Economic issues top the list in the May 3 Republican Primary for Wood County commissioner, but incumbent Doris Herringshaw and challenger Mark Hanson have very different ideas for handling the growth.

Herringshaw is the president of the commissioners and is seeking re-election as she completes her second term on the board. She successfully ran for re-election after being first appointed, as a replacement for Tim Brown, when he successfully ran to become a member of the Ohio House.

She is proud of the commissioners maintaining balanced budgets and wants to maintain the momentum of positive economic development in the county.

She comes from a family with a long history of public service.

“My grandfather was a county commissioner, my dad was a county commissioner, my sister-in-law was a county commissioner and my brother was a township trustee. I walked a lot of ditches as a kid. I stopped and looked at a lot of bridges,” Herringshaw said. “I didn’t have the full picture, but I had an idea what the position was about.”

She believes in keeping a local perspective on the job, but has examples showing how she helps bring funding sources and people together for the accomplishment of bigger goals.

“I think every citizen has a special interest in a part of the county,” Herringshaw said. “One example is economic development. We have great economic development and keeping an eye on our Master Plan, so that we can keep the economic development and the agriculture and save all the precious things in Wood County.”

Part of fulfilling that goal, she said, is having enough employees.

As a county they are working on job training programs.

One of the programs has Wood County Job and Family Services, in collaboration with Northwest State Community College and local manufacturers, to put together training programs to get people trained for specific jobs so the future employees can move directly into open positions.

Property rights are also coming into play, and the commissioners are working with new revisions to the Ohio Revised Code, coming down from Columbus.

“It’s really based on property rights, especially right now, with windmills, solar fields and those kinds of things,” Herringshaw said. “It’s more like ‘Do I want that right next to my house, and what say do I have if that’s going to be across the road from me?’

“Of course, agriculture is big in Wood County, and being a farm wife and living here 40-some years and growing up on a farm, water quality is something that farmers are working hard on and dealing with also,” Herringshaw said.

She said that a lot of the commissioners’ work is being done with H2Ohio money, Ohio Soil and Water Conservation and Toledo Metropolitan Area Council of Governments.

An example of those efforts at improvement of water quality are boxes that both provide filtration and keep the water from rushing out of fields during downpours.

“There’s a whole list of things that are available, and we hope to get our share, to improve the water quality,” Herringshaw said. “The other thing we are working on is with Northwestern Water and Sewer District, because we have a lot of rural area that have very old septic systems, may not have water from a reliable source and helping people to get better water and clean up the environment and the aging septic systems.”

Herringshaw serves on the County Commissioners Association of Ohio Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee, and the Water Quality Committee. She also serves as the vice president of the Northwest Ohio Commissioners and Engineers Association.

Herringshaw and her husband, Paul, live on the family farm in Liberty Township. She is also a member of Farm Bureau.

Representing Wood County, she has served as chair of TMACOG, and on the executive and leadership committees for the regional organization. Locally, she has served on the Bowling Green Community Foundation Board and is a past president of Bowling Green Chamber of Commerce.

She has two advanced degrees from Bowling Green State University. Prior to serving as a commissioner, Herringshaw was an educator and area leader with Ohio State University Extension Service in Wood County.

Hanson said he felt a pull to run for commissioner.

“The main reason I’m running is I really enjoy public service. I feel I have a calling for public service. I have over 30 years of public service experience, mainly in the criminal justice field,” Hanson said.

He works at the Wood County Juvenile Court, after retiring as an officer with 25 years experience in the Bowling Green Police Division. He has also worked at the Wood County Juvenile Detention Center and the Wood County Park District. He was a board member on the Wood County Gift Exchange, which was a supervised visitation program and was president of the Wood County chapter of the International Cops for Christ.

Hanson said that he is a conservative and uses his faith as a guide.

“I believe the coming years are going to present many challenges, trials and opportunities for residents. I have a strong Christian faith and I’m inspired by the Biblical story of Joseph. He had the wisdom and the foresight to successfully guide his community, years ago, through the hardships that were coming,” Hanson said.

One of those hardships is the COVID-19 pandemic and the continuing economic ripples of inflation that are hitting the nation and the county, especially as they affect the national supply chain and local farmers.

“As a conservative, I do believe in limited government. The government, in my mind, needs to stay away from masks, vaccine mandates and certainly stay away from lock-downs,” Hanson said.

He added that the most recent lockdown in China, with shipping containers not moving, will be felt here soon.

He would like to try to attract a fertilizer plant to Wood County, in order to help keep the county, and local farmers more self-sufficient.

“I know farmers are dealing with incredibly high fertilizer prices,” Hanson said. “Wood County has such a high agricultural base … the commissioners office needs to be proactive in finding ways to solve this issue and keep our local farmers profitable. Perhaps forming a commission consisting of farmers to help strategize different ways to help them.”

He is also suggesting a reduction in property taxes for actively farmed land.

Hanson is looking at what he calls his “strong community policing background,” as an example of what he would like to do with the county. He worked in the Community Services Office of the BGPD.

He said that they had identified problems associated with university students damaging private property. The solution was forming a neighborhood watch style group to assist in notification of the police.

“Officers would swoop in and fix whatever the problem was. That was a very successful program,” Hanson said.

The Democratic Party candidate for county commissioner, Nick Pfleghaar, is running unopposed in the primary.