AUBURN — The Twin Cities need a new more modern, post-industrial vision of the community to guide future council decisions and economic development, Auburn mayoral candidate Jonathan LaBonte said Tuesday night.

“We don’t make blankets and shoes, but to some extent we still think like we make blankets and shoes,” LaBonte told members of the Auburn Democratic Committee at a candidates’ forum in Auburn Hall. “I think we need to look around us and see we are competing in a global economy.”

LaBonte and the five candidates for two at-large seats on the City Council in the Nov. 8 election presented their views and answered questions from the Democratic party members. At-large candidates are Joshua Shea, Ron Potvin, Jeremiah Bartlett, Belinda Gerry and J. Michael Lemay.

LaBonte, the sole candidate for the Auburn mayor’s job, said he’s eager to work with city councilors and consider new ideas.

“It’s the mayor’s role to understand the interests and needs of individual councilors and mix those things together in a way that accomplishes business,” LaBonte said. “I assure it’s not my goal to have 7-0 votes. We find the best solutions by throwing things at the wall and poking holes in them and finding the best solutions.”

LaBonte said he hoped to run polite council meetings based on respect.

“I’m not afraid to use the gavel,” LaBonte said. “We need to have decorum and a certain amount of respect. That’s going to come by making sure we talk to each other as adults and are able to respect each others’ ideas, even if we disagree.”

LaBonte urged voters to consider which council candidates represented his kind of forward-thinking vision, but he stopped short of endorsing any candidates.

Candidate Shea, owner and publisher of LA Magazine, said he’s running because he is fed up with sitting councilors.

“It’s just amazes me how much a poor city council can drag down an area,” Shea said. “It just reflects in the citizens. That’s what I see and what I’ve been hearing for a long, long time.”

Shea said he would work to review budgets carefully. He said he wanted to see more economic development in the area.

“The absolute best form of economic development that you can have in a town is by having the absolute best education system,” Shea said. “It’s just a trickle-down thing. No. 2, we need to invest in the arts and making Auburn a place people want to come.”

Potvin, a former city councilor, said he wanted to focus on the budgets for the city and the School Department, with an eye toward keeping taxes low. That’s the way to bring new people and businesses to a community, he said.

“We need to get people here,” Potvin said. “In my experience, the one turn-on for both residents and business is the tax structure of a community and how much money is spent and where it’s spent.”

Potvin said he blames the problems councilors and city staff have had over the past two years on a poor economy and cuts at the state and federal levels.

“We could have had Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Snow White on that council and it wouldn’t have made any difference,” Potvin said. “The challenges municipalities faced, with reductions in federal and state aid, were humongous.”

Candidate Bartlett, a local transportation planner, said his most important goal is to help the city define a new vision.

“We need to have a vision and a common set of goals before we even talk about how much something is going to cost,” Bartlett said. “Without that vision, we don’t have any way to sell ourselves.”

Bartlett suggested hosting community forums two times a year to engage Auburn’s residents and get them excited about the city.

“You could bring in different stakeholders, developers, business owners, representatives of nonprofits, and get everybody in one place talking about broader issues,” he said. “When it comes time for these groups to share their visions with the rest of the community, it doesn’t happen now. There’s a lot of wasted energy there, so that’s one of my strong goals.”

Incumbent Councilor Gerry said she would continue to work hard as a councilor. She defended many of her more controversial decisions over the past two years.

“I’ve always tried to do the right thing,” Gerry said. “I might have chosen my direction not for the reasons other councilors did, but for my own legitimate reasons. Sometimes it was a vote as a starting point to come down to a more sensible conclusion.”

Gerry pointed out that one of her opponents, candidate Shea, had printed his campaign literature without saying who had paid for it, a violation of state election law. Gerry said she and another candidate suggested Shea print a simple sticker to fix the problem — which he did — but then reported him to City Clerk Roberta Fogg.

Shea had complained about Gerry’s decision to report his mistake on his Facebook account, and Gerry said she felt the need to respond.

“The reason I turned it in is that I covered his butt,” Gerry said. “If another person called in to complain, they’d be told it was already reported and was being fixed. But also, as a councilor, we are honor bound to support the charter and ordinances and those things.”

Candidate Lemay, a former Auburn police lieutenant and chief deputy of the Androscoggin County Sheriff’s Department, said he was running to bring some sanity to city government.

“I think a big thing with me is a lack of respect,” he said. “There’s no respect for councilors, no respect for the public and certainly no respect to the manager or from the manager to the council. I think that is a wrong way to operate.”

Lemay said he would keep an open mind and work with the other councilors.

“One thing you will never hear me say is, ‘Talk all you want, because you will never change my opinion,'” Lemay said.

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