Two running for Dorchester president
By Nathaniel Underwood
Dorchester trustees Thomas Carter and Keith Lageman will be running for village president in the April 1 election. The winner will replace Kurt Schwoch, who decided not to run for re-election as president.
Carter and Lageman were each asked the same questions. Their answers are below: Why are you running for board president?
Carter: “I wasn’t planning on running, but I was asked if I would run if I was nominated because they’d like to see a change and I said that I would.”
Lageman: “I think I can do good for the village. I’ve been on the board now for six years and I think I’ve done good things. I’m sure I’ve been the bad guy in some people’s eyes, but you aren’t always going to make everybody happy. I have a good vision for what I would like to see the village become and I think I’d be good for the job.”
What would you say makes you the best candidate for the position?
Carter: “Well, I don’t know if I am the best candidate. I just think that the board meetings need to be more structured, following Robert’s Rules of Order. People need to be more present. The only thing I can do is to do my best.”
“I’ve tried to be as honest as I can and, if I don’t know the answer to a question, I’ll try to get the answer, whether it’s the answer they want to hear or not. Because I don’t have all the answers and when I’m wrong I’m not afraid to admit it.”
Lageman: “The number one thing that I think makes me the best candidate is that I don’t do what’s best for me individually. If it’s something that’s better for the village that’s not good for me, I’m definitely going to push or vote for what’s in the best interest of the village. I’ve done it a few times over the past six years. You can’t do something like this and put yourself first, because then you’re not doing it for the right reasons.”
“Local politics is where I think that makes the most difference, in a way. In small towns like this, in villages, your trustees are more accessible to the public, you can talk to people more and get a broader range of what people are looking for. Where, at your state and national level, you can’t really do that at all.”
“I’m a firm believer that you never make yourself look good by making someone else look bad and I will never talk bad about anybody on the board. We’re all doing what we think is best and if people are happy with what I’ve done, they’ll vote for me.”
What do you see as one of the pressing challenges in the village and what steps would you take to address it?
Carter: “Our biggest problem is revenue. We don’t have enough revenue coming in. We need more businesses and more residential housing to come in.”
“I’ve already talked to some of the area developers to see if they would have (any interest). The village owns property that’s zoned residential that hasn’t had anything done with it for several years, so I’ve been talking with developers trying to get someone interested in developing it. Everybody I’ve talked to didn’t know that the village even had that property.”
Lageman: “Growing the village. Getting more businesses into town, more houses, more apartments. I think some of the things that would help out with that is, just like we are doing now with the snowmobile races. The village profits zero dollars on that, but it shows other businesses and it shows the community that, ‘Hey, we are willing to do this so that we have something for our residents to do.’ It would be very easy for the ice races to go to any other (community) – Abbotsford, Colby, Stetsonville, Medford. And Medford would probably be a better place for them because it is so much bigger and they would probably get a better turn out, I would think. But because they are choosing to come to Dorchester, that I think is a testament to what we can do for them, what we already do for them, and that they are enjoying what they are getting here.”
Dorchester residents recently saw a significant increase to their property taxes. What do you think the board needs to do in the future to help avoid similar increases from occurring?
Carter: “The tax situation was a mismanagement of the TIF district when we had to close them out. Plus, we had the tax levy in 2023 that didn’t get added onto the bill, so we had two increases in one year, which made it so big.”
“But the board needs to look at a five and 10 year projection for revenue and not just act for today, which I think a lot of them are doing. I think other than the clerks and myself, I think we’re the only ones that are looking ahead at what’s down the road.”
Lageman: “I think that in, maybe past decades even, everybody expects to pay a little more in taxes every year. There’s always going to be inflation and everything’s always going to go up, and I don’t think that there was much of a raise, if any, over the years. So, there was no little incremental adjustments for inflation, and all of a sudden it all hit at once.”
“I think that’s something that we’ve really got to look at. You know, it’s probably going to make a lot of people unhappy, but I would imagine it would go up again next year, but it’ll be a one percent or a two percent [raise]. It’ll be a small amount compared to what everybody saw this year.” “And I think that there was not enough foresight in years past where they didn’t look ahead to that. The whole appeal of living in Dorchester was water was cheap, sewer was cheap and taxes were cheap. Well then, just in my tenure, in those six years I’ve been on the board, we had to raise sewer rates, I think it was like 35 percent, we had to raise water rates and we had to raise property taxes. Everything had to be raised at such a huge amount because there was no foresight over the years to raise it incrementally over time.”
“So I think that’s the key is to foresee the growth and know what we have to do and do it a little at a time. Everybody’s going to complain when their taxes go up, including me, but if you aren’t doing it 70 percent at a time, nobody is going to complain as much as when you have that big jump.”
