Heads up, it’s a big election year in Platte County.
It starts, of course, with municipal elections in April when local cities and school districts place candidates/issues on the ballot in their respective entities. All your local cities and school districts will have board members and alderman (city council) positions up for grabs. And by the way, if you’re thinking of becoming a candidate be aware that the deadline for registering to run for school/city posts is next Tuesday, Jan. 21 at 5 p.m. Filing can be done at the appropriate school district central office or city hall.
Take note that several countywide elected positions will be on the ballot later this year. If you want to make money (mid $60,000s) at this public service thing, the county positions are the way to go vs. city spots, which are paid very little, or school boards, which are paid nothing.
The filing for county spots doesn’t begin until Tuesday, Feb. 25 at 8 a.m. Deadline to file is Tuesday, March 31, at 5 p.m. Filing for these takes place at the Platte County Board of Elections, 2600 NW Prairie View Road in Platte City.
Both associate county commissioner spots–currently held by Dagmar Wood in district one (south) and John Elliott in district two (north)–are up in 2020. Wood and Elliott are both Republicans. Democrat David Park has announced he will be a candidate for the district two post.
In addition to the two associate county commission jobs, the positions of assessor (currently David Cox), public administrator (Jera Pruitt), sheriff (Mark Owen) and treasurer (Rob Willard) are open this year.
The political buzz around potential candidates stepping forward to challenge incumbents has been pretty quiet. Or maybe I’m not running in the right circles. There was quite a bit of chatter in the south part of the county last year around this time about a challenger in the works against Wood in district one. Probably a worthy consideration. Wood has made herself vulnerable with some surprisingly strange remarks and strange positions on a couple of important issues. There are a lot of folks who believe the 2020 Dagmar Wood isn’t the 2016 Dagmar Wood they supported.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen this happen in district one (see Dusenbery, Kathy and Roper, Beverlee). For the last dozen or so years district one has become Bizarro World. Bizarro World is also known as Htrae, which is “Earth” spelled backwards. Everything that ought to be down is up, everything that should be up is down. Wood has done her part to keep up the ‘here’s a wacky-ass stance for you’ tradition. It’s like Dagmar watched Dusenbery and Roper go off the rails and said “Hold my beer.”
No buzz has reached Between the Lines headquarters about any potential challengers lining up for sheriff, where Mark Owen seems safe; for public administrator, a position the general public knows very little about and thinks about even less; treasurer, where Rob Willard had an embarrassing and expensive miscue a few years back but seems to be off anyone’s radar at present; and assessor, where David Cox has worked hard to bring the county up to date on real estate assessments that had fallen way behind in many areas of the county.
Wood has not done a good job of hiding the fact she is not a fan of some of the steps the assessor has taken to get the tax rolls updated, so if a surprise challenger steps forward against Cox my guess is we’ll be able to follow a trail of bread crumbs back to the door of the first district commissioner.
What if you planned a virtually meaningless discussion and nobody came?
This isn’t going well. Virtually no one showed up for the Platte County Sales Tax Advisory Committee meeting on Monday night. The committee could not meet because it did not have enough members present to constitute a quorum. Only four committee peeps checked in.
Was this some type of polite boycott?
It might be time to blow up the entire concept. Despite the spin put on it by commissioners, this committee thing wasn’t a great idea in the first place. Calls for “public input” did not mean hand-picking a panel of 10 or 11 people to sit around discussing a meandering mission statement while in the back of their minds wondering if what they’re doing is even going to matter to the commissioners.
We appreciate your time and service, loyal volunteers, but at the same time we hear your silent reluctance to serve as a pawns in political gamesmanship. Thank you and good night.
How ’bout those Chiefs? Pretty amazing comeback to win the divisional round of the playoffs, taking out the Houston Texans on Sunday. After being down 24-0 early, the Chiefs exploded to wipe out that deficit by halftime. KC rallied to lead 28-24 by intermission and then dominated the second half in a 51-31 victory.
So KC is one win away from being in the Super Bowl for the first time in 50 years. Brace yourselves.
(Get more Foley on Twitter @ivanfoley and follow us on Facebook at Platte County Landmark. Email ivan@plattecountylandmark.com )