In her 16 years on the board, Stoker said she is most proud of the work done to complete the Union Centre Boulevard interchange at Interstate 75, and being able to manage the growth that happened as a result.
“We all knew we were going to get this development,” she said. “We just didn’t know we’d get 30 years worth in 10 years.”
At the time, the Butler County Transportation Improvement District implemented a $20 license plate tax to help pay for the necessary infrastructure for the interchange, but Stoker said she held firm and filed a lawsuit to halt the move. The TID dropped the tax and refunded the money.
“We had a funding mechanism that had already been created and it was a much larger revenue source,” she said.
That mechanism — a tax increment financing district — continues to pay for infrastructure improvements in and around what has become one of the busiest commercial corridors in one of the fastest growing areas of the state.
Stoker also said she has underscored the importance of making local government more transparent and helped to pass the township’s nepotism policy that still stands today.
Stoker also is somewhat of an anomaly. Although township trustees are nonpartisan, she is a prominent Democrat in mostly red Butler County — and more specifically, West Chester Twp., where Wong and Trustee George Lang are both supporters of the county’s Republican Party.
“I think I prove that bipartisan government is good government,” she said.
Her biography on the township’s Web site — the longest among her colleagues — also touts her work on the environment, growing local greenspace, her various volunteer responsibilities and her family life.
“I feel pretty proud that I just don’t talk the talk, I walk the walk,” Stoker said. “Everybody says they’re fiscally conservative. We are. Everybody says they’re going to stand up and fight for you. I really have.”
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