TAMPICO – Joan Johnson, a Republican candidate for Whiteside County Board, has a bipartisan proposal for selecting the next board chairman: choose a graduate of the long-closed Tampico High School.

That group of graduates, she said, now includes four county board members – Glenn Frank, R-Morrison; Bob VanDeVelde, D-Sterling; Karen Nelson, D-Rock Falls; and Doug Wetzell, R-Deer Grove. She, too, is a Tampico graduate. Frank and Wetzell are Republicans; VanDeVelde and Nelson are Democrats.

“I feel this shows a commitment to public service found in local roots,” she wrote in an email this week.