On Thursday evening the Johnson County Democratic Club held a meeting and social gathering at the Montserrat Winery east of Warrenburg. Approximately fifty Democratic Party activists were in attendance.
Johnson County Democratic Central Committee Chair Jane Van Sant (standing, upper right) addresses club members. Democratic Club President Gary Grigsby (standing, upper right) presiding.
The outdoor meeting was held at the hilltop winery, allowing for attendees to socialize prior to the scheduled program for the evening. Johnson County Democratic office holders updated attendees on the state of county government and took questions. Johnson County Auditor Kay Dolan Reynolds (of Dolan v. Powers recount case fame) gave a thorough briefing on the stressed status of the Johnson County budget. Other office holders spoke of the challenges and successes in their various local government offices.
Courtney Cole, announced Democratic Party candidate for the 121st Legislative District seat, speaks with local Democrats at the event.
Monthly Democratic club meetings in Johnson County (and across the state) keep grassroots party activists in touch with each other and are another forum for exchanging information and keeping up to date on issues and Democratic Party candidates.
I love to go to these meetings. You learn about the nuts and bolts of local government.
For example, revenue for the county is down about 10% over projections and a lot of offices have cut staff back to 35 hours per week. There is hiring freeze in the county.
However, as people lose jobs, crime goes up causing expenditures for the justice system to rise.
Johnson county does not yet have a drug court. We learned that defendants going through a drug court process have a dramatically lower recidivism rate that normal drug offenders. In this time of economic downturn, we see an increase in drug-related crime, so the need for a drug court is increasing. The county has no money for it at this critical time.
We Democrats in Johnson County do not have a single Democrat representing us in Jefferson city. Nixon carried all three of the representative districts that are in Johnson County. We have three good candidates, and let’s not forget that in two of those districts the results were very, very close. If we flip these three districts, Democrats will take back the House!