By Dan E. Way

dway@heraldsun.com; 918-1035

CHAPEL HILL -- As the 2009 municipal election season heats up, candidates around the county will be attending forums to discuss issues and present their ideas to the electorate.

Next up will be a candidates forum in Hillsborough from 7 to 9 p.m. today. Candidates for mayor and the Town Board of Commissioners will answer questions prepared by the Orange-Chatham Group of Sierra Club. Questions also can be submitted from the audience.

The forum will be held in the Old County Courthouse, 100 E. King St., Hillsborough. For more information call 489-3046.

The newly formed Citizens For Responsible Government announced it plans to expand its efforts to push for Chapel Hill government efficiency and fiscal responsibility. As part of that process, it will host a Candidate Meet and Greet from 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday at the Roberts Bar of The Franklin Hotel. On-street parking is available on Sunday afternoons.

The group recently enhanced its Web site www.cfrgch.org with new features that include unedited candidate replies to its questionnaire and an incumbent voting record summary.

"We decided to give candidates an opportunity to fully express themselves on some of the important issues of the day," Citizens For Responsible Government member Tara O'Donnel said in a prepared statement. "We also added a new section to the Web site -- Voting Records -- which highlights some noteworthy council votes including the controversial lifetime health care and Lot 5."

The Chapel Hill Voting Record portion of the Web site will be updated regularly as a service to facilitate awareness by Chapel Hill citizens.

"We do not endorse individual candidates but rather are working for support of our platform by the candidates. We are following the Dawson Hall proposal and council's handling of the Strom vacancy, and we expect to be actively involved in Council's handling of these important issues" group member Tom Holt said.

"The time is ripe for change," said group member Randy Cox. "In May, our group saw that the membership of the mayor's newly formed Sustainable Community Visioning Task Force was unbalanced and did not represent the diverse community we know Chapel Hill to be. We quickly secured over 350 signatures on a petition for broader membership representation, resulting in the Council's expansion of the Task Force. That was our first success."

With openings on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP will sponsor a candidate school board forum on at 7 p.m. on Monday.

The event will take place at St. Pauls AME Church, 101 N. Merritt Mill Road. Contact Theresa Watson for additional information at (919) 274-2340.

Meanwhile, the League of Women Voters of Orange Durham and Chatham Counties has scheduled a Chapel Hill forum for mayoral and Town Council candidates from 7 to 9 p.m. Oct. 5 in the Town Council Chamber, 405 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., and a forum for Pittsboro mayoral and Town Commission candidates from 7 to 9 p.m. Oct. 7 in the Superior Court House in Pittsboro.