With the incumbent out of the picture the race for Eastern District Commissioner comes down to a former commissioner and a businessman.
Incumbent Dan Hausman lost the republican vote in the August Primary to Scott Burnham. Tom Archdekin ran unopposed on the democratic side. Now, Burnham and Archdekin will face each other in the Nov. 8 election.
Archdekin’s background includes a past stint as the Eastern District Commissioner from 1990 to 2004. Recently, he has been involved in insurance and real estate. Archdekin said he wants to get back into the commissioner’s seat because he enjoyed his time on the job.
“During that time I was the initiator, or as some people call the architect of starting the North Shoppes,” Archdekin said. “I was real proud to have created it, to help start it. I think it was definitely needed for the community because the county’s revenues were going down I-29 to Metro North.”
Burnham is a St. Joseph businessman. He formerly owned an insurance company which was acquired by CBIZ in 2006 and worked for CBIZ until 2011. Burnham said he got into the race because he feels a need to bring honesty and integrity to politics and to make some needed changes.
“Where I feel I can bring the most value is in economic development,” Burnham said. “Our population has declined and that’s what we really need to change because that’s where our tax revenue comes from. That’s an area where I feel we need to work on.”
Archdekin said the big job he sees for the Eastern District Commissioner is road maintenance.
“There’s 220 miles out there and it takes some going over and working. Every day there’s something. You get the rains, if you have a bad snow year the blades from the snowplows will disrupt the roads and those have got to be brought back,” Archdekin said. “The roads are starting to go backwards again and it’s kind of like maintaining your house and your property. If you don’t do regular maintenance and keep it up. Watch it pretty close then things start to go backwards on you.”
Burnham also said he sees a need for road maintenance.
“One of my goals was to drive all of the county roads on the east just so I can get familiar with them and I think there is some need for improvements on the county roads. Some of them actually look like they’re in pretty good shape but some of them we need to get corrected,” Burnham said.
Voters in the Eastern District will choose their next commissioner during the Nov. 8 general election.