A Republican Candidates Forum ahead of the March 3 Primary, organized by the Brown County Republican Party, took place Thursday evening at Victory Life Church. The nearly three-hour event featured introductory and closing comments, along with question-and-answer sessions, with candidates for Brown County Judge, Brown County Treasurer, Brown County Clerk County Commissioner in Precincts 2 and 4, Justice of the Peace in Precinct 4, and Republican Party Chair.
The following are the excerpts from the questions answered by County Commissioner Precinct 2 candidates Joel Kelton, Jeff Hoskinson, and John Stacy.
Joel Kelton
What do you see as the biggest challenge for Brown County and what’s your plan to solve it?
Everybody always talks about taxes, and we struggled to maintain with all the growth we’ve got, but the budget is always our biggest challenge in all precincts. Meeting the needs of the county and staying within the budget and controlling expenses, budget is our biggest problem.
What are the other responsibilities of a county commissioner aside from roads and bridges and what qualifies you to answer those needs?
I can’t agree with the other two any more. We are looking at our new building and we are talking about moving a lot of the permitting offices and license plate offices out of that building and into a building that does not have to metal detectors to go through. We’re still in talks about that, no final decisions have been made. There are many duties that don’t have to do with the roads. We are talking about working toward getting more grants because no one wants higher taxes, but you can’t create things with money you don’t have, so it’s a hard spot to be in. We do all the contracts, salaries and insurance, planning, grant approval, facilities. There’s just no end to it, we serve on different committees. We are growing, we’ve put in more culverts the last two or three years than the first 10 of more years I was there. Houses are starting to pop up, but you have to get them online for the tax base before we actually have the money. It’s hard to get ahead of the curve when you have to get the taxable property there in order to received the taxes to build roads.
How does the role of county commissioner affect all the other offices in the courthouse?
We approve all salaries in there, but going back to bringing us up to date, we are working right now currently on our IT infrastructure, we realized how far behind we were on that. When we started looking for new software to move us into the new century we realized it wouldn’t run on our current infrastructure. We’re working to get our emergency management back up to speed, we hired a new emergency management person and he’s working with to make sure we’re ready for any emergencies. We’re talking about our new alert system and waiting to see what’s the best bang for the buck for the emergency alerts for all the people out in the county. We vote on everything that happens in the county, we vote on payrolls and salaries, we also provide a leadership for the county, and I’m working to help get us ready for a new judge.
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Jeff Hoskinson
What do you see as the biggest challenge for Brown County and what’s your plan to solve it?
The biggest challenge I can see in Brown County is there’s a lot of people moving here quickly. I deal with it all the time because I’m in the courthouse getting permits all the time. I know how many people that are moving here, and it’s a bunch, and that takes more infrastructure. There are things that need to be done there. Another challenge would be getting that budget and looking at it and making that budget work for Precinct 2. I would never be for raising taxes. Since I owned a house for 40 years every year my taxes have gone up. I don’t like it, that’s my biggest gripe in the world, so I would always be for keeping our taxes as low as possible. Another challenge I see is taking the new job and figuring out where everything is at and what to do, how to put it all together and make it work right.
What are the other responsibilities of a county commissioner aside from roads and bridges and what qualifies you to answer those needs?
Part of it is the budget, and I’ve been in business for 40 years and I know how to budget my money and make things work. The sheriff’s office would be a big challenge, the jail, there’s a lot of stuff that county commissioners are over that they do in commissioners court every week. All the employees and people wanting raises, one thing in the courthouse I never was for was walking through a metal detector to get my car tags. I know they purchased a new building and maybe that’ll move and some things can change there in the courthouse and it will be easier to walk in and get a permit. The infrastructure, there are some things I would have planned for that in the future to update us to some big city ideas. We have a lot of people moving here and like it or not, Brownwood is becoming a big city.
How does the role of county commissioner affect all the other offices in the courthouse?
I know that anybody in the county that needs anything that is a county employee they come to the commissioners court. There’s a lot of building to take care of that they county owns. There’s a lot of things the commissioners have to look over, you have to have that budget and plan it out where it can work. As far as road and bridge I think I would be an asset there because I’ve been paving for 25 years. I wouldn’t outsource any of it, I would in source because I know how much money difference there is to outsource. One of the things I see that the county can use most of all is the sheriff’s office and having deputies on patrol in different places to where they’re seen. In Precinct 2 there’s a big need for those guys. Talking about saving money and running the budget, I would like and see how we could be more competitive in some offices to get more of those people here that are qualified to work that position. As far as anything else, you don’t everything there is until you’re in that office and then you have to face it. I’m willing to face those challenges, I’ve always liked challenges, the most that’s stacked on my plate the better I function. I would be a full-time commissioners, I wouldn’t be part-time, it wouldn’t be just commissioners court on Monday. I would be working that position.
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John Stacy
What do you see as the biggest challenge for Brown County and what’s your plan to solve it?
One of the biggest challenges we’re facing as community, as a county is the influx of people coming in. I grew up down south in Killeen and if any of you have been that way recently, it’s not the country I grew up in. Brownwood is a whole lot closer to being the country I grew up in than the country that I actually grew up in. There’s so many people there, they’re running over each other and that’s what coming to Brown County and we have to be on top of it. To do it we have the get the infrastructure up to date and get the courthouse up to speed and get everything going our way and get ahead of them, because once we get behind there’s no catching up. When you’re building roads and people are already living in the area, you’re just asking for more problems than you’ve got to start with. We need to be ahead of the game and get a good start.
What are the other responsibilities of a county commissioner aside from roads and bridges and what qualifies you to answer those needs?
Roads and bridges are a small part of the budget but it’s going to be a big thing in the future because with all the people coming here from everywhere in the country we’re going to get in a bind and need some new roads, new infrastructure, it’s got to be done. The other side of that is the employees that work with the commissioners, work with the road crews, get everybody up to speed and try and stay in budget. I know that’s going to be a hard thing to do in the future and I hate to be the guy up here running for office telling you it’s going to be tough for us to stay in the budget for the next 10 years, but it’s going to really be tough. That’s one of the biggest problems we’ve got as a county, maintaining a livable budget and everybody get the necessities they need.
How does the role of county commissioner affect all the other offices in the courthouse?
The way I see it, the county commissioner is the speaking part for the body of the courthouse. They make a lot of decisions that the citizens of the county rely on, and things that other than roads and bridges that they do that are very important. Settling on annual budget and we keep talking about a budget because I think all three of us up here know what’s coming. We’ve got to get everything up to speed, computer systems, and bring it into the 21st century and be ready for what’s coming. I hate to sound like doom and gloom, but it’s inevitable, it’s coming, so we need to get things up to date and have all the computers and personnel in the courthouse in a public service mode. We’re all public servants and that’s what it’s all about. We work for the people that vote for us. To me that’s most important thing, get everybody in the courthouse on the same page and get up to speed and be a servant to voters in the county.
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To watch the KOXE live stream of the forum in its entirety, click HERE.