2025_YSNElectionGuide

5 Y E L L OW S P R I NG S N EWS H H H 2025 E L E C T I ON GU I DE H H H OC T OB E R 3 , 2 0 2 5 PAUL HERZOG BACKGROUND : Paul Herzog moved to Greene County from Columbus in 2015 when his wife, Melissa, opened House of AUM yoga studio in Kings Yard. Herzog has worked as a sales representative for Yellow Springs Brewery for nearly a decade. Having grown up in nearby Springfield, Herzog said the village has always been on his radar. Since moving to the area, Herzog said, he’s taken joy in becoming part of the Yellow Springs community through his posi- tion at YS Brewery and through his work as a mortgage loan originator. “Helping people come into the village has been super rewarding,” he said. The biggest draw to the community, however, has been his two children, who have attended YS Schools since the family moved to the area a decade ago; his eldest child graduated from YS High School this spring, and both Herzog youngsters have been involved in local school and recreatio- nal sports. Herzog helped establish and run a youth basketball league in 2017, and later spear- headed running the FC Springs youth club soccer team. He also helped establish the YS Youth Sports Association, in collabora- tion with the YS Community Foundation, to unite all local recreational sports programs under a single insurance policy. He is also the current announcer for boys soccer games at home. Herzog said he’s enjoyed bolstering recreational youth sports and, in turn, helping to strengthen the district’s sports programs as young athletes bring their burgeoning skills into the schools. With his relationship with the schools and community youth in mind, Herzog said his focus as a school board member will be on students. “My platform is the children,” he said. “I love sports and I’m a numbers guy, so I hope to bring those angles to the table in consi- dering whether something is best for our children and the community as a whole.” Question responses: 1. I’m in sales, so the number one piece of my job that, if I’m not doing it well then I’m failing, is communication. I’m a big fan of over-communication rather than under- communication. That’s it, in a nutshell — open lines of good, honest, back-and-forth dialogue and keeping lines of communica- tion open in a positive way. 2. ������������������������������������������� With conflict, it’s important to be discer- ning about what kind of conflict it is, asking, “Are we really getting somewhere with this conflict, or are we spinning our wheels?” … I think it’s important to keep a level head; the number one piece of communication is listening, and really trying to understand what the people who are coming to you are saying and putting yourself in their shoes. … In the Yellow Springs athletics world, we have the 24-hour rule: Wait 24 hours before you react to something — it doesn’t matter what, it could be anything. It’s a great rule; take 24 hours, sleep on it. 3. I’m a great public speaker, and I’m a numbers guy, so I can bring a financial background that I hope will help our tre- asurer make sense of the numbers when those come up. … I don’t know everything yet, but being involved in the schools for the last 10 years I’ve learned a lot, and I’m a quick learner and plan to learn as much as possible. Learning everything is how I’ll gain confidence to make decisions, but I’m going to give myself a little grace for the first couple of months. 4. To use a sports analogy: Control what you can control. We’re going to have to deal with the hand we’re dealt, and we can only be so proactive. Being reactive is important when you don’t know what you need to be proactive about. I’ll try to stay up-to-date on current events, but every day there’s some- thing else, and staying up-to-date on what is local, in the end, is probably most impor- tant. … Keeping our focus on what’s happe- ning locally and just get down to taking care of local issues in a way that hopefully most villagers can appreciate. MIAMI TOWNSHIP TRUSTEE There are three candidates seeking two available seats on the three-person Miami Township Board of Trustees. The highest vote-getters will serve four-year terms. The three candidates are listed in order they will appear on the ballot. The News asked them the following questions: 1. How do you plan to stay connected to other governing bodies in the village? 2. What do you think is the best strategy for working through conflict as a governing body, and how do you plan to address conflict, if it arises, when you serve? 3. How should Trustees consider the realities of the need for renewable energy — particu- larly utility-scale solar — in conjunction with the desires of the township’s rural residents? 4. How should Trustees balance the Town- ship’s Land Use Plan and its measures to keep the wider township rural and agricultural with growth initiatives within Yellow Springs? LORI ASKELAND BACKGROUND: Lori Askeland has called Yellow Springs and Miami Township home for 27 years. An educator with a long career at Wittenberg University, where she’s now a professor emerita, she also served two terms on Village Council. From that expe- rience, she said, she learned “how to bring good processes to organizations with a goal of keeping them transparent to the public, understandable to the public and accounta- ble to the public.” Askeland emphasized that Miami Town- ship encompasses not just Yellow Springs, but also Clifton and unincorporated rural areas. Her own upbringing on a farm in Iowa, and later work with her husband, Frank, converting his family farmland into wetlands and tallgrass prairie, informs her understanding of rural communities and natural resource stewardship, she said. If elected trustee, Askeland said her priorities will center on strengthening the Township’s fire and rescue services, ensu- ring sound fiscal stewardship and raising the level of transparency in township gover- nance. “We need [Miami Township Fire-Rescue] to be strong,” she said. “We’re an aging com- munity, so it’s particularly important that we are acting in ways that ensure the health of that organization.” She also stressed accountability in finan- cial decisions, with an eye toward the long term. “I take it very seriously that I would be handed the public purse, and if I am elec- ted, I want to do right by the public and be making actions that make sense to them, that I explain to them and that I own.” To improve communication and over- sight, Askeland said she would advocate for regular, public working meetings of the trustees, clearer financial reporting at each meeting and consistent use of Robert’s Rules of Order to keep everyone “on an even footing.” “Everything should be in place so the public can come, watch and understand what’s going on,” she said. “Everybody has access to it — the public, the people on the board. That way, again, you can hold people accountable.” Question responses: 1. There should be someone from Miami Township who has [intergovernmental communication] as their bailiwick; someone who is in liaison with both the Councils of the Village of Yellow Springs and the Vil- lage of Clifton. I could see myself potentially being a person who does that — if not atten- ding every meeting, then certainly reading through agendas and minutes. … If we’re able to have weekly working sessions, one of the early ones would be devoted to divvy- ing up tasks, including being liaisons, and making sure it’s equitable and that there are some reporting and budgeting structures in place, all in public session. 2. As a teacher, I always taught first-year composition on different themes. The last theme I used was how to tell the difference between good conflict and “high conflict” — what it is, and how to avoid it. The book I used is by a woman named Amanda Ripley. … I don’t think the absence of conflict is a healthy state because it usually means, for whatever reason, people aren’t feeling safe enough to express an opinion that differs from some powerful person in the room or someone who’s in authority. That tends to create bigger problems down the line. So you don’t actually want to be conflict-free. What you want to avoid is high conflict, which is when we get really rigid and locked into positions of “us versus them.” Good conflict actually makes you think, “Well, is what I’m doing correct?” Mature individuals should be able to hear critics; when conflict feels personal to us, we need to have the abi- lity to say, “OK, that’s tough feedback. I’ll go take care of my emotions on my own time, but I have to think about what they said and then determine whether it’s fair and how to move forward.” 3. ��������������������������������������� The landscape [of solar power] is chan- ging so quickly; there are really good, small- scale solar things happening that I wouldn’t have thought possible. But it’s important to stay abreast of technological developments, and I think it’s helpful to remember that the source of this conflict is that decisions are being made on high that really should be made through public entities. One of the problems is that these corporations are a little fly-by-night, and that’s a concern. One of the things that I view with particular concern is that there should never be any topsoil scra- ping, and there should be a requirement that organizations remove solar panels as new CONT INUED ON PAGE 6 WRITE A LETTER TO THE EDITOR The YS News welcomes letters from readers on topics of current interest. In submitting them, please observe the following guidelines: • Letters must be signed and include a daytime phone number and an address for verification. • The deadline for submissions is 5 p.m., Monday, the week of publication. Submit materials via our website at ysnews.com/submissions, by email to ysnews@ysnews.com , by mail to P.O. Box 187, Yellow Springs, OH 45387, or drop it of f at our office at 253½ Xenia Ave.