More candidates explain reasons for running

TELL CITY – Two more of the 13 candidates seeking positions on the Tell City-Troy Township School Board have provided information for News profiles ahead of the November election that will seat three of them.

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Joseph Loren Stephens said if voters select him, “what you see is what you’ll get,” someone who is “outspoken, open-minded, honest, accountable, and a man of his word.”

Stephens graduated from Tell City High School in 1959 and went to work at William Tell Woodcrafters, where he learned to be a cabinet- and pattern-maker. He was drafted into the Army in 1966 and served in Vietnam before going to work at Maxon Marine in 1971, where he became a boilermaker. He left Maxon’s in 1978 to work field construction until he became a rural mail carrier in 1986. He retired from that job in 2003.

He earned an associate’s degree in business and date management through Owensboro Business College, completed a Dale Carnegie course and graduated from the first emergency-medical-technician class offered in Perry County. He is a member of St. Paul Catholic Church, the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Masonic Lodge.

“The state of Indiana still has some pretty dire predictions for the future,” he said in written comments he provided to The News. “For this reason, I believe we have no business incurring a $6 million debt. Our school buildings are in good shape and our children will be much better served for the future by maintaining our teaching staff and the accelerated classes, college-accredited courses, the school’s high rating, etc. We just cannot take the chance of denying them to our children. Buildings do not educate our children – teachers do.”

“I want to be a part of making sure that all our children and grandchildren have the best and most opportunities possible from the resources that are available to them in our schools,” he wrote. “By running, I am able to present some interesting observations of the election, share concerns of many people I have discussed the school board with and school issues I have read about.”

Stephens has seen evidence that Gov. Daniels and the state school superintendent think less-populated counties in Indiana should consolidate schools, he continued. “They seem to feel that this would save money by eliminating repetitive positions in administration, classes, athletics (and) that the curriculum offered to the students would be more advanced and diversified. The way the state divides up the apportionments per student, with the students in the larger school getting a larger share, it appears to me that they are making it harder and harder to resist them. I think they are right about consolidation, but would resist it in the current financial downturn.”

If the state forces Perry County to consolidate schools, Stephens said he’d prefer a centrally located junior-senior high school and grade schools in the northern and southern parts of the county. That wouldn’t come free, he noted, and “to me this is another reason to be sure we stay financially stable and debt-free as we go about our everyday business of educating our students.”

“If elected,” he wrote, “I promise to represent our students first, foremost and always. What in the world could be more important? I will also make every attempt to be open and above-board with you, my constituency, in these dealings. I will treat you with respect and be open to your ideas and suggestions; I hope you will be with mine.”
He promised he “will not keep pressing an issue you have already rejected twice” and noted “some of the present school-board members have stated that three new elected … members who are ill-intentioned … could take over the board” and reverse what the current board sees as progress in construction work.

Conversely, if one current member retains his or her seat after the election, Stephens pointed out, that member and the two whose seats aren’t contested can exercise “a majority control of the board again and a continuation of their present agenda. Isn’t it great that the voters themselves finally get to decide the direction we take? It makes me giddy all over.”

Mack Cail Promises Openness, Transparency
“I pledge to work for the voters of (the school district) to ensure a transparent and open-door policy for the school system,” Mack Cail promised, “with a strong responsibility to students and taxpayers while maintaining the highest standard in education.”

A lifelong resident of Tell City, the 1967 graduate of Tell City High School earned a degree in engineering technology from Brescia University and has been a foreman of technical services with the Tell City Electric Department for 34 years. He is the city’s floodwall commissioner, president of the Local Emergency Planning Committee and Tell City Planning and Zoning Advisory Board, a member of the Indiana Municipal Power Agency Reengineering Committee and another IMPA committee working to select money-saving light-emitting-diode streetlights for 19 communities. The Vietnam veteran is a building trustee for the Veterans of Foreign Wars and a member of the city’s American Legion post. He’s also a past governor and member of the building committee for the Tell City Family Moose, an associate member of the Fraternal Order of Police, a member of the city’s historical society and has coached fourth- and fifth-grade basketball.

“It is important to promote pride and willingness to help students archive their educational goals,” he wrote in comments he provided to The News. “Students no longer have to go to school in their district. A student from the Tell City-Troy Township School Corp. can now go to Perry Central or Cannelton and the money for that student will follow that student. In the future, the school system will have to promote more use of technology to help better educate the students and lower the cost. At the same time, we don’t want to forget the arts, humanities, band and the sports program, along with the basic classes.”

Experience has taught him to be more objective, he continued, “and I will bring a lot of experience to the … corporation. In the utility business, I have learned to work with the State Board of Accounts. In the power industries, I have learned to plan a budget for long periods of time to ensure we satisfy the customers’ power needs. As a member of the IMPA LED Streetlight Grant Committee, we started with 15 vendors and have now selected one. This will reduce the cost to 19 communities by half with no maintenance for 20 years.”

Working with the floodwall and emergency-planning committees has also given him valuable experience in working with budgets, he said, and he makes decisions on the planning and zoning advisory board “that will affect the city for many years and help promote growth.”
“The junior-high building has been closed and if not disposed of by (the corporation), it will remain an expense to the taxpayers,” he noted. “One of the best uses for this building would be for a college (which) would bring students from a 50- to 60-mile radius of Tell City who would spend money in our community.”

Consolidation of school systems would bring cost savings which could be redirected to education, he wrote. “I believe that the voters of Perry County should have the final say as to the consolidation. There will still be a Tell City High School and a Perry Central High School.”
Profiles of eight candidates have been published in Aug. 16, 19, 23 and 26 editions of The News, which is working to get information from the remaining three for upcoming stories.