THIS Is One Reason Why Local Elections Matter

While most people focus (almost exclusively) on Presidential elections, your local City, School Board and County Elections can have an even bigger impact on your day to day life. Here is a classic example of why...

Bob Vogel is going to use his presidency of the Scott County Board to talk about
the commissioners' per diem payments.
In addition to making $44,943 last
year, a figure that was upped to $47,010 this year, the commissioners collect a
$40 per diem for attending board meetings and other committees.

Remember....these are supposedly part time jobs.

A lot of focus has been put on the state legislators per diem claims. The Belle Plaine Herald decided to look at the county level and made some startling discoveries.

According to the Belle Plaine Herald, this is what each
commissioner collected in per diem payments last year:
- Jon Ulrich,
$5,320;
- Jerry Hennen, $5,280;
- Barbara Marschall, $5,080;
- Joe
Wagner, $1,720;
- and Vogel, $760.
Vogel did not take per diems for
attending the county board meetings nor for in-county committee
assignments.

It should be noted that the county commissioner who lives the closest to the county government center (Jerry Hennen of Shakopee) collected the second highest amount of per diem payments and the county commissioner who lives the furthest away (Vogel from New Prague) collected the least!

This, in a nutshell, is why your local races are just as important as the Presidential elections. These local officials might not get the same amount of press that the national officials do, but the money that they waste, combined with that of the state and federal governments add up to real dollars.....dollars that come out of your pocketbook and mine!

This Is Vision?

The Scott County Board released their "2030 Vision" in a town hall forum last night. Based on the reporting in todays Star Tribune, I wasn't sure how bad it would be.

"Scott County is unveiling this week what officials are calling the last best chance to "paint the picture" of its future in the decades to come. And they're bracing for hostile reaction.
The county's plan for the next quarter century, on display at an open house Tuesday night and on the Web on Wednesday, envisions a future in which farming almost disappears in the generations to come."

The Strib has the reputation of being a little less than accurate in it's reporting, so it is possible that this future devoid of farm land (in a very agricultural county) could be just a little hysterical...right? I mean slide 4 talks about how great the county will be in 2030 because of it's "natural beauty and rural character". Slide 5 talks about a "diversity of urban and rural lifestyles".

However, slide 28 starts the discussion of Land Use and it is there that (if you like the rural character of Scott County) things go south in a hurry. Slide 31 shows where the planned growth will be and how it will "include" family farms! There, just south and west of Belle Plaine, taking a whole 1/8th of the county is what the County Board has relegated to farm land! Everything else will be residential/municipalities (Shakopee, Prior Lake, Jordan etc). We are talking about the government of a county that is MOSTLY rural/farmland now, planning to become another inner ring concrete "smart growth"!

Now I have no problems with a retiring farmer selling his land to whomever he/she chooses. That is what property rights are all about. But government planning you out of your farm is another story entirely! To have our farmers know that in 20 years, the county will crowd them out of their land is unconscionable!

The charm of Scott County has been it's rural/farming identity. Family farms and hobby farms (10 acres and a horse as the Star Tribune called it) give the residents a reminder of what this state was founded on....a reminder of our history! To plan on paving that all under in roads and developments is a crime.