AUBURN – Chip Morrison will moderate tonight’s City Council candidate forum after all.

Morrison, president of the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce, said he had planned to have someone else moderate the forum. He is seeking an elected office himself – one of the six seats on the city’s charter commission. He wanted to avoid any appearance of conflict, he said.

“But I couldn’t find a substitute,” he said. “I had about a half-dozen people on my list but none of them could do it, and this is too important a thing not to do.”

The forum is being sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce. It’s scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. in the Kirk Hall auditorium at Central Maine Community College.

The forum will follow the same format it did two years ago. All of the candidates, including Mayor Normand Guay and Ward 5 Councilor Belinda Gerry, will be allowed to make a three-minute opening statement. Then Guay and Gerry, who are both running unopposed, will be excused from the forum.

Morrison will collect questions from the audience and will direct them to the candidates in the contested races. This year, four of the five city wards and the two at-large City Council seats are being contested.

Candidates will get one minute to answer questions. There will be no side debate between candidates.

The forum will be videotaped by Great Falls TV for broadcast beginning tonight, Morrison said.

“That’s turned out to be our best audience,” he said. “We get a handful of people that show up, but it should run 40 to 50 times between now and the election. That’s where most of the people see it.”