The 2024 was a hotly contested election with at least a dozen seats being contested. The Election resulted in quite a few new supervisors winning against incumbents. In particular, I was fortunate that my seat was uncontested this term for the first time in 6 years. Monica Yuhas won her seat and she was elected as the County Board Chairman and Das Gaschke was elected as the Vice-Chair.

This term, I have been appointed as the Chairman of the Human Services Committee, as well as the Vice-Chair of Judiciary and Law. I will also serve on Public Works. The County Executive also asked me to serve on the Land Information Council so I will be very busy this session. I am looking forward to the new challenges.

On November 7th, 2024 the County Board passed the 2025 Budget and Bonding resolutions. Everything went well. There were no budgetary conflicts and both the Budget and Bonding passed unanimously. Chair Yuhas was instrumental in maintaining good relations with the various factions on the Board and the County Executive. As a result, there were only a few minor amendments which passed by the Board in good faith. It appears that bi-partisanship has returned to the County Board (at least for now).

The only contested issue so far this year was when County Executive Kerkman over-rid a veto that the County Board passed. The resolution which was introduced by Supervisor Gentz was to repeal the Executive firing authority which was passed last session. This authority allows the Executive to fire Division Heads “at will” where previously Division Heads could only be fired “for cause”. In essence, the independence of these individuals would be severely hampered. However, though the resolution passed 13 to 9, County Executive Kerkman over-rid the veto since the Board did not have enough votes to block the over-ride.