Political Career.......

The incumbent County Commissioner for my district didn't file for re-election. The deadline for incumbents to file was February 18. The deadline for non-incumbents to file is next Monday, March 3.

I found out this morning that nobody had filed yet, so I did. That's not to say that some other non-incumbent won't file by the deadline.

Guess we'll see where this goes.

Going over to the Dark side are we, Goose? (Sorry, I couldn"t avoid that.)

Bein from illinoiz, i'll vote for ya!!!!! Several times!!!!

I don't understand why any sane person would want that position.

County Commissioner pays $78,000 a year in this county. Guess that would be a reason. . .

I have 2 sons who both became politicians to try and stop all the foolishness from the liberals. One is a town supervisor in Wi and the other one was on the town board here in NY. After they were initially elected they both run unopposed. Hope you get elected, maybe you can put a stop to some of these laws and regulations these people come up with.

So after my dealings with county commissioners we'll have to remind you of a few things I learned. 1- 35 is more than 28 if you only have 28 employees in a department you can't lay off 35, I don't care what the neighboring county did, but if they layed off 35 employees from their highway department I suspect they had at least 35 employees the day they announced the lay-offs. 2-.38 is less than .505 so if you "shut down" the county motor pool (to save money) and your motor pool operates without direct tax levy and your "savings plan" is to replace motor pool vehicles (at $.28/mile) by paying employees IRS reimbursement rates (at $.505) you will not save money and no you can't make it up in volume. 3- If 27 of the 30 county supervisors vote to do a project and all licenses and permits are filed just because YOU didn't want to do it and YOU were not able to use your political influence to stop it doesn't mean it's Illegal and if YOU continue to tell the newspapers I built an ILLEGAL structure on county property my lawyer may be in contact with you about slander and defamation. 4- I don't care what your personal feelings are about some of the state mandated programs, if the program YOU don't want to FUND costs the county $150,000 a year but discontinuing this program means the county will loose $500,000 in state shared revenue discontinuing this program will not save the county money. 5-If you use a portable electric heater to heat a room above the thermostat set point and that room is Air Conditioned the air conditioning will come on, it's not broken and I don't care if it is the middle of the winter if the actual zone temperature is above set point the air conditioning will run, what is broken is the accounts payable clerk who feels it needs to be 80 degrees in her office. If you wanted to provide that level of control to occupants of each office you needed to add anther $1,5000,000 to your $7,000,000 Courthouse annex project to insure the HVAC system has those capabilities, AND you better add another $75,000 to $100,000 to my annual utility budget. 6- just because they're a union member doesn't mean they not lying. 7- Just because a constituent think the law or building code is "Stupid" doesn't mean we don't have follow it. 7- There is no grandfather clause for ADA (Americans with Disability Act)compliance, don't be stating there is in the newspaper 'cause it will attract attention from lawyers that sue businesses who don't comply with ADA. 8- Not spending $25,000 to fix ADA access problems might cost the county $100,000 in legal settlements to disabled parties abd oh yes then you spend the $25,000 to fix the problem.

Good luck, and I mean it. I think being a county commissioner is a thankless job for an honest man, but we sure need more honest men in office. I have great respect for your willingness to sacrifice your time for public service.

Pays next to nothing here.

But good butt chewins are plentiful.

can't beat em, join em? - LOL

All you have to do is not raise taxes and keep everything fixed and all employees happy without spending any more money.

I once spent five years as Chairman of a nine member Board of Trustees in a church with 3,000 squabbling members.

Among other adventures, we had a $50,000 mold problem in the Fellowship Hall while I was Chairman. Naturally, all 3,000 members had an opinion as to how the mold should be remediated, and by whom. I even had to fight with my own board to get it done properly. And in a setting like that, you just don't take chances with mold.

It got to the point where, at 10pm one evening, I told my wife if the phone rings again tell them I went to Africa to hunt elephants.

That may have been good training for County Commissioner.

(quoted from post at 17:55:00 02/26/14) County Commissioner pays $78,000 a year in this county. Guess that would be a reason. . .

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and you get a retirement pension for life, all you have to do is serve one term. that is if the county don't file bankruptcy somewhere down the line. like Detroit.

Just remember, it's always easy if you aren't the one "doing".

And we really want to return government to the local level, where our elected officials understand the problems,and where people like these with good old fashioned common sense, can deal with it efficiently? Huh?

I am custodian of my church. We have had a few mold problems. I just track them down and remediate them myself. No problem. One was just tell the janitor that she had to store her mop in the ventilated boiler room instead of the unvented mop closet.

Welcome to public service Goose, chances are good that you are going to find out what your made of, real fast, so always be prepared. Twenty years of public service under my belt and it wasn't for money either. Kinda brings the saying "careful what you pray for" to mind. Hang on tight, you might just love it too.

Oh so you want to go into crook training do you. Sorry any more at least 50% of those in office may not be crooks when they go in but by the time they get out they sure the heck are crooks

Just a reminder, "the idiots in washington DC" that everyone loves to complain about, almost all started out in our county governments.

Send me a sign and I'll put in my front field next to the others....

Best of luck to you. If you need any opinions just ask us and we'll give you all sorts of them lol.
My neighbor is a supervisor and has been for at least 20 years. I cannot imagine the headaches in a populated county after hearing of the b.s. here. People that have lived in the country for 60 years and won't buy a 4 WD to get through some snow because the county should be waiting for them to leave so they can plow the snow off the road on front of them, and so on. I was thinking of taking over the part time job of township maintainer operator here a few years ago, when I asked I was told "you don't want that thankless ring job. That sealed it for me.

One of the guys in our church ran for road commissioner and lost the election. The next evening at Bible study I mentioned that I'd heard he'd won the election. He corrected me real quick and said No, he LOST the election. I said No Ralph - you WON the election - the guy with the most votes LOST! Having said that - Good luck to you Goose - I hope you get the most votes, if you really want to.

Well all I can say is good luck. I really hope you win and can maintain your sanity.

Rick

you mite like it , I started as Commissioner in 2003 . they all come out to my farm and begged me to run ..,once elected the job took a lot of time and hardwork ,,we still call it a part time job .. LOL ...if you care it will be hard on you, I was Lucky to serve with 2 gentleman ..,none of us took issue with one another over the battle of ideas and struggles ...,Now I am in my 2 nd term as COUNCIL member .. half the pay , half the headaches , twice the fun ,although , budget time is a headache,,imho ,, runnin a camp aign doin speeches and chiken dinners and parades , and trying to parlay that in to v ot es is the least pleasurable part of political life ,,doing either job is easy enuf ,,, I have survived and thrived thru a full courthouse of concerned and angry citizens many many times ,, keep a cool head ,don't snap to a dicision too quik , unless you must to save bloodletting ,, find out who your helpers are in the dept ment heads ,and weed out the party mules and hacks,REMEMBER ..government must serve the people ,, and most of ALL ,,do NOT BE A PROS TITUT E FOR Anyone or PARTY ONCE ELECTED ..absolutely, no tradin favors and bak door deals .always ,DO THE RITE THING , BE A MAN of integrity .EVEN IF IT HURTS ,, AND . BE YOUR OWN MAN ,...

The Goose is Loose!

Good for you Goose! I look at it this way- everyone complains about everything gov't does, their taxes and regulations, etc. Well, if good people don't get up off the couch and run and try to fix the problems, then the career politicians with the poli-sci Masters and plans on enriching themselves in power and wealth will be in gov't doing the damage we see all around us. I ran last fall and got elected to our Town Board. I'm finding out I was misdirecting all my complaints for many years. I'm also finding out that there are a LOT of otherwise well intentioned people of at least average intelligence out there that think gov't in all it's forms has some magical access to free money, that giving tax breaks, grants or other public funding to every "good cause" or project out there somehow does not require that someone else pay for it and that the same gov't they complain about having too much power should unilaterally grant itself the power to do what THEY WANT done! I'm not even going to touch on the way "The Union" can rape the taxpayer. Suffice it to say that bargaining these days seems to mean giving them everything they want and a raise too regardless of whether or not there's any money to do that.

Go for it man, but make sure there's someone you can talk to that isn't directly involved that has the character to tell you when you're turning into a politician. And don't be afraid to get down on your knees and ask for some guidance.

GO FOR IT GOOSE!
Guy I worked with kept whining and harping about the way the local govt. worked. Wanted to build houses and wanted to change the rules. Somebody at a city council meeting told him to "put up or shut up" so he did. Been mayor of the berg ever since. Made more changes to clean up the garbage they had created.

I have exactly that person as a mentor. One of my best buddies is a former member of the local City Council. He's never been lacking for opinions, or shy about terrorizing someone who needed it.

It was hilarious when he was on the council. He's a licensed civil engineer. They'd have other engineers and salesmen appear before the council on various utility projects, and these guys would come in thinking they were going to snow the local yokels, not realizing they had a licensed engineer sitting on the council who had already worked the project out himself.

Good luck. I serve on a board,but I know from that,it's a job and it takes an ego to do it. I don't have one big enough to run for office. I'll serve at will as long as they want me to,but I won't run.

I hope you like being chastised for every damn thing you do...

Rod

Had a local fellow run for congress. He got elected and off he went to Washington. Had a lot of good ideas and wanted to change Washington. After much gnashing of teeth and butting of heads, he determined that it was a lost cause. And rather than change to their low standards he came home . Can't remember if he finished his term or not. Don't believe he got involved in any more politics.