Two of the three Republican candidates for northern district county commissioner participated in Wednesday evening’s forum, having two minutes each per question with nine questions posed.
Candidate Sue Ann Mitchell currently serves on the county council, while Nathan Scherer sits on the Syracuse Town Board. Candidate Marcia Baumgartner declined to participate.
After introducing themselves, the candidates were asked to grade the county roads and what is their priority when it comes to infrastructure improvements.
“As far as grading the roads, I think, obviously, you have to pick this road or that road because they’re not all created equal, obviously. And I do believe that our county highway (department) does a good job with what funding that they have to be able to make things happen,” Mitchell responded.
At one point, she said the county worked on the wheel tax. The year that the county enacted the wheel tax and raised it a bit was the same year that the state came along and changed the way that it was distributing the money, and not for the county’s gain.
“So there are a lot of things going on with the funding of roads. There’s a task force study committee at the state legislature, and fortunately (Kosciusko County Highway Department Superintendent) Steve Moriarty is involved with that and he will have some input. And I believe it is behooving to all of the commissioners to get involved in that process and understand how that funding is eventually going to affect Kosciusko County,” Mitchell said.
Scherer said he feels the county highway department does a great job.
“I’ve driven a lot of county roads lately and I’ve driven to other counties, and I think in comparison, our county roads are doing very well,” he said.
He said people need to keep in mind that the county’s population is roughly 80,000 but the county has the second most length of roads in the state. “So we don’t have a huge population that we’re drawing from for that amount of road that we take care of. So I think that our highway department does an excellent job with what they’re working with,” Scherer said, giving the department a B+ grade.
The county is working on a strategic plan. The candidates were asked what would they like to see be included in that plan.
Scherer said he’d like to see “a clear understanding of what we’re going to do to retain our children and attract new families to our community. What are we doing to attract new business, and also help small business in our community. What are we going to do to make sure that our downtowns of our smaller communities stay relevant in this digital age?”
Mitchell said she served on the strategic planning committee shortly after she started serving on the county council.
“We had several issues at that time, and those same issues are still on the list. We have made very little progress on those. That’s one of the things I would like to see done. We have many things that we’ve talked about,” she said.
Parking downtown is critical. The county needs to be a good steward and neighbor to downtown Warsaw, she said, and work “is being done on that piece of the puzzle.”
Recently, the county used American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) money to refurbish the Justice Building that had not had anything major done to it in “many, many years.” The last construction of the jail was built when she was the county auditor, Mitchell said.
“We can not let the old courthouse fall apart. We must make some changes. And I know the commissioners are working toward addressing some of that, but it’s just critical we can absolutely not let that fall apart,” she stated.
Speaking of ARPA, since the county is near the end of its ARPA funds, the candidates were asked to place a grade on how that money was distributed and if they agreed that the ARPA funds should be used for the Justice Building repairs.
Mitchell responded, “As we approach the end of the ARPA funding, of the $15 million-plus, that has been a huge effort. I have served on that committee, along with (Council President) Mike Long and (Middle District County Commissioner) Cary Groninger, and it has been a huge task to try to look at everything that was being requested. We feel like we kept a pretty good balance between the nonprofits, the people in the community who could use the help, along with the changes that we had made to the radio system for the whole county for all the emergency responders. Those things were needed to be addressed because each one of those groups had to have different radios and we did actually finance those through that.”
She said she’s not necessarily excited about the county having received ARPA money.
“Because I can guarantee you that my children, your children and great-grandchildren are going to be paying for that for a long, long time,” she said.
As far as the repair of the Justice Building, she said the better plan would have been to put money aside each year to address its needs annually.
Scherer agreed with Mitchell that deciding on where to spend the funding was a hard thing to do and that generations to come will be paying for it. He said the use of the ARPA funds for the Justice Building was probably prudent.
“As for the rest of the funds ... I think that emergency radio systems and things that are supportive of our first responders and community response overall is a good use of those funds because the pandemic is very related to health-related issues or responsiveness of our first responders,” he said. “So I think overall, like Sue said, I would agree that it was probably a tough task to determine who is in most need and where the funds should go. I’m sure a number of people would have liked to give all the money back, but we know it would have been spent by somebody else so I think putting it to work through our community was most important.”
If elected, the candidates were asked what could the commissioners do over the next four years to foster economic growth in the county.
Scherer said the things that he thinks are really important locally are also important to the state.
“So I think that quality of place, quality of opportunity are two of the main things,” he said. “The way the world works today is a little bit different than it used to be. In the past, you would go and give out all these incentives to businesses to move in and expect people to follow. In the world today, most people are going to go where they enjoy and places where they want to live and businesses are following them.”
Scherer said the county needs to make sure it’s leverage the lakes and natural resources in the community to attract both businesses and people to work.
Mitchell said when Zimmer Biomet CEO Ivan Tornos was at the Kosciusko Chamber of Commerce dinner in January, he talked about having trouble landing the airplane and getting here on U.S. 30 in time for his presentation.
“And he said, ‘You know, you people here have all of these wonderful amenities, but what you don’t have is a road to get you here and an airport where you can land a big plane.’ And I think those are two of our economic things that we’re going to have to be looking at over the next several years,” she said. “Obviously, U.S. 30 is a huge, huge issue for our community, and it’s not going to get lower. That problem is going to get bigger because when INDOT makes their decision on how that road is coming through, that’s going to impact every one of us, everywhere in this county.”
The commissioners need to stay involved in those decisions, she said.