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Fiscal Responsibility Towards Taxpayers
I know and fully understand pressures of increasing property taxes and will be a strong advocate of responsible spending and living within our means.
Mental Illiness
It touches all of us! County staff and processes do a great job but there is a huge statewide need. Long term treatment beds are lacking. My goal and a driving purpose of my candidacy is a new state mental hospital in Rochester or elsewhere in Minnesota. It is critical!
Our Environment
We must continue to address climate change by reducing carbon emissions. Likewise preserving our earth’s natural resources is imperative. Olmsted County has environmental sustainability as a core principle which I strongly support.
I would not even consider balancing either. Balancing suggests to me that middle ground needs to be found. It does not and can not. Olmsted County has and will into the future pursue and, I believe, attain excellence in administering safe and secure elections. Likewise, Olmsted County strives to the fullest to provide voter access in an unobstructed, non-threatening, and welcoming way. Free and fair elections are the essence of democracy and must be assured in every way possible.
This goes back to one of my listed issues. The number one challenge is lack of longer term treatment term treatment beds in Minnesota. This leaves too many non-criminal, mentally ill individuals confined to jails or left to fend for themselves on the streets to await is usually a bad outcome. My past legislstive experience gives me a pulpit to work with my county board, advocates, legislators, criminal justice system experts, and our new governor to build a new state mental health hospital.
County board members do not deliver county services but set policy, provide budgets, and work with our county administrator to ensure the board’s policies and expectations are carried out in a successful and cost effective way. This means accountability through attention to established metrics (if you don’t measure it you can’t mange it) by all county departments by regular reports to the county administrator and periodic reports to the county board. Olmsted County does this well.
This is a function of the federal government and I do not believe Olmsted County should play in a formal way in the administration or enforcement of federal immigration laws. Our responsibility rests with the enforcement of county ordinances and state laws.
I am generally known for a long history of constituent accessibility and availability.
I have been told by many that my attention to constituent service is superior. There are, of course, the normal communications measures and they are important however they are one way communications. Being available and immersed across the community with an open, inviting, and welcoming spirit is essential. Likewise, just listening and asking is extremely important and I am told I do this very well,
