COLLEGE PARK, Md. (DC News Now) — Four candidates stepped up to the plate to run for College Park mayor. On Wednesday, people went to City Hall to hear from the candidates in a mayoral debate.

Former Mayor Patrick Wojahn was arrested and charged with 80 counts of child pornography on March 2.

Three of the candidates — Fazul Kabir, Katherine Kennedy and Denise Mitchell — are currently on the council. Mitchell is the city’s current acting mayor.

Bryan Haddad owns a restaurant in College Park, this is his first time running for a city position.

Key issues at Wednesday’s debate were economic development and how each candidate plans to help the city move forward and heal after Wojahn’s arrest.

“Making sure that you have the opportunity to make your voice heard, which [could] mean resources, or if it’s means come by and sitting on your front porch and holding your hand,” said Mitchell.

“By making sure that I am healthy, making sure the council is healthy, and then moving out from there. I think it’s really important in the early tenure of this we really focus on that tight knit group. So that we can lead the city as best as we can,” said Katherine Kennedy.

“I think the way to restore trust is to run a functioning government, and hopefully it doesn’t happen again,” said Bryan Haddad.

“This is the action of one individual and we are a community of 32,000 people. So we need to move forward and as a community we can be stronger and we can resilient at the end,” said Fazlul Kabir.

A survey that the city conducted said that more than half of the residents were actually concerned about crime prevention. With police officers facing a shortage, residents are curious to learn how the new mayor will be able to tackle this.

Kennedy says she would love to add more police officers but due to the shortage she’s encouraging more people to sign up.

“Adding more cameras both for traffic control and for her [downtown] to monitor, I think would be another way for crime prevention,” she said.

“Criminals use heavy tints and missing license plates to hide their identity all the time when committing serious crimes. So if we have code enforcement going around writing tickets for tints, writing tickets for missing license plates, putting pressure on those people to leave our community or reveal their identity, that would help combat crime,” said Haddad.

Kabir shared a proposal he’s currently working on in the council.

“The proposal was to have FTE contract police officers, I asked for another half. Thankfully it will be approved in the budget very soon,” he said.

“We also have to discuss going back to Prince George’s County to look at the reconfiguration for the amount of money received for contract police to increase the amount. So that we can possibly in due time, when the police shortage has subsided we can add more contract police to our current force,” said Mitchell.

DC News Now asked a few residents about what they want to see in their next mayor, many of them shared economic development is important.

“I want someone who has a definite vision for the economic development of the city. Also someone who has a cultural vision for the city, talking about relationships between the university and the city,” said David Alicea.

“Biking infrastructure as a priority would be fantastic. We need a lot of people to switch from driving to walking, biking, and public transit in order to densify the area, and get more of these small businesses that they’ve been talking about tonight to come in and have a lot more economic development,” said Evans.

The special election is scheduled for May 6. Early voting begins May 2.