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Lyon Co. commissioner candidates join forums

MARSHALL — Lyon County commissioner candidates joined the discussion of local concerns during a series of candidate forums held Tuesday. County Commissioner Rick Anderson and challenger Tom Chandler answered audience questions on topics including development and population changes in Lyon County.

Anderson and Chandler are running for commissioner in District 5, which covers the southern half of Lyon County. Two other commissioner races are uncontested. Commissioner Todd Draper is running for re-election in District 2, which includes part of the city of Marshall. Commissioner Gary Crowley is running for re-election in District 4, which includes the northern part of Lyon County.

Anderson and Chandler started out the forum by discussing their priorities if elected.

“I think the priorities at least in this first year, there’s going to be a lot of changes in our skyline within the county, especially in the southern part of the county,” Anderson said. Renewable energy companies are looking at putting up wind and solar farms in Lyon County, and Xcel Energy is planning a new power line that will be coming to the Garvin area. The location of those wind projects would be important to residents. “If somebody wants to sign up for that, they have to have that priority. But I think we have to make sure that we do it in a respectful way for everybody there.”

Anderson said child care was another priority over the next five years, especially to encourage families coming to the county.

“Child care is probably the number one thing that the county is going to have to figure out a way to help,” he said.

“I think short term, probably the biggest issue that we’re going to see is budgeting,” Chandler said. “The inflation right now, as we all know, is at a pretty high rate.”

Chandler said a lot of the issues that would be important to him as a county commissioner were similar to Anderson’s. One example was concerns over renewable energy projects in District 5.

“Long term, over the next five years, it’s the renewable energy landowner rights,” Chandler said. “Whether it be as a landowner that wants windmills or a landowner that doesn’t want windmills … it’s allowing landowners to make the decisions to best serve the land that they own.”

Chandler and Anderson were also asked to get into a little more detail about what they would do regarding efforts to expand renewable energy in the county. Chandler said he felt the county’s role was not to disrupt landowners’ rights to allow solar or wind installations.

“On the other hand, where the county does come into play is just keeping an eye that those decisions are not affecting the neighbors that don’t see eye to eye, and that the benefits are being spread throughout the entire community,” he said.

“The state pretty much regulates all of those large projects, whether it be solar, whether it be wind,” Anderson said. “I think the thing that the county has to be dealing with is that a lot of these projects are going to be using either our county roads or the township roads, and we need to be able to protect that.” He said the county also needed to make sure that renewable projects didn’t negatively affect agriculture or private drainage tile.

Anderson and Chandler also received questions about economic development. They were asked to share their thoughts on how to fight population decline in Lyon County.

“The challenge is providing the opportunity and the necessary infrastructure for young families,” Chandler said. “There’s a lot of houses that are available in the market for a well-established family. If you look at housing availability in starter houses, there’s not nearly the opportunity in the area.”

In addition, he said, “The day care situation is something that desperately needs to be addressed in the area.”

Anderson said the county board had talked about the need to do more to support economic development in Lyon County.

“Housing is definitely going to be one of the top priorities,” he said. “Right now we’re looking at funding three different housing projects, one in Marshall, one in Tracy, one in Balaton.”

“I think EMS is going to be an important thing,” Anderson said. “Emergency medical services are a key component to getting people to come in if they want to live in our small rural areas.” He said Southwest EMS recently getting a $9.9 million grant to add telemedicine technology in their ambulances was going to be a positive for the region.

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