Candidates running for seats on the Brown County Council appeared before voters at a forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Brown County Oct. 3.
League rules prohibit “empty seat” forums, so candidates whose opponents were not present were not able to answer questions from the audience.
District 1 Democrat candidate Debbie Guffey gave a prepared statement because her opponent, Republican Bill Hamilton, was in Germany. Hamilton submitted a statement which was read by a proxy.
District 4 candidate Diana Wright, a Democrat, also read a statement because her opponent, Republican Art Knight, was unable to attend. Knight did not submit a statement.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]District 3 candidates Roger Kelso, a Democrat, and Dave Redding, a Republican, answered questions along with District 4 candidates Sherrie Mitchell, a Democrat, and Republican incumbent Darren Byrd.
Here are their answers to some of those questions, edited for space:
Q: The Brown County Council is fiscally responsible for managing nearly $5 million of our citizens’ property tax money and over $5 million of our income tax money. What is your fiscal management background and experience that gives voters the confidence that you could manage this budget?
Darren Byrd: I’ve been doing it for the last three-and-a-half years as part of the board already. … Income should be greater than outflow. It’s a pretty simple principle. I’ve always lived within a budget. …
Sherrie Mitchell: I used to manage nursing homes. I had multi-million-dollar budgets, 100 staff, so I’m pretty used to that, keeping the fat down. … We all have our own personal budgets. We’re all responsible to make sure that our bills are paid timely and that we keep our heads afloat.
Roger Kelso: … I’ve managed similar budgets for the town in both the town government and in the utility operations. Then on the private side I was the COO of a 600-person engineering firm. … I think I have the general skill set to balance the budget and look at what resources we have and what things we need to do, then also work very cooperatively with everybody to get those things done.
Dave Redding: Being on the council in 2016 and 2017. … I think in the newspaper article questions, I referenced the last project that I led at Cummins. I’m in more of a technical lead contributor role now, but before I was in program management. It was a five-year program that ranged from $6 million to $15 million based upon the year and activity. … I think there’s another important point than just being able to count the dollars, it’s risk management. If you think about some of the things that we do in the corporate world, it’s to identify things that could happen. … I think risk management is another important element that I would like to see us spend a little more time on.
Q: What do you think Brown County can do to attract young families and make it affordable for them (i.e. child care, affordable housing)?
Kelso: I think that before we can really truly have affordable housing and support those sorts of things, what we really need to be able to do is to expand our local economic base. I think the activities that are currently going on with this comprehensive economic development plan are fundamental to how we essentially grow the top line or how we increase income in the area so that these other things follow. It’s difficult to have affordable homes if the people don’t even have the income in the first place to afford an affordable home. I think at this point it’s difficult with the type of business base that we have to truly expand those things and make those things affordable until we address that item.
Redding: Over the two years I was with the RDC (Brown County Redevelopment Commission), we wrestled with this quite a bit. … We started with this idea of how do you market Brown County to families that are in areas they are not comfortable with because of crime, over development or under development, that type of thing? We have a fantastic story here in Brown County. … I’ll be selling it myself because we’ve got people coming in every day where I work. … They are specifically looking over here. If we have a way to market this and help those people get connected to available properties and things like that, I think that’s step one. Child care, you see what Cummins and other companies have done, they put up a corporate-sponsored facility. … Maybe we should explore some kind of private partner, public relationship. … Child care is not something our government should be in, but we can certainly help try and figure out how to attract the investment. Available housing, we’re in a tough spot with the amount of land that is landlocked. … I told somebody one time, if you’re standing on level ground it’s probably in a floodplain. … When it comes to housing we’re looking at some areas that are very successful that we can model and learn from.
Byrd: Economic development and redevelopment is key to that. When I moved here, we still had Ski World, the Opry was still there, there were things to do, there were things for young families to do. I am winter guy … so I was absolutely elated to get close, almost walking range to a ski slope and then it shut down. … What we’re trying to do is redevelop what we’ve got. As far as active solutions, it’s hard to do that especially with the philosophy. … “Government solution” is an oxymoron, I think, to private matters. There’s a lot to balance and it’s a tough thing to balance. How much do you do for people and how much is overdoing? I think it really comes down to … our economic redevelopment and enticing people and young people to the county with opportunities.
Mitchell: … I think we should expand Head Start. We had a conversation the other night about how to maybe do some training with some local folks around here and teaching them to become daycare providers, which would be a fairly decent paying job. It would create economic development for those folks and solve a problem that we have. Your other point about affordable housing and attracting young people, I think a lot of that has to do with our tax structure. We have the fourth-lowest property tax, which causes us to have over-inflated home values. We need to fix that. There’s a SPEA report out that I think everybody should read if you haven’t. You can find it online. The Democrat ran a story about it. … Attracting young people, we also have the fifth-highest income tax in the state. I don’t think too many people are just dying to come down here and hand us over two-and-a-half percent of their paycheck, especially young people who are struggling to pay for rent. We definitely need to take a look at our tax structure.
Q: How would you expand the tax base to account for a declining population?
Redding: From the RDC perspective … we were very focused on making Brown County easier to do business with. … We decided that we needed external capital to come into Brown County, and I think what we were doing was making Brown County easier to get introduced with. … We were all volunteers. We weren’t using any budget or money. … People say, ‘Well, show me existing buildings. Show me an existing 100,000-square-foot place,’ that type of thing. We realized we needed to start building our portfolio of assets and other people where we could connect the external people bringing the capital into Brown County. … I think there’s probably some pretty cost-effective, if not zero-budget type of things that we can do to help attract a strong capital. There’s other things we can do … but I think that would be the most important, to bring external capital in.
Byrd: It’s difficult in this county because more than half of our land in Brown County is off the tax rolls. … It’s federal land, state land, forest land. … We have a pretty high demand for people wanting to live in Brown County, very low supply of available properties, so that’s going to put property values up. … I don’t like property taxes. I think the more property is taxed, the more the encumbrance is on you personally. That’s your land, that’s your home. I always lean more towards income tax because if you’re not making income, you still have property taxes. If you’re making income then you pay income taxes. Seeing what that has done kind of to the balance of the tax burden in the county has got me questioning a little bit of the direction that has gone. I think there’s probably a re-balance that needs to be made in light of the supply and demand issue of property and the scarcity of it in Brown County, or see if somehow we can get more of the state and federal property maybe opened up to people to move into. …
Mitchell: I still think we need to restructure our taxes. Darren and I are going to disagree about property taxes, because property taxes, for most of us, we have deductions. We have a supplemental deduction and we have a homestead deduction. When we take those deductions, my $100,000 house, I’m paying taxes on $35,000. (On) my paycheck, that’s two-and-a-half percent no matter what.
Kelso: I think this is an extremely difficult question. The reason is it’s literally a chicken and egg situation as far as when we do get capital investment in an area like Brown County, often times we don’t have the people to support it. If we had the people to support it, I’m not sure what they would do until the capital investment came. … I think that as we’re looking for additional capital and that sort of thing to come in and invest in Brown County that we need to work on a more regional basis, so that we can play off the strengths that everybody has. Bloomington is different than we are, we’re different than Columbus is, yet in the same token, I think if we work collaboratively, we could maximize the ability to raise our tax base.
Q: The property tax levy freeze we’re under has greatly increased income tax and put the tax burden on our declining working population. Do you support ending the levy freeze?
Kelso: I support ending the levy freeze, but with a caveat that the council, as it’s going through and approving the budgets and that sort of thing, has to take into consideration why do we need an increase in the first place? To put a freeze on, in my opinion, from what I’ve seen happening with the income tax primarily, it starts to throw things out of balance. Something that seemed like a sensible idea in the first place, because of the fact that we’re not having the growth on general income and that sort of thing, we’re still seeing we’re having to raise a different tax that a lot of times is not affordable for a lot of people, because it’s just a straight flat tax on income. That doesn’t make sense, so at this point, I would say we really need to study that. I am not in favor of keeping the freeze on. I know it’s probably not the most popular answer, but at the end of the day, I think it’s the right answer.
Redding: … I’m not sure I’m aligned with the thinking behind all the tax structures that we see on income and property. … I’d like to see us put all of that in play and go through and make sure we’re doing the right things and we’re not putting Brown County at a disadvantage because we have to attract capital and we have to attract people. As a council person, I think you kind of have to maybe govern that personal view and listen to a group of people, or whoever comes forward, and look at it from the aggregate or the average … because maybe people don’t agree with my personal view on this. … The state doesn’t let you make major adjustments. You have to incrementally move this up before you move that down, so it’s going to have to be a multi-year plan. I would be very much in favor, if the population wanted to, to entertain some kind of study and a longer term plan to be put in place.
Byrd: I want all taxes to be frozen. … This goes back to more than half of our county is off the tax rolls. We get nothing out of it. Everybody comes here and plays; they don’t pay property tax when they do. They don’t pay vehicle registration fees. … One of the things that the county has been working on for years is trying to get PILOTS — payments in lieu of taxes — out of the state for the state land that is off of our tax rolls, the park and all of the other state land, (like) Yellowwood. I know I have been working with Eric Koch on that when he was representative and as senator hoping to get some of that through. This past session Eric got, I think, three bills in committee that would have looked at different aspects of that. There was one I liked more than the others that was just a flat PILOT fee from the state to us for the land that they occupy. It’s hard to get support for that out of the legislature because we’re one of the few counties that affects. They kind of see it as the rest of the state paying for us. … None of those three bills made it out of committee. If they don’t make it that far, it’s hard to do anything else with it, so you just got to keep on.
Mitchell: Twelve counties in the state of Indiana decided to put a levy freeze on their property and income taxes and nine of them have ditched it. Now there are only three, and we are one of those. The reason why they got rid of those is once you create a tax freeze, let’s say our income tax for instance, which is at 2.02 percent on the levy freeze portion of it, that number never can go down, ever. Same thing with our property taxes. Those numbers can only go up. So would I support a thaw? Absolutely.
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Three candidates were only allowed to read prepared statements because their opponents were not at the forum.
District 1
Debbie Guffey: … I’ve lived in Brown County all of my life, which is a lot of years. My husband and I own Brown County Tire for about 27 years. This is my fourth year on the council and I have learned a lot. I know what budgeting is all about and you have to cut corners and you have to learn to do without a lot of things. We do have committees that the council appoints every year. There are too many to mention, but anyway, we have them come in about every few months and tell us how that committee is doing and what their progress is, things like that. My main thing is to keep the budget low, keep our taxes low, so I am trying to do everything I can to keep that part going. I appreciate your vote, your friends’ votes when it comes Nov. 6. Thank you.
Bill Hamilton (read by Tracey Yeager Stogsdill): … I am an 18-year resident of Brown County and I am currently running as a candidate for county council District 1. I am a retired manager from AT&T after completing 30 years of service in southern Indiana. My responsibilities included supervising, coaching, leading and managing personnel while also managing a $4.4 million annual budget. This position requires strong communication skills. I am trained and certified in management systems and operational control, efficiency, productivity, labor relations, situational leadership, critical thinking and Six Sigma. I am also retired from the U.S. Air Force after completing 33 years of active military service. My responsibilities included training and supervising personnel, developing procedures, administering recognition and discipline, mentoring, being the president of councils, committees and being the security forces for a sergeant as well as the liaison between the command leadership and list of ranks. … My education includes degrees in security administration, criminal justice education, training management and human resources. … I have completed the Brown County Leadership program, or LEAP. … I am … a member of the American Legion, the VFW where I serve as the senior vice commander, and a reserve deputy sheriff with the Brown County Sheriff’s Office. I realize in order to be successful, one first has to be a good listener before one can be a good leader. … I do not bring my own agenda to this position. I am running for this position because I believe I can strengthen our Brown County leadership and I am confident my diverse background and experience in both civilian and the military life can contribute to the fiscal responsibility of this county. … I see the county’s economic standing as strong, but I also believe we can’t stop there. … I believe in Brown County and our county council and I want it to continue to be strong and successful for us here and now, but also for the future of our families yet to come. I ask you for the opportunity to serve the citizens of Brown County.
District 4
Diana Wright: … For 25 years, I’ve lived in Brown County and for 20 years I’ve worked at the Brown County Public Library. My kids both attend Brown County Schools. … Those of you who know me from library, I am a pretty busy person even though I only work part-time. I run a monthly book club called Novel Bunch, which I enjoy very much. I check in and out materials. I work at the circulation desk. I help people with their computer problems and I really have a sense of wanting to help people no matter their background, their educational level, and that is something that I would like to bring to the county council: My commitment to helping people in this county. Some of the things I am learning just from the past two months in canvassing is No. 1, seems to be roads are somewhat of an issue. I’ve attended some of the council meetings, I’ve heard Mike Magner talk about how the highway department goes on a schedule for the roads, so I try to share that information with people who say, “When’s my road going to get fixed?” Another issue seems to be septic problems in the county and so if I were to get elected, I am not sure how it all relates together, but I would like to work with the sewer boards to try to establish better septics for some of the homes that have been abandoned and also to extend our town septic (sewer). The third thing, which I think is all on our minds, is to get fast speed internet for the entire county. … I hope you will all consider me and vote for me this November.
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