Nick Gosnell: Good morning Ken.
Ken Nisly: Good morning.
Nick Gosnell: All right so let's just talk a little bit about you. What's the experience that you've had thus far in your life and why did you decide to run for office?
Ken Nisly: Well thanks for asking. Some of my experience has been I've been on the city council at the town of Langdon which is out in western Reno County and then when we moved back over into the Haven USD 312 I've been on that for my second term now on the board there serving there and then being involved with community both school and fire department EMS there's things that I think that have been forgotten out in the western part of our county and I was encouraged to run by others to go represent some of those needs that we have out in the western part.
Gosnell: All right so what is your top priority? There's obviously sometimes a lot of things that happen that the folks here in the city of Hutchinson may say hey wait a second there's you know 40,000 of us and just a couple of thousands and folks in the western part of the county but at the same time county government in particular has to make sure that everybody's taken care of so what's your top priority?
Nisly: One of the top priorities would be roads. We have a bunch of paved roads out there we got a lot of back roads if you want to call them that that have deteriorated that have not had any kind of attention in many many years. I don't know how many years but it's been a long time since they've been given attention. I do want to go and commend the county they usually come out once or twice a year and mow the ditches for us that is very much appreciated but we just like to see some of our roads maintained a little better.
Gosnell: All right so budgeting is one of the chief functions of the county commission these days and so what's one thing that maybe you think the county should spend less money on than what they do right now?
Nisly: That's a sort of a tough question at times because there's things that are important but then you got to also go and look at what else is important. You're asking what should they spend less on? I have not gone and personally looked at the budget individually but maybe some of the things that you could probably spend less on is some of the money that they give to other organizations. They're good organizations don't get me wrong but like United Way and things like that where I think that they should probably maybe scale back on a little bit and focus more on what is actually county responsibility.
Gosnell: Okay so what are some of those county responsibilities that you say aim your resources maybe differently or spend more money or whatever it might be?
Nisly: Okay the county has a responsibility of roads, fire, EMS and well out there it's the sheriff's office so those are the basic services that need to be provided for everyone in the county equally not just only certain areas. Well there's nobody out there so we don't worry about it. Yes there are people out there and at times it's very frustrating when we don't get the response time like you would if you were living closer to Hutchinson.
Gosnell: That's part of why the as an example Reno County EMS has an EMS station out in Arlington is in an effort to kind of reduce that. I know that actually if you were watching the county commission meeting yesterday there was a brief addressing of that issue saying hey even with some of that work we still need to try to figure out a way to whatever degree we can while still being fiscally responsible even out some of these response times. Would you agree with that generally?
Nisly: Yes.
Gosnell: Okay now what do you see the role of the county administrator as being for Reno County? Well it's sort of like the school where you have the superintendent that's running the day-to-day operation and the board gives direction and I think that's what the county commission needs to be doing is giving the administrator the direction that he needs to be going in.
Gosnell: I'll bet I probably know your answer to this but we're going to find out anyway. There were meetings this week in Arlington and Pretty Prairie about just letting people know what zoning might look like if it were to happen in the western part of the county. Talk to us a little bit about what you think about that idea and what what maybe the there is to to know about zoning. Is it something that you believe the people in the western part of the county wants or don't want or how does that work?
Nisly: That could be a double-edged sword about zoning but when I heard what the people were wanting they were saying they would like to have less government but yet they would like to have some kind of oversight on the mega farms and I think it was brought up in Arlington like the wind and the solar and like the some of the big livestock farms they would like to have some regulation on that but as far as personal farm and if somebody wanted to start a business out of their shed they would like to have less government involvement in that.
Gosnell: Okay so what what the county did with wind was they went ahead and did technically it's a zoning overlay so really speaking technically the entire county is zoned in this area only but they basically said we're just not going to have wind anyplace. Is that what it looks like folks want for solar or or what are you hearing in that regard?
Nisly: Yes that's what I'm hearing right now is they would prefer not having the big mega farms come in and take up the farmland and things like that.
Gosnell: Okay for you if you get a chance to be a part of the county commission what is something that you say you know I haven't heard this idea at the county commission level at least that I know of this is something I want to bring to the table.
Nisly: You're asking what I would do?
Gosnell: Something new that you haven't heard before that you that you'd want to do as a county commissioner.
Nisly: Well that's sort of interesting question because there's be a lot of things that I think I could probably bring but would it be feasible? Probably not but yes it would be real nice to have every road out in the county paved but that's not even realistic but to try to bring something in that I would think would be a benefit to my district would be like RCAT that have a little bit more frequent coming out instead of calling in. Something like that I could see that be more beneficial for the especially for the elderly who can't get out and drive like they used to provide more services for them for those people they're out in that area to help them out.
Gosnell: Sure and it's unfortunate but it seems like these days and I feel like I should probably knock on wood when I'm saying this Ken but when we have vehicle accidents in the county or in the city most of the time unless somebody's breaking a traffic law it has to do with an older driver having a medical issue and so having that access to RCAT and things like that may help a little bit with that I would think.
Nisly: Well I would think so too but you know like you're saying knock on wood we can never tell until we you know pursue some of that then hopefully we can reduce some of that.
Gosnell: All right and as far as the sheriff's office is concerned my father-in-law was a sheriff's officer for 20 years on the Reno County Sheriff's Office and back in his day there were only I don't know I think it was like four or five officers for the entire county so if something happened out in the western part of the county it would take a while to get out there and then basically there wasn't a whole lot of folks around for a while in the rest of the county. How would you propose making sure that the sheriff's office can can staff adequately for having an emergency happen in the part of the county that's really solely their responsibility while at the same time not spending too much money for those relatively quiet periods in the county as well?
Nisly: I would like to see it more like what we have it zoned now for you know like for us as commissioners having somebody assigned out there and then just roam the roads. Now I know that in the middle of the night I'll be right blunt about it out in western Reno County it is desolate there's nothing happening out there. I don't mind seeing them maybe slip in more toward the the core of the county because when they're out there they're out there by themselves and it's just there's nothing else out there except them and the deer and I wouldn't mind if they would slip in you know a little closer that way they could respond to other areas should they need but I think we should have people assigned to that area that they should be out there patrolling actively.
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