(Hudson, WY) – County 10 has contacted all of the mayoral candidates across the County to ask them a few questions.
Mike Anderson, the current mayor of Hudson, is running for a third term. He has lived in Hudson since 1961-62 and is retired.
Below is a Q&A transcript of our interview, which has been edited for clarity and length.
County 10: How did you get involved in government?
Mike Anderson: Served on the town council for six years and have been mayor for eight years.
C10: Why are you running for another term?
MA: I want to complete what I started. Continuing to work on the funding to get rid of the flood danger. Continue the half-cent tax. We have about three streets left to pave here, and I want to make sure those get done. We’ve got Main Street right down here with an overlay, and then we have Ohio, which will probably take two years because it’s long, so we’ll do an overlay up there. And then there’s some other just ends that we need to finish up. The people are good people here in town.
C10: What is a challenge you’ve faced during your time as mayor?
MA: The first one was the flood. The flood was a major one. Maintaining and trying to keep the hesco barriers in place has been a challenge. The funding continues to decline, you know, and that’s always difficult to figure out how to get things done with less and less money. The direct distribution may have increased last time around, and then the formula, because of our size, we got a little more money than we normally do. So that helps. We were checking the sales tax revenues. The new statements have in-state and out-of-state. We’re assuming the out-of-state is online sales. That represents 42% of our sales tax. So, hopefully, that’ll keep going. But if the state legislators hadn’t taken the lead to get those out-of-state sales taxes, we’d probably be in a world of hurt. So I appreciate what they did to make that happen, and it helps us.
C10: What do you believe is the most pressing issue facing town council this year?
MA: Probably finding money. We will probably get through this year, but if the mineral royalties and severance keep coming down, it’s going to be tougher and tougher to keep things going. We will, but the margin of error becomes less and less. So, I think that’s the biggest thing that we’ve got going on right now. That’s about it. Good counsel. That’s always good. We’ve got two positions open, and we’ve got three running. So that’s always good.
C10: What is one thing you wish people knew about Hudson?
MA: It’s a good place for families. We want to get back to where families were in the 60s and 70s; who knows what happened in the 50s, but U.S. Steel probably employed 40% of the town. I have no idea what that number really is. But a lot of people worked at U.S. Steel, and I assume they worked for somebody other than mining in the 50s. But when U.S. Steel was here in Lander, people raised their families here. You know, that’s where we had 100 kids going to school from first to eighth grade. And we need those people back. We need people who want to live here and have their kids here. One of the issues that we have always is keeping the institutional knowledge base here.
C10: Anything else you wish to share?
MA: Not at this time.
Additional questions and answers can be found here on the League of Women Voters Fremont County Primary Election Voter Guide.
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