Election Preview — Supervisor seats, Sheriff’s race highlight Cerro Gordo County ballot

MASON CITY — Voters head to the polls in two of the three Cerro Gordo County Board of Supervisors districts to choose who will serve a full four-year term on the board.

Republican Chris Watts and Democrat Lori Meacham Ginapp in 2022 were voted into two-year terms on the board instead of the typical four-year terms due to the redistricting process and now each faces a challenger today, with Watts facing Democrat Timothy Lapointe in District One and Meacham Ginapp being challenged by Republican Carl Ginapp in District Three.

Watts says county government is running fairly smoothly currently.   “I don’t see a whole lot of issues. I think most departments are working well together. The union thing will be coming up the first part of the year, so we’ll be working with the union, and we have two unions, the courthouse union and the sheriff’s union, so we’ll be working with them. All in all, I think the government flow at the courthouse runs pretty smooth.”

Lapointe says the single most important issue facing the county in the next two years is the proposed carbon capture pipeline that would cross through the county.   “I have studied this issue extensively. I am adamantly opposed to the CO2 pipeline. I’ve also posted several articles on my Facebook pages about the CO2 pipeline and the perils of that. I’m against it because of the incredible waste of water, 47 million gallons a day if this plan goes through in all of the ethanol plants in Iowa.”

Meacham Ginapp says the county needs to continue working on all the resources available to all areas of the county. “We’re always looking out on how do we go here, where do we go there, if we just call combined our resources together, I think that would be a very useful toolbox for everyone.  I’ve been to a lot of different meetings and realizing that we do all interact together and we intertwine, and if we can all be together, there would be a savings to the taxpayers and we can all come together on that.”

Carl Ginapp wants to increase transparency and accessibility to local government, starting with video streaming the meetings, which he says will create less confusion and fewer questions about local government.   “The meetings themselves at 10 o’clock on Monday mornings are hard to access for people who work during the day. Anybody who would like to be informed with their local government should have the opportunity to see those either as a livestream and recorded to be watched later, or posted 24 hours later on a YouTube channel is what Worth County does, and Worth County with the resources they have, the county just to the north of here and their limited resources, are able to do that and have it accessible for their constituents.”

The candidates made their comments during recent candidate programs here on northiownow.com. You can find copies of those programs below. 

== Voters across the county will also be choosing the county’s next sheriff. Republican David Hepperly currently serves as the chief deputy of the department, while Democrat Brian Koob is a former deputy. The winner will replace longtime sheriff Kevin Pals, who announced at the start of the year that he would not seek another term.