Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is scheduled to be the featured speaker Saturday at a town-hall forum in Kensett.

The forum will begin at 5 p.m. at the Kensett Community Center, 300 Willow St., in Kensett. There is no cost to attend.

The event is designed to give people the chance to tell Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, what issues are on their minds and to ask him where he stands on issues that are important to them, said Kurt Meyer, chairman of the Tri-County Democrats, which covers Worth, Mitchell and Howard counties in northern Iowa.

Sanders formally announced his White House bid on Tuesday.

“Everyone is invited — people who support the Sanders campaign, people who are curious and anyone interested in meeting a presidential candidate,” Meyer said.

He noted there would be ample time for questions and photographs.

Meyer said Sanders is coming to the small northern Iowa community at the invitation of Democratic activist Jim Berge of Kensett.

Sanders reportedly read a favorable comment in a Washington, D.C., newspaper that quoted Berge. The next day, one of the senator’s staff members called Berge to thank  him for his remarks, and Berge ultimately invited him to visit the next time he was in Iowa.

Berge, who has spent most of his life in rural Kensett, said as far as he knows this will be the first time a presidential candidate will have visited Kensett.

“FDR came through Kensett on a whistle-stop train trip in 1936 but didn’t stop and speak,” he said. “And several candidates have swung by Worth County in recent presidential cycles prior to the precinct caucuses, but I think this will be the first time an announced presidential candidate actually spends time in Kensett, talking with potential voters.”

People with questions about the event can contact Meyer at meyer6601@aol.com.