The Informed Voter Coalition is made up of these nonprofit organizations: Be Civil, Be Heard ; Drury University’s L.E. Meador Center for Politics & Citizenship; Junior League of Springfield; KSMU Ozarks Public Radio; Leadership Springfield; League of Women Voters of Southwest Missouri; Missouri State University’s Office of Public Affairs; NAACP Springfield; Rosie; Show Me Christian County; Springfield Business Journal; Springfield-Greene County Library District; and the Springfield News-Leader.
You can hear the interviews recorded at KSMU by clicking on the "listen" button above or watch videos of the interviews recorded by Nathan Papes and Greta Cross of the Springfield News-Leader.
Candidates were interviewed individually and asked the same questions. They had one minute to introduce themselves and two minutes to respond to each question. Questions were submitted by Informed Voter Coalition partner organizations and were not provided to the candidates in advance. The order of the candidate interviews was determined by a random drawing.
Greene County Commissioner District 2
I'm Carrie Richardson with Leadership Springfield, one of the nonpartisan organizations that make up the Informed Voter Coalition. Today, we are interviewing candidates for Greene County Commissioner District 2: John Russell and Tim McGrady. Our first candidate is John Russell. Thank you very much for joining us.
"Thank you."
Let's begin by having you introduce yourself and tell us why you decided to run for this office.
John Russell
"Sure. Well, thanks so much, Carrie. It's certainly an honor to be here today, and I appreciate the opportunity that you all put together. I'm John Russell. I currently represent District 2 on the Greene County Commission. District 2 in Greene County is the eastern side of the county. I live on that side of the county with my wife and two young kids, and I've been able to bring a different set of experiences to the commission, both in terms of experience in state government and in small business. I was deputy chief of staff for the governor of Missouri for four years and have had over a decade of experience in small business, both in the insurance and manufacturing segments, so have been able to really draw on both sets of experiences to work in our local government and appreciate your all's interest in local government. So many times, decisions made at local government can have long lasting impact on our friends and neighbors, so appreciate the interest in it."
Explain the role of a county commissioner and why voters should care about who represents them in this role.
"Yeah, as I just mentioned, local government has long lasting impact on our local citizens, and the Greene County Commission is responsible for many things. The top of that list would be budgeting decisions, and it's an area that I focus a lot of my time on. We set the budget for the various county offices and departments so you have to set priorities. For me, those priorities would be really focusing on things that our citizens can't do for themselves so protecting citizens from crime, building roads and bridges, responding to disasters, and then also on that list would be just ensuring that we have high level customer service at the county. So that would be one of the main responsibilities of a commission. We also have to collaborate with the various offices and departments to make sure that we can deliver those services on a daily basis. Each office holder is independent, elected by the voters, but it takes that strong collaboration to make sure that we can move things forward. Planning and zoning is also a big part of a county commissioner's role. The unincorporated area of Greene County is the responsibility of the commission to work with the Planning Board, to make those planning and zoning decisions, to ensure that we respect property rights and also balance that with long term growth. So many responsibilities of the Commission, but a lot of it is just collaborating with the community to ensure that we deliver those services."
Do you think Greene County should take a more proactive approach dealing with vacant commercial and residential properties that are years in disrepair? If your answer is yes, what do you think the county should do? And if it's no, please explain why you feel that way.
"Yeah. The commission works very closely with the resource management department of Greene County, which is a commission department, and we have a compliance division of that department. And it's something that we have invested dollars in, in both terms of budgeting as well as additional full-time employee added to that department this year to work through some of those cases. Sometimes it is related to some vacant houses that are maybe in disrepair or maybe just not taking care of the yard or have trash in the yard. But we have made investments over the past two years to try to continue to tackle some of those problems. At any given day, there can be around 4(00) to 500 open cases in Greene County of compliance issues. So we're working to try to take care of those in a timely manner."
Issues of mental health and domestic abuse continue to be in the forefront of concerns for citizens. What do you feel the county commission's role is in addressing these issues?
"Yeah, it's something that this county commission, including myself, have shown a strong interest in. Obviously, the county doesn't have dollars that we can really invest in that besides, we did have some ARPA dollars that were sent to the county from the federal government. One of our priorities in investing those ARPA dollars was mental health. We put over $5 million into a youth rapid access center. So that was definitely a priority through those ARPA dollars. But on an ongoing basis, we can collaborate with the community. I'm part of a ongoing mental health collaborative group that include many here in the county, and it is our priority to really come together as a community and see how we can continue tackling some of these issues. Sometimes they're easy things we can do, but there's a lot of heavy lifting that needs to be done, so it's really collaborating as a community. The State of the County address, the commissioner, the presiding commissioner, made that the focus of his address, with collaboration from the two associate commissioners, just to show how much of a priority it is for this commission to focus on some of these issues."
Will you encourage the Greene County Commission to broadcast commission meetings on the county's website or social media platforms to increase citizen engagement?
"One of the most important things that we can do is to be accessible and get information out in a timely manner, and we have made a lot of adjustments over the past few years to do just that. We launched a transparency portal on the county website. You can go to the Greene County website, greenecountymo.gov, click on transparency portal, and you can see in near real time how county dollars are being spent. When I came on to the commission, you had to attend the meeting in person if you were going to hear what was going on in real time. We have since moved to a platform where you can dial in, and every single commission meeting you can watch in real time from your phone or computer so that ability is there. And we do sometimes have citizens join in to see what's going on during our meetings."
Can you give examples of how the counties and municipalities could cooperate to solve problems, and how can cooperation between these entities be improved?
"Collaboration is one of the things that we hear about most in our community. I think we do very well as a community, but there's, of course, always room for improvement. Some of the ways that we have collaborated, and I will continue to collaborate with colleagues in different municipalities and with Springfield. And one thing to remember, there's many other municipalities here in Greene County, but we have regular meetings with most of these, either mayors or sometimes the councils. We have a standing monthly meeting with the City of Springfield's management team, just to collaborate on what might be going on here that we might need to know about and then vice versa. We have regular phone calls with each of these mayors and municipalities and try to have meetings out in the community just to hear what's going on in each of these, because Greene County takes in all roughly 300,000 citizens so we really need to hear what's going on in each and every segment of the county."
John Russell, that concludes our interview. Thank you very much for taking time to talk to us.
"Thanks so much for the time. Good to be with you."
Tim McGrady
Our next candidate joining us is Tim McGrady. Thank you very much for joining us.
"Thank you for having me here today, I appreciate it."
Would you please introduce yourself and tell us why you decided to run for this position?
"Absolutely. Yeah. I, like Carrie said, my name is Tim McGrady, and I'm a lifelong resident of Greene County and Springfield other than four years in the military. I'd say I am running for office for the old fashioned reason, honestly, to just be a voice for the people. I had wondered for years what it would be like to just, to honestly represent the people. Kind of like the days way back when. I mean, there were farmers that left their fields, you know, left what they had to do. They went and represented government. They did their thing, and then they came back home. So they did it for the reason they wanted to. They weren't in it for enrichment. They weren't in it for, you know, higher offices or anything like that. And that's me. But yeah., lifelong resident here, Central High School, Missouri State, Drury. Gosh, I've worked for O'Reilly's and CoxHealth. So, you know, firm, wide background here in Springfield and Greene County. And I think I can do the job very well for everybody."
Explain the role of a county commissioner and why voters should care about who represents them in this role.
"Absolutely. Yeah. And I know that probably a lot of people don't know what the county commissioners do, and they may have already heard that from the interview just a minute ago, but I'll give my spiel on that. You know, county commissioners, it's not a political position. It's not. It's a business job. And, you know, I mean, we, you know, there's three commissioners in Greene County, and we run the business for the county. I mean, you know, the biggest thing, of course, is budget. And I know for for this year, I mean, the budget's a little bit over $248 million. I mean, it's a lot of money. There's, you know, I think it's 129 miles of roads in the county and 900 bridges. So, I mean, there's a lot of things there for, that have to be taken care of — purchasing, working with HR, even the medical examiner, all of that that comes under the commissioners, and it's a big deal. It's very important. But and one of the great things, like I said, it's not political. You know, we have to get there politically, but it's not a political position. So I think, you know, it's a position that almost voters could have a little bit of fun with and care about. That's one of the reasons that I wanted to run. I've never ran for office before or been close to anybody that did, but I wanted to be able to have some fun. Now, it may sound funny, but to have some fun and be happy and lighthearted about it and that even my friends and people that I know could have some fun with it, too. And, and, you know, take some responsibility and ownership and, you know, be able to be, you know, connected to somebody to know somebody. I mean, I'm about as normal as they come. I don't come from a rich family. I don't come from a connected family. I — Springfield all my life other than four years in the military. So I'm the picture of normal."
Do you think Greene County should take a more proactive approach to dealing with vacant commercial and residential properties that are years in disrepair? If your answer is yes, what do you think the county should do? And if it's no, please explain why you feel that way.
"Yes, any kind of vacant, blighted, any type of properties like that, be it via commercial or residential, needs to be taken care of. I mean, it's a, they're not going to get better, of course. The worst thing you can do with any vehicle or home or building is to let it set. And so if that happens, it's going to get worse. It's never going to get better. Never, ever. You know, and the county, of course, in dealing with any kind of properties like that, of course, they've got to be fair, open, listen to what the county wants because, you know, the commissioners there were elected by the residents of the county, and we need to listen to what they want. We need to listen to them on a very regular basis and know how they want to deal with things like that. If you have people that are not taking care of properties, not taking it seriously, and I think any time that something is vacant or ran down, they're not taking it seriously. That's plain for everybody to see. And so when that happens, it's time for the the county, city or anybody to step in and make changes for that. And you probably need a new owner, you know, and/or the county could lend a hand, you know, depending on the property that you're talking about and make sure that it's good for the new owners and/or the county. It's like I say, yes, it's absolutely a big deal and can't let things go on like that because it's never going to get any more positive and it's got to be addressed. We've had some, some owners in the past that have had quite a few properties in the Springfield and Greene County area, and they've let them go way too long. And sometimes people even have to deal with that, that are tenants there. And that's a very bad deal. People should not have to deal with that."
Issues of mental health and domestic abuse continue to be in the forefront of concerns for citizens. What do you feel the county commission's role is in addressing these issues?
"Great question. It's again, a big deal. You know, the county commission works with the sheriff's department on an ongoing basis, and they actually meet with them on a monthly basis. Mental health and, you know, spousal abuse and all those things. I mean, those are two different areas, but sometimes they could overlap, and they're both very big deals. And none of them are free. You know, that's probably the biggest problem with things like that is that, you know, who's going to pick up the tab for this and that, who's paying attention, who's going to police it, et cetera, et cetera? The commission has got to be ready to work with the, like I say, the sheriff's department on a continual basis. And, of course, we've got health care here, I mean, between Coxhealth and Mercy, I mean, we've got two of the the greatest health care providers we could probably ask for. So we've got to work with them on an ongoing basis to make sure that it's taken care of. People, they can't be just left on the streets and create a danger for others. And then, of course, again, you know, the whole spousal abuse thing, that's just, that's a no go. That's an absolute no go. That's one of the things that I've always held dear in my heart my whole life. I know it can go the opposite way as far as the sexes, but normally it's it's men taking advantage of women and being rough on them. And you don't hit girls. That's period. That does not happen. And when it does, it's got to be taken care of. And it's time for law enforcement and the right individuals to get involved. And they can't just necessarily, you know, run roughshod over something like that. People do still have rights. But we'd have to work on a continual basis with the sheriff's department because you don't hit girls, period."
Will you encourage the Greene County Commission to broadcast commission meetings on the county's website or social media platforms to increase citizen engagement?
"100%, absolutely. Communication is probably, I think, one of the things that I could bring to the commission in a change, not saying the commission isn't doing it right now, but I enjoy talking to people. I've talked to people all my life. I'm in sales right now. I sell 4(00) or 500 cars every week at the auto auction here in town. And also I'm a realtor with Murney, and so I sell real estate and and vehicles all the time. Communication is a big deal if, you know, communication really is how everything happens in life. The commission has got to let everybody know what's going on on an ongoing basis. I was talking to a group the other day and took some questions, and the last gentleman raised his hand, said, 'Tim, I don't have a question for you, but I've got a statement.' I said, 'sure,' and and he said, you know, years ago when Dave Coonrod was in office, I felt like I knew what was going on at the county.' He said, 'these days I just feel there's more like a veil there, and I don't I don't know what's going on.' And it would be one of my hopes that nobody in Greene County would feel like they don't know what's going on. It's kind of like the old deal of Florida, Florida, Florida. I'd say communication, communication, communication. We've got to get it out there. I think I'd I would probably be the new best friend of KSMU and KY3 and everybody, if they think, 'I wonder if we can get him to talk about that?' Yeah. You can always get him to talk about issues."
Can you give examples on how the counties and municipalities could cooperate to solve problems? How can cooperation between these entities be improved?
"Great question. And of course, as I mentioned before, you know, the county's budget for this year is a little over $248 million. That's a huge amount of money. I think the county, the city, the state and even, you know, the federal government have got to work together. We need to make sure that we're maximizing and minimizing all the time. I mean, from my corporate life at O'Reilly's, I've learned that, to the nth degree, you want to maximize everything that you're getting out of every dollar, and you've got to minimize cost and minimize taxes any way you can. It's got to all been done, you know, correctly. But we've got to — cooperation. Again, there's communication. You've got to make sure that that is happening on an ongoing basis. And if you're talking with people, and I'm a relationship builder, you know, you've got to demand things of vendors and people like that because you're spending the taxpayers dollars, and you got to make sure you're getting everything you can for every one of those dollars. And at the same time, you got to build great relationships with those people so that they want to work with you. But I think via the state and the city and even the feds, you know, I would always be looking for ways that I could spend their money before I'd spend our money. You know, I mean, it's all got to be legal and up front, of course, but if we can spend other people's money to help get things done in the county in a better way, we've got to make that happen any way that we possibly can."
Tim McGrady, that concludes our interview. Thank you so much for taking time to talk to us.
"Thank you so much. I appreciate it all."
