By KALEY LYON

klyon@dailynews.net

HDN: What is your stance on the proposed Ellis County wind farm projects? What benefits or concerns do you foresee?

PM: "The benefits that I see coming out of this if we do get the wind farms, hopefully it will be a long-term benefit.

"We do have to find an alternative source of power, because we're using more and more every day. They are coming up with more energy-efficient appliances and so forth.

"But if you look at it, we have been using wind power for well over 100 years. Farmers relied on wind mills for water, for the house, livestock and so forth.

"As far as the wind power, am I against it? Absolutely not.

"Am I for it, yes, for the most part. We just want to make sure that everybody's in agreement with it.

"You're going to have a few that's going to ruffle a few feathers because they don't want it.

"But it's something that's going to come. I'm ready for it.

"As far as pollution goes, there's no pollution using the wind generators. Any time you burn a fossil fuel to create electricity you've got emissions and that's pollution.

"I don't know if I'll live long enough to see this world go to hell in a handcart, but I've got kids.

"I'm sure there'll be grandkids down the road. I just want something better for the future."

HDN: What are your thoughts on the current countywide zoning process?

PM: "It just depends on how they go about the zoning thing.

"For one thing I don't see why we need the county zoning. I mean we've lived all these years without it and haven't had any problems.

"I don't know if it's anything to do with being able to put the wind farms in. If we do need county zoning, if that is something that is needed for that then it needs to be looked into.

"As far as the county zoning goes, I just don't see how that countywide zoning will actually help the overall view unless it does due to benefit as far as the wind farm goes.

"I've lived in the county all my life. I lived in hays for six years it was convenient.

"I like it out in the country. You couldn't ask for a better living. It's peaceful, it's quiet. And as far as the snow and the dirt and the rain goes that's part of living there.

"Just like living in town you've got to put up with the noise and the traffic and the sirens.

"Can it work? It just depends on what they want to enclose with the zoning, what they want to incorporate with it.

HDN: What do you perceive the relationship between the county commission and the planning commission to be? Any changes you would propose?

PM: "That's undecided right now. There's still a lot of loopholes. It just depends."

HDN: What are your thoughts on space needs issues, and of the proposed Hadley Center relocation?

PM: "It depends what office do they want to put in there. I know they're looking at a pretty good-sized chunk of change for that.

"In order for an expenditure to be that large, that is tax payers' money going into that.

"Will it be a long-term benefit to where, will the moneys make it back to, will the taxpayers get the return on that, and taxpayers should have the say so in whether that much money is spent on that particular building. "It should be put to a vote to where the people can actually go and say 'Yeah, OK this is a good thing, let's go for it'.

"'Or no, it's not for this reason why.'

"And then it can be put in and then other avenues can be sought after to see what we can do to come up with a solution."

HDN: How do you view relations between Ellis County and the communities within? Do you believe anything could be done to improve city/county relations?

PM: "As far as Hays goes, because Hays has got a pretty good-sized population.

"And they're sitting there, 'we need to rebuild x amount of bridges out there in the county. Or we need to improve x amount of miles, we need to repair x amount of miles.

"And the people in the city of Hays are wondering 'why do we want to spend our tax money fixing those roads?

"Now you get to people that live in Pfeifer, Munjor, Schoenchen, Antonino, Walker, and up around those areas, they're going to be the ones saying yeah, we need this done.

"But the people out there are such a minority, but those minorities are 98 percent of the traffic on those roads out there.

"As far as relations between them, the way it goes now, relations are pretty good, but there's a few feathers ruffled every now and again, because there are some disagreements.

"I haven't done the math for several years, but say for every seven people in town one lives out of town. When you have a seven to one vote against something, it's never going to happen.

"As an overall they've been working together pretty well so far.

"You've got a few disagreements and that's going to happen. Not everybody's going to agree on everything, but so far they've been working together pretty well."

HDN: With taxes on the rise from last year to this year, and local property values also increasing, how does this affect the local budget? What are your thoughts about the current finance formula?

PM: "The more they get the more they spend. It just seems like they want more money.

"And everything -- inflation is a given, it's going to happen. I don't think any of the prices will ever come down again to where they were 20 years ago.

"The bad part about the tax thing there is, as far as property taxes and property values going up, they're always paying out more and the wages that are in the area are not keeping up with the cost of inflation. "That's the hard part. Something like that's got to be taken into consideration.

"If you get an increase in salary, say 3 percent and the cost of living goes up 7 percent, the numbers aren't there.

"And as far as investments and stuff like that, as far as retirement later on, it's going to be tough. I hate to see what my kids are going to be coming across when they start getting up there.

HDN: Should the mill levy be reduced to compensate for increased valuation?

PM: "As far as mill levy being reduced to compensate, we just need to spend the money wisely.

"Why spend a dollar on something that isn't necessarily needed?

"Much like shoes. You can wear that pair of shoes for another week, but you can't go without groceries. That's the comparison."

HDN: Why did you decide to run for office?

PM: "I've had quite a few of my clientele say I should because I get around the county quite a bit as far as working on customers' equipment.

"But I've been around long enough, I've been keeping up on things for the most part pretty well and I'm just wanting to try to do my part to help things out, make things a little bit better."

HDN: Any other issue you would like to address?

PM: "There is one issue that I would really like to address and that is the rate of speed driven on county roads.

"That is a big sore spot. I don't know what the hurry is -- it's going to be there tomorrow. Everybody gets in a hurry from time to time.

"But that is the biggest thorn under my saddle. Their driving like that, it's hard on everything.

"That's probably, well I guess that would be my personal pet peeve.

"There's times -- my shop is just spitting distance off the road and there's people coming by at 60 or 70 mph.

"That and wiser use of time for road maintenance.

"We've got the equipment to make that happen. You need to take pride in your work and make it a quality job not a quantity job."