The Reno County Commission Republican primary candidates are visiting the KWBW Morning Show to talk to Nick Gosnell about their campaigns. Below is a transcript of the answers of Mike Warren from July 28, 2022.
Nick Gosnell:
District five interviews continue. Mike Warren, running as a Republican, along with three other folks for the district five seat on the board of county commissioners. Good morning, Mike.
Mike Warren:
Hey, good morning. I'm glad you had me in here today.
Nick Gosnell:
No worries. We're trying to get everybody in at least once, although, Penelope Poitras from Haven was not able to join us because of the illness earlier on this week, but we will have the transcripts of the folks that we have had on up on Hutch Post later on. So, Mike, first of all, talk to us about who you are and where you come from and why you want to be a county commissioner.
Mike Warren:
Yes, thank you. My name is Mike Warren. I live out on East Fourth Street, just off the Haven-Buhler Road. I moved to Hutchinson in 1990. Jay Shears hired me as their equipment manager and I retired with them in December 31st, this past year as 31 years as the equipment manager. And I had no idea that I wanted to be a county commissioner, anything to do with political life until the board had the election back in November and said, we're gonna go to five commissioners. And I thought, what better way to get involved with the public and see if we can't drive this county up into the 21st century and try to help out and make sure that we're able to deliver what the public is wanting us to do. And I had, like I said, 31 years of service with a large corporation, so I've been dealing with a lot of money.
Nick Gosnell:
All right. So what should county government do and what should it leave to the private sector to do? What do you feel like the basic things that a county government should do are.
Mike Warren:
I think the county government needs to take care of the infrastructure around the county and taking care of the roads and making sure that our public services are up to date and take care of the fire and the police in that area.
Nick Gosnell:
Those are the first things and that's where you go from there. I guess Mike, follow up to you as with your experience as an equipment manager working in sort of the construction area. You probably have a better handle on what road and bridge actually ought to be, than maybe some folks would, though there are a lot in this particular race that have that kind of experience.
Mike Warren:
I talked with Mr. Brittain the other day and he's got a great handle on a plan of how he wants to maintain this county and keep the road systems up. We got over 500 miles of paved road, 1,260 miles of county roads out here, and he's got a plan of doing things in a segment and making sure that everything is handled in a timely manner and not lose the bases that you've already got on your road system.
Nick Gosnell:
So part of the issue, and I didn't get into this with the other candidates, but given your background, maybe you can help us to understand it a little bit better is when lane miles get traded off. When you have state projects that then become county roads, the easy examples are the old K-61 and then there are other times when the state decides that it's going to improve a road, they've got a certain number of miles of road that they, that the legislature has allowed them to have as state roads. Usually, what ends up happening with the old highway is that it ends up becoming a county responsibility when it's not within a city. So, when you're talking about those kind of things and the county then ends up with more of those lane miles of paved road, how do you prepare for the maintenance for a road that you weren't responsible for for a while and now you are.
Mike Warren:
My understanding is the state, when they give that over to you, they give you a projection of money set aside to maintain that road for a period of time. Once it gets turned back to the county, it will not get the traffic that it had on it back when the state had that road. So, it should extend the life of that road a little further and help out with the county and maintaining the road miles.
Nick Gosnell:
The county commission ended up doing a whole lot of things over the last couple of years that I think if you had said to county commissioners prior to 2020, what does the health department do, they would've said, well, they're the ones that give you your flu shots. And they take care of the gals that are on WIC and the little babies. And they just do what a health department does, but it's fairly routine. There's not a whole lot, I mean, 2019 and before that's the way people would've looked at it. Then we had a pandemic and the role of the health department came to the front for a couple of years, a whole lot more than maybe other people had expected it to before, and what people may not have realized is that the county commission as the board of health, ultimately was in charge of that. How do you see the role of the health department as we get past, hopefully crossing my fingers, the pandemic, and back into what might be regular order?
Mike Warren:
Wow, that's a great question. And I think that the health department has got to look at the whole of our county and we have a lot of people out here that need assistance. Not necessarily if the private sector has a good health insurance for them, we've got people out here that don't have the healthcare system that they need to have. So the county health department needs to step up and be able to address those issues at a cost savings to those people.
Nick Gosnell:
Explain how you understand the role of the county administrator and his relationship with the county commission.
Mike Warren:
Well, the county administrator, I think, is a good opportunity for the commissioners to step back a little bit, cause most of us, we only meet on two days a a month. And for them to understand what goes on with every department out there is real hard for those three commissioners to get around and see what happens with the county administrator. He is the liaison between the department heads and he brings that information back to the county, and the commissioners for them to rule on different issues.
Nick Gosnell:
All right, a lot of departments in the county, like the treasurer and the sheriff and, and those sorts of departments...county clerk...are not controlled by county officials as much as they are controlled by things they have to do by state statute. So how do you interact with them and be sure they have what they need while keeping an eye on the checkbook?
Mike Warren:
I think with us having five commissioners and we're gonna have the opportunity to sit down with each one of these departments and get to know them better. It's better to know your friends than it is to know somebody, a stranger. So by being able to sit down and visit with them and letting the county administrator deal with the day to day problems, and then maybe we can kind of watch their checkbook a little closer that way and understand how they're wanting to spend their money.
Nick Gosnell:
All right, given the truth in taxation law that passed in recent years in the legislature, the county can't just keep the mill levy flat and count on increased valuations to keep them up with inflation, because now you get that additional messaging where people will say...where people know that the county has more money to spend because valuation went up, not just individually, but generally as a county, do you believe in trying to stay revenue neutral, actual dollars neutral or keeping the mill levy flat is best or what? What do you think with those budget things?
Mike Warren:
Well, I think the revenue neutral is, is a great way for 'em to look at the money that's coming in and it'll adjust the mill levies as the taxation valuations go up. And I think it's a fair way for us to look at that and hold the money accountable to what's coming in from each tax entity.
Nick Gosnell:
You know, events come up and all of a sudden you have to figure out what's going to happen. Emergency preparedness is another area of the county we don't talk about unless something happens. Well, the Cottonwood Complex fire happened east of town. And so for those that have been a part of that...from a policy perspective, what is the county's role? Obviously, getting the fire out when it's happening is one thing, but what's the commission's role going forward?
Mike Warren:
I think the commission needs to look a little bit of help in how we work with the fire department. Number one, cause we've had quite a few fires out here in Reno County and they've been devastating to a lot of people. And I think the county needs to visit with the fire chief and see what we can do about some burn bans. People think it's time to burn during the wintertime when there's snow on the ground. And there's a lot of dry ground. And I think we need to expand our burn bans a little bit further. I think with discussions with the right departments, I think we can probably address some of these issues.
Nick Gosnell:
So when you sit in a room with, as you assuming you win, four other people and you start to hash out the decision making process, um, how does somebody build that relationship within the group of five so that when you're talking to the public, you are all giving them the same, the same answers, but still have that, everybody's ideas come to the table at the same time...
Mike Warren:
Having the continuity.
Nick Gosnell:
Exactly.
Mike Warren:
Yeah. By having the five commissioners, you kind of get a little bit away from the open meetings, that you're not so pinned down to where you can't visit with each other. It's gonna allow us to go to more meetings where we can have more than one representative to these other forums and things that's going on in the county was one with the mental health. The other day, we had two city commissioners there and only one county commissioner because of the open meetings law that you can't have more of 'em in one area. So it should allow us to have more togetherness with the, the commissioners that we can actually get together and, and understand each other.
Nick Gosnell:
Sure. And I know that they're gonna have that meeting for the rural water districts there, north of Yoder coming up here in a couple of weeks, that two of the commissioners are gonna attend. And that's why we got a note is because that technically then makes that an open meeting. It would've been an open meeting anyway, public was gonna come, but when you deal with those issues that come up through maybe no fault of anybody, but stuff just happens, uh, the nitrate levels in Yoder, the fires, all these things that are just these at exigent circumstances that you can't, that you couldn't have planned for before you got the job, how do you think about them when they come up? How did you deal with, how did you deal with things when, um, when something happened you didn't expect in your career and what do you expect to be able to do as a county commissioner
Mike Warren:
Research? You gotta dig down in the weeds and try to figure out what the issue is and try to get people involved from the outside to understand what's happening. Usually when somebody tells you no, that just means they need more information. So we gotta dig down and try to figure out what the root cause of these issues are and get along with the other commissioners. And hopefully we can get out with the community in our districts and have some little forums out there with them on a monthly basis and have these people understand what's going on within the county government.