If elected to the Eau Claire County Board, student Matthew Lehner plans to author legislation to create a youth commission because he believes youth perspectives are not being adequately represented at the county level.

Lehner, a third-year political science student at UW-Eau Claire, is running for the District 22 seat on the County Board which includes Lower Campus. Two years ago, Lehner ran for District 18 when he lived on Upper Campus and lost.

In addition to the youth commission, Lehner also wants to author legislation to create an advisory committee made up of UW-Eau Claire and Chippewa Valley Technical College students.

“I alone will not be able to represent all of my generation, nor do I want to represent all my generation,” Lehner said. “I want to make sure that we’re bringing in young people to the conversation through this youth advisory commission and through the CVTC/UWEC advisory committee.”

Lehner said he was inspired by the Milwaukee County Youth Commission that was re-established last year.

“We need a youth commission here to really include young people in the conversation,” Lehner said. “I don’t think Milwaukee County should be leading the way on these issues, I think Eau Claire County should be leading the way on these issues.”

While the youth commission is still a broad idea at this point, Lehner said he imagines there being a 14 to 18-year-old student enrolled at a high school in their county district to represent each of the 29 County Board districts.

Lehner is running against District 22 incumbent and retired university clinical psychologist Katherine Schneider, who said more youth perspectives are needed at the county level but doesn’t think a youth commission is the way to go about it.

“I’m not a fan of setting up special commissions for particular groups,” Schneider said. “Too often they end up talking among themselves and not influencing the whole group in my experience.”

Schneider identified other ways for younger residents to get involved, including participating in the climate action plan survey, volunteering to serve on County Board committees and running for County Board like Lehner is.

Schneider said in addition to youth perspectives, she thinks the County Board needs more input from elders, people with families, members of the LGBTQ+ community, Hmong people and disabled people. Schneider said she welcomes input from members of District 22 about county issues.

“I hope to inspire young people to get involved in county government to realize the importance of county government,” Lehner said. “Hopefully it’s not just me as a UWEC student representing university students on the county board and we have more student representatives because we should frankly have more students serving on the county board.”

Kasper can be reached at [email protected].