17-Year-Old Council Candidate Sees Youth As Advantage
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David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
While some might question his ability to serve on the Kosciusko County Council given his age, Evan McKinley sees his youth as an asset. The 17-year-old Warsaw Community High School junior from Clunette, who is running for an at-large seat, said he can provide the council with a “fresh perspective, high energy and a drive and a will to get things done.” “The sort of perspective that you can only have being this young, because when you’ve been around for a long time – when you’re older, when you have a family, stuff like that – it’s a little bit different,” he said, “whereas I feel like I can connect a lot better than maybe some of the older candidates do. That’s not a knock to them.” There are three at-large seats, he said, so if he got on the council with some of the older candidates his energy could “mesh well” with their experience. McKinley was born Aug. 19, 1998, so he will turn 18 before the November general election. He is filing to run today at about 3:30 p.m. According to a spokeswoman from the Indiana Election Division Monday, Title III of the Indiana Election Code states that candidates for local office are required to be registered voters. For county council, a candidate must reside in the county for at least one year before the election and have resided in the district in which they are seeking election for at least six months. The spokeswoman said in Indiana a 17-year-old can register to vote as long as they turn 18 before the general election. She said it was the opinion of the Indiana Election Division office that McKinley is “allowed to file” for office. She did say that any candidate can be challenged, however, and those challenges would be filed with the local county election board. McKinley could have run for student council in high school, but he said he wanted to do more. “I guess because I love my community, I love the people in it. And I felt like with my energy and my youthful perspective I could bring a really beneficial dynamic to the county council, which I followed the last two years. I felt like that would be the right place for me to go,” he said. McKinley said he hasn’t been to every county council meeting over the past two years, but he’s been to “most of them.” As for why he wanted to run for county council instead of commissioners or a city office, he said, “County council, to me, just holds a lot of attraction to it. I like the work they do – the fiscal branch of the county government. It just seemed to interest me, and I like the work they do. I felt like it was somewhere where I could really help out.” His plans after high school aren’t clear-cut, but if he gets elected he said he would make sure he serves the full four-year term. He would take any college courses locally or online, he said. “I’m not going anywhere, I’ll stay here. I want to stay connected with everybody,” McKinley stated. Asked what specific issue he’d like to address or committee he’d like to serve on if elected, he responded, “I think the number-one issue that we’re going to face coming into this election and moving forward is the wheel tax.” McKinley said there are two bodies of thought on the tax, which was approved in 2014 and began collecting in 2015. “We implemented it because our roads have been in extreme disrepair in the county, and they’ve been rough for a while now, and we’ve had to make a lot of cutbacks on our equipment as well. So when they implemented that it really helped because it generated a lot of revenue. We’ve been able to do a lot more road work this year than we have in the past because of the revenue from the wheel tax and we’ve been able to upgrade our equipment,” he said. On the other hand, he said there are many people and businesses with trailers who’ve been hit hard by the wheel tax, and people who pay the wheel tax for a trailer they may only use once a year to take their boat out. “I’m definitely not in favor of new taxes. On one side I’m unhappy with the wheel tax because I don’t feel like it’s fair, but on the other side I see how much good it’s doing for our infrastructure. I would say coming into that, the sooner we could scale that back – because they are the maximums right now – and ease the burden on the people, the better. Would I like to see the wheel tax gone completely? Sure. No one likes to be taxed, but you can’t argue the fact that it is doing a lot of good,” he said. The other issue he’s eager to deal with if elected to county council is the department budgets. He wants to take a look at those and make sure “we’re making the best decisions possible with our money, it’s going where it needs to go, and we’re not making any extra purchases so we’re not putting any undue burden on the people.” When it comes to budgets and finance, McKinley said he’s learned a lot from his dad, Jack McKinley, who has been running his own business, McKinley Painting & Drywall, for 35 years. “Every single day I see him budget. I see him work his business, work the numbers ... so I understand how it works. I understand the intricacies of it,” he said. County government is not quite a business and works a little differently, he acknowledged, but he said he understands the complexities of it and continues to take business classes in high school to continue to understand it all. His dad may be a big influence on him in business, but McKinley said his political influence is District 22 Representative Curt Nisly. McKinley worked on Nisly’s campaign. “The one thing that I love about him the most is that no matter what the rest of the GOP down at the Statehouse might vote, or what way they might go, he always comes back and listens to us. He’s always been open,” McKinley said. “He votes the way that we want him to vote. He doesn’t go along with what anyone else tells him to do, what the heavyweights down there in the Republican party might tell him to do. He just votes based on how we want him to because he is our representatives. And that’s exactly what I want to do, if I do get elected, is vote how the people want me to. I want to do what’s best for them. I look up to him in that aspect. I want to be exactly the same way.”
