The Brown County Commissioners will continue to have a Republican majority after voters re-elected Jerry Pittman and chose political newcomer Chuck Braden.
Pittman, representing District 3, received 5,440 votes, with Democrat challenger Ronald Fleetwood receiving 3,176.
Braden represents District 1, which is current commissioner Dave Anderson’s seat. Anderson announced last year he was not seeking re-election.
Braden received 5,522 votes over Democrat Tracey Callahan Burnett, who received 3,014.
“I am excited. Because of the state of everything, it really was a toss-up,” Braden said on election night. “I wasn’t exactly sure I would (win). It was a nice surprise.”
Braden works as the zoning inspector for Brown County, so he said he will have to resign from that job before he takes over as commissioner in January to avoid conflicts of interest.
He thanked voters for their support. “I ran to serve, so I want to meet the needs of the community,” he said.
This Braden’s first time running for political office. “From the Marine Corps serving my country, to running for office serving my community, and really, I think working in planning and zoning, is a way of serving a community as well,” he said.
“I do have a heart for service, and I do it to the best of my ability.”
He said the community can expect him to be a commissioner who thinks for himself.
“I am open to debate. I am open to ideas and opinions to helping the community,” he said.
Braden said he wants to help cut costs by taking a deeper dive into the health insurance plan for county employees.
He also wants to focus on getting the Brown County Music Center up and running again as a way to help the local economy recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Paving more county roads without going into debt is another one of his goals.
Pittman said he wants to continue pursuing matching grant funding from the Indiana Department of Transportation’s Community Crossings program to finish repaving the county’s 200 miles of paved roads. For the last five years, more than 20 miles of roads have been repaved each year with the county using matching state grant funding and local funds.
Pittman said focusing on getting more employees at the Brown County Highway Department where they are currently down four is another priority for his next term.
“A lot of that is competition with other counties who can pay more. I think we’ve done pretty well being as short as we are in our highway department,” he said.
He also wants to look at using money from the county’s cumulative capital development fund to fund bridge repairs over the next four years.
“We put a lot of emphasis on the paving. That’s something that people see and it’s an immediate result,” he said.
“When they drive across a bridge, they don’t think about the bridge. But if the bridge falls in, we have a real problem, so we have to take care of that.”
Pittman said he was “very thankful” to voters for electing him to another term. He believes this reelection is a confirmation of the work the commissioners have done over the past four years.
“There are certainly some critics who would change things, and I understand that,” he said.
“But I think it makes me feel good about the things that we’ve accomplished in the last four years that people must be pretty happy with.”
The commissioners had to make several new policies this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including shutting down offices in the County Office Building to the public by restricting access to only the Salmon Room for any business.
“We had to institute policies for our employees, some of which have not necessarily been popular with them, but we tried to protect our employees as well as the general public,” he said.
“It made doing business in the County Office Building more difficult, obviously, but so far we’ve had a very good response to our policies overall. We’ve not had much infection in our county employees, and that’s a good thing.”
Like Braden, Pittman said he wants to get the music center open as soon as it is safe to do so as part of the county’s economic recovery from the pandemic.
“I’m excited about the next four years, and hopefully we can accomplish a lot of good things for Brown County, get through this COVID-19 crisis, get the music center open again and get tourism back up. It will help a lot of things,” he said.
In 2018, talks began about building a new county justice center. But recent grant-funded updates to the courthouse, and the county purchasing the former Nashville Police Department on Hawthorne Drive this year, have put those talks off. One issue in the overall workspace discussion still remains: The Brown County Prosecutor’s office, which has environmental concerns and cramped quarters.
“We may go for a smaller project, such as tearing that old building down and building a new one there,” Pittman said. “We are looking at that, possibly replacing that old Army barracks with a two-story building that would give us additional space and clean up some of the environmental issues involved in that building. It’s not a good work environment.”
Streamlining the election process by implementing vote centers is another area Pittman expects the commissioners to look at over the next four years. With vote centers, any registered voter in the county could go to any polling place, not just the one in their neighborhood.
Overall, Pittman said the commissioners are trying to “hold the line”on the county’s budget.
“It’s always a situation of there’s never enough money to do all we want to do, especially when it comes to our roads, but we don’t want to raise taxes. Our taxes are high enough. We’re trying to hold the line,” he said.
“There are certain things we have to take care of, and some of those things, there’s really no way to reduce that expense.”
Pittman said he intends to be as transparent as possible with the community and encourages anyone who has concerns or questions to contact him.
“I know there’s been an issue about transparency, but I want to do everything I can to make that one of my top issues,” he said.
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”How You Voted” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
County commissioner Dist. 1
Republican Chuck Braden;5522
Democrat Tracey Callahan Burnett;3014
County commissioner Dist. 3
Republican Jerry Lee Pittman;5440
Democrat Ronald E. Fleetwood;3176
[sc:pullout-text-end]
