Local Politics Starts Early -- Goeman (Seems to) Declare for County Commission

[If you need full disclosure, look at the ads.]

Who needs presidential politics? Instead of seeing which presidential candidate can sell out to the most corporate donors before the primaries (keep the faith, fellow Dennis supporters!), we can have a lot more fun with local politics.

What's that you say? The general election is still 373 days away? Indeed, it seems early to be talking about November 2008. Maybe we farm-staters could pass a rule saying no election news until after all the farmers have the '07 harvest in.

But you can't stop a go-getter, especially not when there are websites to build. From all appearances, it appears that local insurance agent and longtime school board member Republican Rod Goeman is considering another run at the Lake County Commission. Goeman ran in 2006 and finished third out of four, behind incumbents Bert Verhey and Shirlee Leighton (one Republican, one Democrat -- we're such a happy bipartisan people here).

A man of the New Media, Goeman doesn't appear to have offered any formal statements to the press yet. However, his campaign website appears to have been updated for the 2008 election. The website offers calendar info on the 2008 general election. The first entry on the Q&A page is "Why are you considering seeking a seat on the Lake County Commission in 2008?" [emphasis added].

That's not quite an official declaration, but this considering appears to involve a lot of thinking about specific projects Goeman would like to see the county pursue. Among them:

1. maximizing Homeland Security grants (all those hackers at MHS should make us embrace that idea)
2. auctioning off some county land by Lake Madison and investing the proceeds for some budget relief
   
3. development of a better county webpage (that one issue might get the endorsement of this blog: the current county website has near-zero functionality and no useful records -- how about searchable online databases of all public records, like Minnehaha County has for property records? Wow: not only can you look up values of any property in the county, but you can pay your property taxes online!)
4. change meetings times from 9 a.m. to times that might allow more working people to attend (hear hear!)
5. consolidating city and county services in one facility, perhaps in an addition to the courthouse (does that mean we get the Old Firehouse Gallery back?)
   
6. televising/webcasting commission meetings (how about hiring an official meeting blogger? ;-) )

Goeman doesn't list any campaign events yet -- again, he says he's only considering. But he's certainly ready to put the Internet to work in local politics. This blogger will be interested to see how many other local candidates establish a strong web presence and to what extent that web presence can impact the local electoral process.

[And just in case anyone thinks this is a paid political advertisement, please review the ad policy; you'll see the ads stay in the left sidebar. If anyone else in Lake County or District 8 is up and running, let me know, and they'll get reviewed as soon as possible!]