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Access to affordable housing and homeownership opportunities. The county has completed a comprehensive housing study which showed that we have a crisis in housing opportunities - both rental and home ownership. This shortage touches every price category and especially effects low and moderate income folks. It is critical concern for future economic development .

I am part of a County Housing Taskforce group looking at ways that county can support housing expansion. This includes: a Housing Tool Kit that will provide one-stop information on zoning, development tools, financing options; zoning changes to allow Accessory Dwelling Units; partnerships with housing finance and development providers. Also, sponsoring programs to help homeowners secure newly available energy efficiency grants.

Protecting our water resources, both surface and ground water, is essential. Over 50% of our residents get their drinking water from private wells. Our rivers and lakes are also badly impaired.

The county has completed a ground water testing program with almost 1000 homeowers participating. We now have baseline data on key indicators across the county, and we can use this to identify areas of concern. We need to fund continued regular well testing and make this data available to our citizens. Rehabilitating lakes and rivers will require expanding efforts with our ag community to adopt stronger soil health and run-off management practices. This is a long-term effort. The county Test Farm plot demonstrates conservation practices, and we support two farmer-led watershed groups.

We need to build a shared vision on what we want our community to like in the future. This needs to involve a broad cross section of our community in discussing what values are most important to us and how we can act together to promote them. What kind of landscape, agriculture, small towns,businesses, social structures are important to us. And how can we work toward building them. This year the county will start a process to review our comprehensive land use plan. Instead of starting this process with a board committee, we will start from the ground up, with many opportunities for citizens to start the discussion and share their goals. Those discussions will be gathered into a proposed plan and offered back for further discussion.

Wise use of our tax dollars is always the first concern in setting budgets. Managing debt and capital expenditures is priority one. We currently have a significant debt load (primarily because of choices to build the Neighbors nursing center and renovate the old building). Both have been good decisions, but have required using debt. Each year the board takes an entire day to review our overall capital needs and identify a five year plan to provide financing. This plan sets a goal for significantly reducing our debt level over the next 10 years. I support this process. Our county's success depends on the quality of our workforce. We need to provide an adequate budget to assure we can attract and keep quality workers, while assuring that we evaluate all positions for need and priority.