoches, Texas, through the lens of Strong Towns.

As you’ll learn, Kent didn’t need months of planning. All he needed was an opportunity to act—and a Strong Towns article for inspiration.

The Article that Inspired Action

We want Strong Towns to be a mass movement for change, which means that from a content perspective, we want to deliver actionable bits of insight and advice in an accessible, memorable style. Our former colleague Rachel Quednau is an absolute pro at this, and in 2018, she wrote a piece titled 10 Questions to Ask Someone Running for Local Office.

The questions include:

Do you think our main street/downtown is healthy and successful? If not, what would you do to change that?

If you received a $1 million grant to use for the city any way you wanted, what would you do with it and why?

If elected, what three steps would you take to put our city on a firmer financial footing?

We’re not about telling you exactly how to build a Strong Town—but if you want to ensure that you’re supporting elected officials who are asking the right questions and seeking thoughtful answers, this article is a perfect blueprint to interview candidates for local office.

Kent and his peers at Connect Nacogdoches, who interview candidates during every local election, thought so too. As the date for Nacogdoches residents to vote for their mayor and council members approached, Kent discovered Strong Towns and immediately realized how it related to the future of his organization and city:

“Your messages about parking lots, connectivity, scalability, and fiscal responsibility are all germane to what [Connect Nacogdoches] wants to be about. So when we came across that blog post as our election coming up, we knew we didn’t have to ask anything new—these were perfect.”

And as Kent and I spoke more, I realized these interviews would mean more than hearing candidates’ perspectives on Strong Towns themes—it would boost public public engagement city-wide, as well. “We’re not endorsing a candidate,” says Kent. “We just wanted to engage the public, get residents engaged in the process.”

That’s why Kent and his peers decided not to keep their dialogue in a bubble, locked away in email threads and voicemails. Instead, they gave the Strong Towns-focused interview a city-wide platform, allowing residents across the city to engage with the message.

Live Interviews with the Candidates

Armed with his list of 10 questions, Kent interviewed all available council candidates and the mayor at-large. (You can watch one of our favorite interviews here.) “I read the questions verbatim,” Kent said jokingly as he described the experience to me.