The Republican challenger for the Eastern Commissioner seat in Clay County says a ballooning budget was the leading motivation to enter the race.
Dan Troutz, a Holt resident who grew up in Liberty, will meet Luann Ridgeway, the GOP incumbent, in the Aug. 2 primary. Stacy Nickerson, a Liberty Democrat with no opponent for the primary, will meet the winner in November’s general election.
In an interview at The Standard office in Excelsior Springs, Troutz said he’s also upset by the number of county employees who’ve left their jobs in the past year and by Clay’s failure to maintain and rebuild what he describes as its crumbling “hard infrastructure.”
But county expenditures are the central plank in the retired businessman’s campaign, whose blue signs have popped up along county and state roads.
“The budget was the thing that really got my attention,” said Troutz, who turns 65 next month. “I’m basically retired, and that’s my reason for throwing my hat in the ring. I have the time to do it. I want to be a full-time commissioner and won’t be a politician.”
Troutz moved from Liberty to Holt after his business was submerged during the 1993 flood. He’s married to Patricia Hughes, a Liberty attorney.
At the height of his working career, Troutz ran his own custom fabrication firm and filled orders for large-scale amusement parks. In addition, the candidate said managed around 100 people as an employee of a manufacturing company.
He says his experience with business finance and budgets – he took economics classes at William Jewell College but doesn’t have a degree – prompted him to question the recent growth of county expenditures.
“The budget in 2014 was 19-and-change million,” he said, reciting figures from his campaign’s central talking point. “The budget was $33.5 million I in $39.28 million in 2016. It has doubled since 2014.”
While he says while county management practices have resulted in the loss of 20 “key employees” in the past year, the organizational chart has become more top heavy with well-paid administrators than it was previously.
“What we didn’t have was a county administrator and four assistant county administrators,” he said. “That’s half a million dollars (in salaries) right there.”
The positions he refers to are assistant county administrators for Finance and Administrative Services, Facilities, Operations and Public Services.
“The holes just so deep,” Troutz said. “You can’t believe what they’re spending their money on.”
To read the rest of this, see the Tuesday, July 19 issue of The Standard