Jan Cervelli
St. Joseph County Council
District C
Building prosperity and wellbeing for all in district C!
Why I am running for County Council District C
St. Joseph County, particularly District C, is a wonderful place to live, work, and to raise a family. We face many immediate challenges, however, that threaten our quality of life. And it is harder than ever to get ahead. Local and state elected leadership remain self-interested, unresponsive, or seem to have stopped listening.
My candidacy is a personal choice. I have never run for office before and have not been recruited by any party. Through accessible, no-nonsense, compassionate leadership my aim is to serve you and your family by:
- Lowering the cost of living,
- Creating good paying jobs provided by locally owned and union shop businesses,
- Advancing access to affordable energy, housing, and health care,
- Ensuring excellence in public education and trade job training,
- Enriching quality of life – Safe streets, clean air and water, parks, farmland, and open spaces.
- Bringing greater transparency and public engagement to county government.
We the People…
These are the principles upon which I will serve you!
It’s Common Sense…
Purpose over Party
Our county is facing major challenges of affordability, access to health care, and public safety, among others and is in need of purposeful leadership to guide it into a positive future. Party politics in St. Joseph County, however, have become toxic. The County Council seems more focused on national party dictates, intraparty power struggles (and literal shoving matches), and personal grudges than on the county’s business. If you attend a County Council meeting lately, you will see what I have seen.
My allegiance is to the people of St. Joseph County, not to a political party or narrow ideology. As your council person, my purpose will be to serve the people of our County and District C first. We can work together, without the interference of political parties and other outside interests to actually solve our challenges in our own way.
Let’s advance a St. Joseph County for ALL! Let’s cease the culture wars advanced by a few radical individuals attempting to bring national political agendas into the county to poison and steal our unity and momentum as a community. No one wins in a “war”. So, let’s just stop participating. Let’s work toward a common vision of freedom, prosperity, and equality for all in St. Joseph County!
Photo courtsy of the South Bend Tribune
Local Control – Bottom to Top, not Left or Right
A proud and self-reliant community with traditionally bipartisan representation, we residents of St. Joseph County find ourselves increasingly subjected to a whole host of outside powers threatening that balance and eager to advance their interests, not ours. Our local leadership has too often acquiesced to these powers. The people of St. Joseph County never asked for any of this. And what have these powers brought us?
- Authoritarian Washington, DC Republicans, a subservient Indiana Governor, and supermajority Statehouse has brought us costly tariffs; draconian immigration enforcement and mass detention; gutting of Medicaid, ACA subsidies, and SNAP; forced mid-decade redistricting; and state property tax “reform” that ignores renters and forces local governments to raise income taxes or cut essential services.
- Amazon and Microsoft gig tech billionaires and their data centers extracting tax cuts, energy, and water paid for by the taxpayers of St. Joseph County in return for environmental degradation and relatively few jobs.
- The City of Mishawaka looking to annex sections of Granger without open, public consultation with residents on whether they want to pay for new infrastructure and new city taxes.
My aim as Councilwoman is to restore local decision making in St. Joseph County to better serve the needs of its people first. Local control is the power granted to local governments to govern themselves and make decisions regarding local issues without federal, state, or corporate interference. Let’s take back our power to create policies and solutions that directly address our unique challenges and needs – affordable energy, housing, and health care, great schools, and a clean environment!
Prosperity for All
St. Joseph County Council’s responsibility is to advance prosperity for all citizens. It is charged with growing existing businesses as well as attracting new businesses that want to invest in our community – all of which pay a living wage. It must also ensure stable funding for public schools and other important critical services. Stable funding depends on stable sources of income. All sound financial portfolios require a diverse set of investments that together can weather the ups and downs of economic growth and bust.
Likewise, a sound economic development agenda for St. Joseph County needs to be built upon the growth of a broad portfolio of local businesses, industry and services. The more locally owned, the better. We need jobs and living wages for all of our citizenry.
The County is currently placing too much taxpayer investment in one or two baskets. This risky approach puts the county in a precarious dependency on mega corporate hyper data centers owned by external entities and subject to a possible AI bubble that could burst. Many of us remember when the Studebaker Plant closed. We are still pulling ourselves out of the Rust Belt era while jumping right into a potential Hyper Tech Bust.
We need to focus county taxpayer investments on local interests first, not extending huge tax cuts to megarich outside interests that will inevitably abandon us when the bubble bursts or with the next technological advance. County leadership needs to work harder and more creatively to foster local entrepreneurship and small business growth.
Transparency and Accountability
You know the old adage…”keep ‘em in the dark and feed ‘em horse hockey!” That’s the tactic employed by many of our local, state, and congressional officials, some of which refuse to attend town halls or otherwise meet with constituency. They’re either afraid or believe they are accountable to no one except their party or rich donors.
No longer. Recent local and national protests and off-cycle elections show voters becoming more engaged and fed up with the same old backroom politics. Voters want their elected officials to operate in public view and outside of small group of powerful individuals.
An essential component of local decision making is open government, one that is subject to public scrutiny and oversight. Voters in St. Joseph County no longer simply accept decisions made without informed consent nor input. They no longer tolerate elected officials that hide from their constituency, refusing to appear at town halls or to listen and learn from public discourse.
I pledge as your councilwoman that I will operate in an open and transparent manner and meet regularly with you in listening sessions throughout District C to serve your best interests. Further, I will lead the County in transforming the way it communicates and interacts with its citizens including public forums, town halls, and digital tools.