Gwynne wants to move in a new direction

Jeannie Gwynne has nev­er held elect­ed office, but she knows some­thing about gov­ern­ment. She has worked for 36 years as a 911 dis­patch­er, helped get grant mon­ey, and served on Kentucky Office of Homeland Security committees.

Now she wants to put that knowl­edge to work for coun­ty gov­ern­ment as a mag­is­trate. But what may be even more impor­tant than expe­ri­ence is hav­ing the right kind of heart for pub­lic ser­vice. Gwynne thinks that pas­sion, com­pas­sion, and com­mon sense have often been lack­ing with regard to local decision-making.

Gwynne is the Democratic can­di­date for the open seat in District 1 — the only con­test on the Fiscal Court this fall oth­er than that for coun­ty judge-executive.

Her oppo­nent, Scott Hisle, is a chief finan­cial offi­cer who has served on the school board and oth­er coun­ty boards.

“Numbers are all fine and good, and we have to have a bud­get, and I’m smart enough to do that. But you have to have a pas­sion for the com­mu­ni­ty, and you have to have com­pas­sion for peo­ple. And treat your cowork­ers and your con­stituents the way you want to be treat­ed, and have respect for every­one, no mat­ter what their sta­tion in life,” she said. “I think I would do a bet­ter job of that.”

As a new­com­er to the Fiscal Court, Gwynne said, she could “look at things in a new light.”

“I’m intel­li­gent, and I’m a fast learn­er,” and there is no task she couldn’t do, she said.

Gwynne said she has been attend­ing Fiscal Court meet­ings and watch­ing them on YouTube for the past four years, and she has some­times been dis­pleased with what she’s witnessed.

“A lot of the infight­ing that we saw on the court … was dis­cour­ag­ing, and it was embar­rass­ing,” she said. “This is my home­town and my home coun­ty, and I felt like it was not … the best look.”

She decid­ed that rather than com­plain, she would do some­thing about it. So when it came time, she jumped in the race.

Gwynne has been mar­ried to Tony Gwynne for 21 years, and they have two chil­dren, John, 24, and Janiece, 18, both grad­u­ates of George Rogers Clark High School.

Gwynne grew up here and grad­u­at­ed from GRC her­self in 1986. She briefly attend­ed Eastern Kentucky University, where she met Tony, then worked 12-hour days, sev­en days a week, for IBM before mov­ing on to two local insur­ance companies.

She began work­ing for the Police Department as a dis­patch­er in 1990 and stayed there until her retire­ment in 2018. But after eight or nine months, she found she “missed it ter­ri­bly,” and went back to work part-time.

“That’s been my call­ing in life,” she said, but no one could have con­vinced her of that in her 20s. “This isn’t what I envi­sioned myself doing,” she explained.

Still, the peo­ple and first respon­ders she’s helped has meant some­thing to her. 

So has the recog­ni­tion. She is in the Kentucky 911 Hall of Fame, and proud of it.

During her time with WPD, she has tak­en class­es in crim­i­nal jus­tice train­ing at EKU and oth­er class­es at what is now Blue Grass Community and Technical College. She has been involved in the statewide 911 sys­tem and been an active mem­ber and offi­cer of the Kentucky Emergency Numbers Association, a state pro­fes­sion­al emer­gency ser­vices group.

While work­ing for the police, she got involved in sub­mit­ting grant appli­ca­tions, and through that work, she got to know peo­ple in gov­ern­ment in Frankfort and gained insights into how the grant-mak­ing process works.

“That’s one of the things I’m hop­ing I’ll be able to do” or help some­one do, as a Fiscal Court mem­ber, she said.

Asked what she would like to accom­plish as a mag­is­trate, Gwynne said she would like to see the Fiscal Court have a bud­get sur­plus again.

“I feel like that’s going to be our num­ber one goal, to get our coun­ty on good, sol­id finan­cial ground,” she answered.

Gwynne said she doesn’t want to cut gov­ern­ment pro­grams, but believes pro­grams could be oper­at­ed more efficiently.

There are things “I would have done dif­fer­ent­ly,” she said. “They paid cash for a lot of things that I think should have been financed.”

“I don’t know that you could ever rule out tax increas­es,” she respond­ed when asked.

She also wouldn’t dis­miss the pos­si­bil­i­ty of com­bin­ing oth­er city and coun­ty ser­vices, such as fire pro­tec­tion. Gwynne said that a few years ago, the Greater Clark Foundation offered the coun­ty land between Colby Road and Bypass Road, and the Fiscal Court reject­ed it.

“That was one of the very first times I was so upset that I thought about run­ning for pub­lic office,” she said. “We could have had a fan­tas­tic pub­lic safe­ty cam­pus there, and the coun­ty mag­is­trates decid­ed at the time they did not even want to do a fea­si­bil­i­ty study. … Their only ques­tion was, ‘Who is going to be in charge?’”

Gwynne said she thinks the new make­up of the Fiscal Court will be eas­i­er to work with than the last one was, and she likes the idea that Winchester’s cur­rent city man­ag­er, Mike Flynn, will be one of the magistrates.

She said she wants to see more progress on infra­struc­ture, espe­cial­ly along Veterans Memorial Parkway, and she’s excit­ed about the growth that’s going to occur along Ky. 627 and oth­er places. But that growth also presents chal­lenges in terms of resources and staffing.

She men­tioned that the city police are already look­ing ahead to adding more officers.

“The growth is good, but we have to be ready for it,” she said.

Based on what she knows about data cen­ters, she said she doesn’t think she could vote to allow one to be locat­ed here, but she’s open to study­ing it. They do cre­ate jobs, but also use a large amount of water and elec­tric­i­ty and are noisy, she said.

“It doesn’t seem like a good trade-off to me,” she remarked.

One aspect of local gov­ern­ment that Gwynne is hope­ful about is that there will be bet­ter coop­er­a­tion between the gov­ern­ments of Clark County and Winchester.

“The city and coun­ty are going to have to work togeth­er, and they’re going to have to get along,” she said. “We are in this com­mu­ni­ty togeth­er. We serve the same peo­ple, and we have to keep that in mind.”