A chance to meet the Chippewa Valley sheriff candidates

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (WEAU) - For the first time in decades voters in Eau Claire and Chippewa counties will elect a new sheriff.

Monday night community members had the chance to learn more about the candidates during a forum. Eau Claire County Sheriff Candidates, Dave Riewestahl and Don Henning, and Chippewa County Sheriff Candidates, Chris Kowalczyk and Travis Hakes took part in the forum at the Community Table in Eau Claire.

They addressed concerns about racial profiling, legalizing marijuana, and inmate voting. In Eau Claire County, Riewestahl and Henning shared their thoughts on jail expansion.

“We are talking expansion,” Riewestahl said. “Do I want to expand? No, I don’t. Long-term figure out why people come to jail to keep them out of jail.”

“If we were to have the funding to expand the jail I would support that and by installing or instilling in that facility resources for education, housing, AODA,” Henning said.

Both Chippewa County Sheriff Candidates said expansion won’t be happening anytime soon, but this has made it difficult to offer more research based programs in jail.

“I don’t see us expanding the Chippewa County Jail, but I would look forward to doing what I can to keep people out of jail,” Hakes said.

Vacancies in our jail is a lot, we don’t have a full staff and spacing for those programs is a concern,” Kowalczyk said.

Voters will head to the polls to elect new sheriffs on Nov. 8th, 2022.

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