The signs have started going up around the city, and grown men and women are wearing badges and waving flags. It’s only July but the campaigning has begun in earnest for seats on the city councils in both Issaquah and Sammamish.

The two places have grown from humble roots to become large centers, and important cities, and are heavily involved in the direction that Washington is taking on issues such as development, transportation, population growth, and ecological responsibility.

So this election is going to be an important one, in both cities, and it is great to see that most of the seats are being contested.

In Issaquah and Sammamish we are fortunate to have a number of great local papers that keep us on top of the issues and in the minds of our elected officials.

Though relatively new to both cities, The Reporter is keen to ensure that it is involved in encouraging dialogue between candidates and the people they may one day represent.

To that end, over coming weeks we will be featuring a regular question and answer session with the candidates.

Every other week I will be asking the candidates a question related to an important issue in the city. The candidates will be given an equal amount of space to respond, and those responses will be published side by side.

Our smaller tabloid format makes it hard to devote large spreads to one off debates, and so I hope this regular feature will allow for more sustained candidate input, in the style of an ongoing conversation.

Which begs the question, which questions to ask them?

I have already met with a number of citizens groups who are keen to submit their ideas for what the Q and A sessions should cover, and I extend that invitation to all readers.

E-mail me at jlynch@issaquah-reporter.com, or jlynch@sammamish-reporter.com, and let me know what questions you think I should pose to the candidates.

Obviously we will have a limited number of questions to fit in before the election in November, but I will do my best to make sure all your concerns are represented.

The techies at The Reporter have come up with a cool function that will also increase the amount of candidate/reader feedback over the next few months — candidate blogs.

Every candidate has been invited to take up their own blog page at www.sammamish-reporter.com and www.issaquah-reporter.com, an idea which most of the candidates immediately expressed an interest in doing.

Readers will be able to leave comments for the candidates, and for other readers, on the blogs, hopefully generating some worthwhile and responsible discussion which will shape not only the election but also the future policies of those elected.

You will be able to check them out by following the blogs link for our web site, and they should be up and running any day now.

When I began here eight months ago, I wrote of the role of the community paper as town center, a place of discussion and interaction. These candidate blogs will go a long way to fulfilling that ideal.

One further note on the campaign race. I am eager to keep printing Letters to the Editor that contribute to the discussion of issues in the city, like the ones here about Timberlake Park. However I have begun to receive a few that are clearly endorsements for a candidate, in both the council and King County Executive elections.

While endorsements are also valuable aspects of the political process, these will not be considered for publication in the Letters to the Editor section.

For enquiries about political advertising, please contact my boss, Reporter Publisher Renee Walden.

Best of luck to all the candidates, and to the voters of Issaquah and Sammamish.