I want to encourage the citizens of Tama County to vote yes in November to go from five board members back to three. As someone who has worked for the county for many years with experience with supervisors I would like to share my reasoning. These men and women work hard for our county and care about it but they are elected to represent the county as a whole and should want what is best for all of the county. It seems that some have become too absorbed in just working for whatever their cause is. No matter the other costs associated with that. Transparency is a big factor for us all. It is known that there was a shortage in fund balances at the beginning of the new fiscal year 2025. It was brought to the attention of the current and incoming supervisors before that year began. Money was not missing, it was sitting in other funds and was going to be coming in in tax revenue in September and March that fiscal year. If you took a financial photo of that time, it does look like a minus. It was a timing issue and an issue where money would need to be transferred from somewhere else to cover this. The county never went in the hole, it didn’t need to get a loan. The money was going to be coming in. There was a meeting regarding this, the fall before it happened with some of the incoming supervisors, one of the current supervisors, the auditor, treasurer and the county’s outside audit company. We were not the only county, city going through this situation with the current economy and inflation at that time. The current supervisors have been saying they were blindsided by this and had no idea. They were not, I was there.

They knew about it but chose to not share that they had been informed of this ahead of time. They had some work to do as would have anyone who was a supervisor at that time and it was rectified accordingly as any group of Supervisors would have done. Tama County has survived trials like this and will have more as will other counties. The secret is to have great leadership and to be cost efficient whenever and however possible. One big way to do this is to go back to three supervisors. Tama County is a small, rural county. We have no big cities, hospitals, etc. We need to keep our costs down and our resources strong. Paying for two more supervisor positions per year for years is millions of dollars going somewhere else instead of towards roads, infrastructure, emergency services, etc needed here to keep us all safe and strong.

Please vote yes to go from five to three.

Laura Kopsa of Tama served as Tama County Auditor for more than 18 years before retiring in 2024.