Mikkelsen will bring pride back to Hillsboro through mayor's office WATCH THE VIDEO

With a focus on family, community, and trust, Terry Mikkelsen said that he believes he can help bring back pride to the city of Hillsboro. 

 The 33-year-old will face uptown developer Drew Hastings and Hillsboro City Council member Rod Daniels in the May 3 Republican primary. The winner of that race will face Independent candidate John Levo in the November general election.  

 Mikkelsen is a graduate of the former Ashtabula High School and went to The Ohio State University, where he studied audio and electrical engineering. He was a co-founder of OSU's student-operated radio station and later returned to Ashtabula, where he worked at a radio station as a broadcast engineer. Mikkelsen later went to Full Sail University in Orlando, where he received a degree in audio engineering. 

 "I took a job in Mansfield, Ohio with a marketing and advertising firm doing their audio and DVD authoring," he said. "I didn't stay there for very long before I met my soon-to-be wife (Vickie Mikkelsen), and after a short period, she moved (to Hillsboro when) she got a job as a music teacher. I followed soon after. So we've been here for about 10 years now and really enjoy Hillsboro. We have been living in town that entire time. We've really enjoyed the city and the people that are here, and we think it's a great place to raise our family and loving every minute of it."

Mikkelsen works at Mac Printing as a graphic designer, and he is in his 16th year operating his own business, Tech-T Productions. 

While he has heard concerns that he may not have enough political or leadership experience, Mikkelsen said that is a concern that could be shared with all three candidates. 

 "Rod Daniels does have some experience on city council, though he hasn't been there very long," Mikkelsen said. "All three of the candidates don't have a heavy political background. My political background is that I have always been very involved in voting. I think that's very strong. I dislike the aspect of politics in their promising things that you'll never see come to fruition and the games that are continually played. Though I've always had a push-back in politics in that I don't like those things, but this is a time where I couldn't sit back any longer, and I really want to see Hillsboro come back to life."

 During his time as a broadcast engineer in Ashtabula, Mikkelsen said he first started gaining experience on the workings of city government when he assisted in news coverage of the city council. 

 "I've been an observer of city councils for many, many years," Mikkelsen said. "Here in Hillsboro, I've been a regular attendee for at least eight years. I really do like to keep abreast of the issues, really have a good understanding and not just rumors of what's going on. I enjoy providing a service, whether it's in my business or whether it's just in the community, and to be able to know those issues and to be able to help in other areas as I can."

Working toward having better working relationships between the office of the Hillsboro mayor and other elected officials is a goal Mikkelsen said he has. 

 "I agree those relationships are strained, and it's not just (between city) offices, it goes all the way to the county commissioners, to the township trustees," he said. "It's very wide, and somebody needs to come in and address those issues to try to get everybody to work together, try to become one city rather than individual departments."

 Among the first steps Mikkelsen said he would take toward bringing the departments and offices together is showing individuals who work with, and for, the city that he is a person they can trust.

 "First is being able to be there as a trustworthy person," he said.

"You can't expect people to come together when they don't trust the words that you say. It's not a magic wand that anyone can wave. It's something that is time, really spending time with people, listening, addressing their concerns, and really trying to show them that we're all people, and we all do want the same objective, and we need to achieve it together."

 Mikkelsen said that an essential step he would take is seeing that there is a "management of the budget so that we are fulfilling our needs and not our desires. Our needs really come down to the basics of what the departments serve: safety, streets, water, sewer. We need to come back to the drawing table and get our needs fleshed out, then we can focus on our desires a little later when we get things managed better." 

 When it comes to managing the city, Mikkelsen said that the direct management of the city departments is the responsibility of the safety and service director, and that there is ample oversight of those employees "if you follow the structure, if everyone is doing their job. My direct involvement, what I want to do, is make sure I'm in there for a long enough period of time for each department so that I get a very good understanding of what they do and not just an overview. If I need to make decisions that affect those departments, I need to know exactly how they're working and not rely on what I think is going on there. So I want to be involved in those departments and have a very, very good understanding, but I am not going to micromanage those departments, that's the department heads, the safety and service director. They are the ones who oversee it to make sure the jobs are done, and done correctly."

 During the first couple of years, Mikkelsen said that the mayor's office needs to "get back to the basics" when it comes to running the city.

 "We need to clean up our city in more ways than one," he said, "and show people that this is a great place to come to. That will naturally attract businesses and population. I will definitely be supportive of, especially, like the Highland County Enterprise Initiative. We have some great programs out there, and I definitely would like to assist in any way that I can with those. But I don't see how I am going to naturally, in the first couple of years, bring anything in that is already not here. We need the population to sustain those businesses, whether they are commercial or industrial. So we need to get back to the basics."

 A special interest that he has in developing community initiatives is finding more interactions for families. 

 "We need things for our families to get involved in, to partake in," Mikkelsen said.

 While the city previously had a skate park for the younger population, there were problems and it was eventually closed, and Mikkelsen said there needs to be more areas of involvement. 

 "We had some talks about basketball courts next to the fire department, and we need to have more of a city park area that is actually in town," he said. "That people can walk to. Kids can't drive themselves out to Liberty Park. It's a great facility, but we need something that's for our in-town people to be able to utilize. There's been talk about cruising coming back to Hillsboro. Depending on how it's done, it can be done very well. If it's geared more toward an older generation of having fun, where there might be some entertainment uptown, whether it's a band or music playing, more of like a car show than just driving around in circles. That would bring in some people that would provide some health to the uptown area."

 When it comes to bringing jobs to the city in future years, Mikkelsen said that he does not have a laid-out plan because the industries he has researched are rapidly changing fields. 

 "I don't have an exact plan for those businesses," he said, "because the areas that I'm looking in, especially with the green industries, are very rapidly changing. They are ever-expanding. Those are the types of businesses that I think are prime to come to Hillsboro because it is a new type of business. It's not something that is established, and is going to take a lot of work to get them to come here. New businesses need new homes, and we can provide that home for them."

 Developing Hillsboro, Mikkelsen said, needs to encompass the entire city and not just the north end of town. 

 "There is a lot of push toward the north end of town, and the Harry Sauner Road area is right on the cusp of our watershed for that area," Mikkelsen said. "I don't know how many people are aware of that. We kind of need to make sure that we have good development plans for the next few years to make sure that we're not encroaching on our water supply and other areas that would come about."   

 Mikkelsen said that when voters make their choice on who to pick in the primary, he said he hopes, "that people can see that I have invested the most in the city of Hillsboro by talking to the people that matter, whether it's in the county, in the city, really trying to get in there and get to the issues, see what they are, see what we can do to correct them, and grow Hillsboro into what everybody knows it can be. If we thought it wasn't a great place to live, we wouldn't be here. So I want to bring back that pride to Hillsboro."