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.
Christian County Eastern District Commissioner
I'm Rachel Campbell with Show-Me Christian County. One of the nonpartisan organizations that makes up the Informed Voter Coalition. Today, we are interviewing candidates for Christian County Eastern Commissioner David Krewson and Bradley Jackson.
David Krewson
Our first candidate is David Krewson. Thank you so much for joining us.
"You're welcome."
Let's begin by having you introduce yourself and tell us why you decided to run for this office.
"Well, my name is David Krewson. Like you said, I live just south of Ozark. I am running for the position to give people a choice during the election. I don't believe any office should be run without somebody, at least from both parties, running for the position. So I'm here to do that and hopefully get enough votes out there to win the election. We'll see what happens."
Explain the role of a county commissioner and why voters should care about who represents them in this role.
"Oh, wow. That's going to be a good one. Let's see. The role of a county commissioner should be to represent the people in the area that they have been elected or appointed to represent. In this case, Eastern Commissioner is, I would say, a board of commissioners that decide on a lot of things that go on in the county, such as roads being improved, health, welfare, sheriffs — running the sheriff's office, running the — and who's appointed or hired for sheriff, who's appointed or hired for the fire department, a lot of different things that a commissioner gets involved with. And, of course, involvement with the community itself, I believe, is very important. So that's the reason I'm running to get involved more than what I am already."
If elected, how would you leverage existing resources and evaluate new ideas to promote and improve quality of life for the people of Christian County?
"Well, I know one thing to improve the quality of life for the people of Christian County is internet services. There has been a big push from, I know, the electric company co-op that I belong to, to do internet service throughout their area, as well as other electric companies and those, based upon the fact that the rural areas really need better internet service because of the fact that the world is becoming faster because of internet, and we need those rural areas to be able to keep up with the rest of the world. So that's my big push. That and, of course, working with the roads and road department to make sure the roads are all up to a satisfactory condition for people to travel safely."
Christian County is responsible for a wide variety of services and departments, from roads to law enforcement, to tax assessment and many more. As a commissioner, how would you balance the varying needs of each department?
"Well, of course, each department submits a budget to the county, and the county auditor and those others involved have to sit down, have an actuary decide how much money the county is going to receive. And then, of course, the county has to divide the taxes that they get among the various departments. It's a juggling act, there's no doubt about it, but there is a way to fund everyone at a sufficient level to provide all the needs required by the citizens."
What would you say are some of Christian County's biggest needs, and what role does the commission play in helping to address those needs?
"One of the biggest needs, I feel, are fire and the sheriff's department. In order to adequately fund the fire and sheriff's department, they need to be paid an adequate amount. I see how much they're paid these days, and to me, that's just not enough. Also, the roads, a lot of them in Christian County could use improvement. So we need to make sure that money for the roads are going to the roads that need it the most. So, and then we have the health department. The health department needs to be adequately funded. The library. The library needs to be adequately funded. Not only that, but the library needs to have a board for everyone and not just a certain portion of the population."
If elected, in what ways do you plan to communicate with and seek feedback from a variety of constituents?
"Well, I'll make myself available, obviously, through various methods, including email, telephone. I will be at the meetings. Anybody can talk to me before or after any of the commission meetings. I, I'm in all over Christian County, but especially on the eastern side, because that's where I do live. You know, I shop in Christian County. I roam, well, I do a lot of business with a lot of businesses in Christian County even though I am retired, there are things that I do need in life, so."
David Krewson, that concludes our interview. Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us today.
"Thank you for having me, I appreciate it."
Bradley Alan Jackson
Our next candidate is Bradley Jackson. Thank you so much for joining us today.
"Thanks for having me. I appreciate it."
Would you please introduce yourself and tell us why you decided to run for this position?
"Alright. Perfect. Well, a little bit about myself. I've been involved in the the community and the county for quite a few years in different capacities. I've served as the mayor of the City of Ozark for two different terms. I sit on city council for a couple of terms. I've been part of the chamber of commerce as part of their board of directors for five years. I've chaired a couple of different positions inside the City of Ozark, but I've been the associate commissioner for the Eastern District for the past two years, a governor's appointment when our current presiding commissioner vacated that seat to become the presiding commissioner, so I'm running for re-election. I guess re-election. I'm running to be elected, hopefully, you know, since I was appointed. But I just want to serve my community and do everything I can to make Christian County a great place to raise a family, which it already is. But, you know, to continue that tradition is very important to me. And, you know, I've always been told if you've got something to give, give it. So that's what I'm trying to do."
Explain the role of a county commissioner and why voters should care about who represents them in this role.
"So the county commissioner, it's not a hugely complex job. It's very similar to being the mayor, which I have quite a bit of experience, but we manage different members of staff, so we oversee planning and zoning. We oversee human resources, building maintenance, our road departments and, you know, we help with constituent service. Every contract that comes through the county, whether it be the assessor, recorder, collector, all those contracts come through the county commission, and we are the ones that review those, sign off on those and enter into those agreements. We also have different jobs appointing different people to serve in different capacities, whether it be Senate Bill 40, the planning and zoning commission, the library board of trustees. There's multiple different areas that we are involved in, other governmental organizations in appointing their board. So you just want to have a person that cares about the job, that cares about the community, that's focused on doing whatever needs to be done to take care of the citizens and, you know, still run the business, because it is a business. And a lot of people don't think about that. But you have to make good, wise business decisions. Now, we have constraints. There are certain things that I could do in my normal capacity as a business owner that I can't do in a governmental agency, but still, you bring that business acumen into the job, make good decisions and hopefully represent your your county and your constituents the best that you possibly can."
If elected, how would you leverage existing resources and evaluate new ideas to promote an improved quality of life for the people of Christian County?
"Well, I think you always have to be looking out for what's going on. You know, we are a part of a couple of different organizations as county commissioners. We're part of the Missouri Association of Counties and the County Commissioners Association of Missouri. And we have annual conferences that we go to where we get continuing education. But one of the most important factors of those big meetings is getting to meet other commissioners from other areas of the state. The problems and conditions and things that we see in Christian County are not unique to Christian County. They've happened somewhere else, more than likely, before. So gaining off the knowledge and experience of those other elected officials is very important. Always keeping up with what the state legislature is doing and how they're proposing new laws or whatever. Looking at what other states are doing. We're constantly evolving as a organization and as a community, and we have new opportunities. And, you know, utilizing all the resources that we have available to us to continue to grow because it's true, if you're not growing, you're dying. And so you've got to continuously work to put yourself in a position for good, smart, controlled growth. You can grow too fast and outgrow your resources and put yourself in a very bad position, or you cannot grow at all and be in a very bad position. Our citizens deserve the best, so we need to invest in our community. We need to make sure that we're taking care of our community, attracting new business and growth into our community so that the tax burden doesn't fall on a small group of people, but yet it can be spread across to everybody, and we can get more services to our citizens at less of an impact on each individual household."
Christian County is responsible for a wide variety of services and departments, from roads to law enforcement, as you mentioned, to tax assessment and many more. As a commissioner, how would you balance the varying needs of each department?
"Well, each one of those departments or offices, I mean, they're their own elected office, and they propose a budget annually. Now, we review that budget to make sure that it's in line with what they've currently received in years past, what their needs are, what their growth patterns are and what the county can actually handle. So a lot of that burden falls on those elected officials to present to us a budget. Obviously, like I said, we review that budget to make sure that we're in line and we can afford to take care of things, but, you know, we live in a unique area where we continually have growth, but our, I mean, we primarily operate off sales tax revenue versus property tax revenue. But our sales tax revenue isn't growing at the same pace as the amount of citizens that are coming in. So it's a concerning thing that we're looking at as to you would think as your community grows in Ozark. When I graduated from high school, I had 4000 people. And now here, 33 years later, there's 20,000 people. But percentage per capita, our revenue hasn't grown as much. You know, we have a lot of opportunities now. People are shopping online. They're not spending as much money, but they still demand the amount of resources. And, actually, the amount of resources has grown far greater than what the revenues have grown. So it's something we have to look at, we have to work on. We have to encourage people to shop local, support where you live or live where you support. I mean, it's kind of the motto. It sounds kind of rough to say that, but we need people to shop local, stay local, invest local, and and then we can continue to to utilize those revenues to support those offices and continue to provide great service to our citizens."
What would you say are some of Christian County's biggest needs, and what role does the Christian County Commission play in helping address those needs?
"I think some of our biggest needs are, you know, continuing to invest in infrastructure. I mean, that's primarily, in my opinion, government's most important function is providing infrastructure. There are certain things that we do in government that are good, that help out in the big picture. But primarily we're responsible to provide the resources that you can't provide for yourself. So public safety, public health, public infrastructure, roads, bridges, you know, even to an extent, sidewalks and trails. Some people don't get too excited about sidewalks and trails, but as gas continues to grow in price, I see more and more people walking, and we need to have safe places for those people to navigate through our communities. And so I think that's one of the most important things to me, is getting back to the basics, providing those necessary resources. We know that, over the past several years, some of our crime rates have grown in our municipalities. Drugs are becoming a little bit more prevalent. Calls for service have grown in those areas. So we need to focus on that and make sure that we have those resources because a community can't grow if a community is not safe. So we want to make sure law enforcement have the tools that they need to keep our community safe. We want to make sure that we have good roads, bridges and transportation completely because businesses don't want to come into a community that has poor infrastructure. So I think that's some of the biggest things that we need to focus our energies on is public safety, public transportation and making sure our citizens are taken care of."
If elected, in what ways do you plan to communicate and seek feedback from a variety of constituents?
"So I'm probably one of the only elected officials that post my phone number. You can call me on my personal cell phone (417) 860-9541. I'm on social media all the time. Transparency is extremely important to me. When I came to the City of Ozark as mayor in 2021, we implemented a video recording and and putting our meetings out to the public, to the masses. They could watch us on YouTube. When I came over to the county in 2023, we've done the exact same thing. In 2021, I established the Meeting with the Mayor, which is a public information session where I open myself up one Saturday a month for the citizens to come and ask me any kind of question they want. I give them a report of what the city was doing. Since I moved over to the county, I still continue to do that community engagement with the current mayor of the City of Ozark. Now we call it a community conversation, but we reach out, we talk to the citizens about what's going on with their their local government and answer any questions they have, take in, any concerns they have because communication is key. If I don't know there's a problem in where you live, I'll never know if you don't tell me. Nobody knows their street as well as the people that live on the street. Nobody knows their neighborhood as well as the people that live in that neighborhood. So I need to get all the information I can to help make your situation better, so having those opportunities to do that. So anybody that wants to give me a call to tell me about what's going on in their neighborhood or on their road or whatever, feel free to give me a call on my cell phone, and let's try to get the problem solved."
Bradley Jackson, that concludes our interview. Thank you so much for joining us.
"Thank you for having me. I appreciate it."
