DISTRICT 2

Greg Knight

Gregory A Knight, Write-In Candidate for the District 2 Seat, Taylor County Board My wife, Barb, and I have lived on South Seventh Street, City of Medford for the past 31 years. Medford and Taylor County are a good place to live, work, raise a family and retire. Despite the challenges and difficulty, we have all experienced, I believe the citizens of Taylor County and the City of Medford have a good future if we all work together.

To the voters of District 2 (Wards 3 and 4), City of Medford, I respectfully ask for your write-in vote during the April 5 election, to represent you as a member of the Taylor County Board, District 2 (Wards 3 and 4), City of Medford.

On April 5, please write-in: Gregory A. Knight for District 2, Taylor County Board.

I am running as a registered write-in candidate to fill the District 2 Taylor County Board seat representing the City of Medford Wards 3 and 4. The current County Board member for District 2 decided not to run again. And, when no other candidates registered to be on the April ballot to represent District 2, I decided in January to register as a write-in candidate for District 2 so that we would have an elected representative on the County Board.

If elected by the voters of District 2, I will work to represent you and Taylor County citizens to make our City and County a good place to live, work, raise a family and retire. I will work with fellow board members to solve important issues facing County government and work for a better future for all of us.

All of us have seen many changes and have been though difficult challenges. But there have been and will continue to be good things happening in our City and our County. I believe we can work together and make our City and County a good place to live for all of us.

As a member of the Medford City Council I have worked with the County on getting affordable workforce housing and developing a homeless shelter for Taylor County residents who find themselves in need of temporary housing until they can get back on their feet. The City is also supporting development of additional housing and rental opportunities that we will see in the next several years.

Local government funding and tax fairness is the biggest issue facing our County and other local governments. The shrinking of local government funding for the last 40 years, caused by State policies on taxes and shared revenues, is the underlying cause of many issues local government and our County face in trying to pay for fixing roads, providing ambulance, fire and police services, hiring and retaining good employees, providing veteran services, and providing those human services that most of us don’t think about until we need them.

We have seen that the long-term revenue caps on local government have made it impossible to keep up with the costs of funding our local services. We have had to sacrifice services and employees to cut expenses. The funding of local government and schools relies too heavily on the property tax. Most of the local property taxes collected are paid by individual homeowners and renters which means they carry most of the tax burden to fund local government. Other taxes like sales and gas taxes have also fallen mostly on families and retirees which has made our tax system, which pays for our local government services, very unfair. We need action from our state legislators to restore equity and fairness to our taxing systems to fund our local government and our schools.

If the County does not have the money, then talk about creating a county administrative or executive position to oversee all departments is a moot point. I don’t think we need more politics with another elected county executive. We have an elected county board that is accountable to the voters.

I have experience with City government employee organization, hiring and transition. We first need to be sure we are talking with all County employees, department heads, and board members if we are going to effectively re-organize. We also need to have the ability to hire, retain, and develop good County employees before it makes any sense to add one more administrative position. Hiring, retaining and supporting good people to run our county departments and fill the jobs that need to be done is critical to providing efficient and cost-effective local government services.

I insist on transparent and open government; That has made me unpopular at times as an alderman in City government, but I think we all want our local government to work efficiently and in the best interest of all citizens.