Budget cuts: Strohman said he wants the board to adopt a performance-based budgeting system.

“Right now the county doesn’t use any kind of professional budgeting system, they use an incremental one, which basically looks at the previous years budget and then allocates a bit more money to programs and departments that have already gotten funding,” Strohman said. “Most professional cities and counties have a performance based budgeting system which ties the money to outcomes.

He said this would help ensure that taxpayer money was being spent wisely.

“I would also put a limit on property taxes, the current board has been raising property taxes for the last 25 years but we don’t really have a lot to show for it,” he said.

Health care: Strohman said that for issues like mental health in Iowa, the Board of Supervisors had a delicate role to play.

“We’re limited on how much money we can raise, the state of Iowa has cut the amount of money that it’s giving counties and the federal government is going to cut Medicaid,” he said. “This is 23 percent of our entire budget.”

He said when elected he’d call for a mental health summit in Story County.

“We’d sit down with the providers, consumers, administrators and staff and put all of the ideas on the table to figure out how we’re going to fix this problem,” he said. “It has become clear to me that the state is not going to fix this problem, the county is going to have to do it so we need a board that is going to be able to look at this system.”

Jobs and Economic Development: Strohman said the current board of supervisors has done very little to be involved with economic development and growth in Iowa.

“I pushed very intensely for a wind energy property exemption for the county, and now we have a 123 turbine wind farms and they have invested about a half a billion dollars into Story County,” he said. “What I’ve been saying to the board is ‘look at the success we can have.’

Strohman said he wanted to create incentives to encourage current business owners in Story County to expand and also to bring in new projects to spur economic growth.

He said he also advocates better funding for the infrastructure in the county.

“We have 1,000 miles of roads and more than 200 miles of bridges and we are currently about $20 million in the hole on bridge and road repair,” he said. “The board hasn’t been using the money properly. We have to have good roads and bridges to help our economic development.”

Civil Rights

Strohman said he believed the board could play a significant role in helping foster diversity within the departments in its purvue.

“The first thing I propose is that the Board of Supervisors promotes about 80 people into various positions, we need to make sure these positions are being gender balanced,” he said. “Right now only about 27 percent of people on these boards are women and a new state law requires that at least 50 percent on the boards and commissions be women.”

Strohman said he believes there are a tremendous number of women and minorities in Story County that could be recruited.