Newly elected Madison County Board President and Supervisor Paul Griffin said his top three priorities this year are road projects, broadband and flooding issues.
In the board’s Jan. 3 meeting, the board elected Griffin to be the president for 2022 and Supervisor Gerald Steen to be vice president. Griffin spent 2021 as vice president and said that his new position is more responsibility but not too big of a deal.
“I will get the agenda prepared, get together what is going to go on the agenda, conduct the meeting and go to a whole lot of other extra meetings,” Griffin said.
Working towards his 22nd year of the board, he said the most important part of being a leader is listening to people and listening to people’s situations.
“Most of the time, we don’t hear from our constituents unless they have some kind of problem,” Griffin said. “We just listen to them and if we can help them with their problem, we help them. If we can’t, we have to inform them that it violates the county rules and we can’t help them. But the main thing is listening to people’s problems.”
Griffin said there aren’t any changes he is looking to make in 2022, but rather he is going to keep moving the board in the direction they have been going.
“Everything is running smoothly,” Griffin said. “Our boardroom now has a limited number of people coming in, and we are going to continue that until we see what this virus does. We want to keep the people that come up there safe and the board members safe. We are going to keep things going the way they are right now.”
Part of continuing the board in the same direction is securing money for ongoing county projects such as Reunion Parkway and Bozeman Road.
“We have a lot of big projects that are ongoing that we are trying to get funded,” Griffin said. “We are a busy county and need a whole lot of money.”
One of Griffin’s top priorities for 2022 that he said they’ve been working hard on is broadband in the northeast part of the county. The county already voted to allocate $10 million towards the project, but Griffin said the board is asking the state for more money because it is a $35 million project.
“We will be trying to do that because there’s children that don’t have internet service in the northeast part of the county,” Griffin said. “The way the virus is – the schools are subject to go virtual at any time. That is just one of the reasons why broadband is important.”
Griffin said Madison County has a lot of great things going on, including Amazon and other large companies coming into the area, and it is a great responsibility to be the head and leader of all the things happening in the county as the board of supervisors.
“It is a great time to be in Madison County,” Griffin said. “I’m looking forward to serving Madison County another year in 2022.”
