3rd Democrat Files For County Council At-Large Seat
3rd Democrat Files For County Council At-Large Seat
Posted
David Slone-dslone@timesuniononline.com
3rd Democrat Files For County Council At-Large SeatA third Democrat filed Tuesday morning for the three Kosciusko County Council at-large seats to challenge the three Republicans who won in the June 2 primary.
Itanya Coon-Kauffman, 48, said she decided to run for office because, “I really tell my kids in order to make change, you have to be involved in things like that. So I’ve lived in Warsaw for 26 years and I’ve never been a part of the process of what makes Warsaw great, what makes Warsaw what it is. So I decided that now that my children are older, I want to become a part of the process, just to represent a myriad of different perspectives and just to add some diversity to looking at how we can make Warsaw an even better place for everybody to live. Just to give a lot of different perspectives and just to bring some diversity to the panel to look at some of the different areas of Warsaw and Kosciusko County that can just make the county better for everybody.”
A mother of five boys, Coon-Kauffman taught science at Warsaw Community Schools for 17 years, but has taught at Elkhart Community Schools for the last two years and one year in Fort Wayne. She has coached volleyball and basketball at the high school level and track at the middle school level, along with overseeing student council.
“I’ve done a wide variety of things within the school corporation,” Coon-Kauffman said.
Democrats Noemi Ponce and Paul Morales filed for the council at-large seats last week. Winners of the GOP primary for the at-large positions were Kathy Groninger and incumbents Sue Ann Mitchell and Joni Truex.
Coon-Kauffman said she didn’t have any specific issues she wanted to address if elected, but her main focus is education.
“What programs can we put out there to help kids have better opportunities to be able to be successful in the different areas, whether it be with community involvement, the schools, just a lot of different programs that can really benefit kids to help them be a lot more successful than where we are now,” she said. “But I’m open to all different avenues. I don’t really want to pigeon-hole myself into just one passion that I have because I have lots of different areas that I would like to explore and look at different ways we can do things.”
The county council is the “purse strings” of the county. As for how much background she has in financing and budgets, she said, “I worked within the school system so you always have to work within the budgets – student council, sports, things like that. But I’m also a mom so I know how to work within a budget. Just my own personal experience with the different areas that I worked in with education and my family. I feel like I have some background, knowledge on budgets and things like that, but as far as an accounting degree, no I don’t have that.”
Coon-Kauffman said the final thing she wanted voters to know about her was, “I’m one of those people that I’m open to looking at different perspectives, bringing new ideas to the table. I like to work hard to try to make those changes, but I want to hear what other people feel like is important. I just bring a different viewpoint from what other people have because we don’t have a lot of representation for younger people, people of different races, ethnicities, religions, things like that. Just to have another viewpoint at the table to look at different areas that we can make some improvements to include everybody in the county.”
