For those of you who continue to ask for County Highway V to be redone, I hear you, and I continue to make it a top priority.  To make a long story short, I have worked hard with our County Highway Commissioner and the Town of Dekorra to get the strongest application possible submitted to the state, and it is in their hands now.  I want to extend a HUGE thank you to those who wrote letters of support for the application!

I have never limited public input length at any meeting I have chaired.  If people take the time out of their busy lives to come to a meeting, I feel that they deserve my time and attention while they share their comments.

I also feel that meetings held later in the day would allow more residents to attend meetings and participate with public comment if they wish.  Thus far, the majority of the board has preferred daytime (and often morning) meetings.

Our state legislature has given state agencies nearly complete control in several areas that threaten to change our landscape like never before.  I drafted two resolutions to ask our legislators and the Public Service Commission to give residents and local government more input and control over the land we call home.  Both passed by a majority vote.

During my time on the county board, Columbia County has gone from the 4th highest debt per capita county in the state down to the 13th highest county.  While we’re headed in the right direction, there is a long way to go.  

I voted to remove several “wants” vs needs from the budget again this term so that we would not deplete our savings account, ruin our credit score, and then be forced to exceed the levy limit with annual borrowing (which would increase your taxes an unknown amount).

I also voted against borrowing $4.4M after asking the question, “How much will this debt cost county residents including interest?”  Nobody could give me an answer, so I couldn’t in good faith commit you to an unknown amount of debt payments for the next 10 years.

A wheel tax was also recently proposed that would have cost you $28 per vehicle beginning in 2026.  I received a tremendous amount of feedback opposing this tax as funds are tight for so many of us now, and as with wheel taxes in other municipalities, the cost tends to go up fairly dramatically and quickly.

Dekorra is home to a beautiful mixture of agriculture and naturally scenic landscape with hills, trees, and of course Lake Wisconsin.  It is my goal to protect not only our township but also the county’s land so that it will be here in good condition for generations to come.

I supported using federal dollars through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to apply for grants in partnership with private entities, including Brightspeed and Spectrum, that should help to increase our internet speeds in Dekorra and reach households that still haven’t been reached.