Ask Mr. Answer Person: "Who, when and where are the Supervisors to be elected since the new districts are established?"

Kevin e-mails Mr. Answer Person: "Who, when and where are the Supervisors to be elected since the new districts are established? Does gender balance apply to the Supervisory board?"

Mr. Answer Person says: "When the new districts were being drawn, the five-member board that handled the task was under instructions to disregard where the current supervisors lived.  But now that the district boundaries have been approved by the county board and sent on to the State of Iowa for final approval, we can talk about the political implications of the new boundaries.

Incumbent supervisor Bill Ibanez lives in Supervisor District #1.  There is no incumbent supervisor living in District #2.  County Board Chairman Les Askelson lives in District #3.  Two incumbent supervisors live in District #4--Steve Bouska and John Logsdon.  Supervisor Lonnie Pierce lives in District #5.

The new county supervisor districts will go into effect January 15th of next year.  However, as a practical matter, the new districts won't come into play until the primaries in June of 2012 and the general election in November of 2012.

Finally, "gender balance" is a concept that applies to appointed board members, not to elected politicians.  Right now all five county supervisors are men.  The only way a woman would become a member of the Winneshiek County Board would be if she ran for election and won.