For those of you that don’t know me, I would like to take the TIME to introduce myself. My name is Jason Seidl and I am the newly elected Brown County Sheriff. Some of you may remember seeing a sign or two with my name on it during the summer months. I would like to take this TIME to say “Thank you”. I and all of the members of the Brown County Sheriff’s Office look forward to continuing to serve all of the citizens of Brown County. In this article I would like to spend my TIME to focus on TIME.

First of all, on behalf of the Brown County Sheriff’s Office we would kindly like to take the TIME to ask those of you that prayed for snow this past week to please stop. It worked. A little too well.

We would like to acknowledge three people that have put in lots of TIME and many years into serving others.

Rich Hoffmann retired in early January 2019 after starting a career in law enforcement in 1992. Rich’s TIME in law enforcement started out as the Police Chief in Morton and then onto the New Ulm Police Department before serving as the Brown County Sheriff for the past 12 years. While Rich had a very long, productive and satisfying 27+ year career in law enforcement and represented our Sheriff’s Office very well, he is the short-TIMER on the list of these three.

Another individual that put a lot of TIME in at the Sheriff’s Office was Mike Mathiowetz who retired in January of 2019 after spending his entire 30+ year career at the Brown County Sheriff’s Office as a Dispatch/Jailer, Dispatch Supervisor and lastly as the Jail Administrator. Mike spent the last couple of years overseeing the operations of the Jail and the people who were sentenced by the Court and doing their TIME in Jail.

Myron Wieland started his law enforcement career in 1987 and retired in October of 2018, serving for more than 31+ years. Myron spent his entire TIME with the New Ulm Police Department, starting out as a Patrol Officer and working his way up the ranks to serve as the Chief of Police. Myron always gave his TIME to anyone that wanted to talk to a police officer.

As with any job that that includes working shifts, weekends and holidays, the Administrative Staff, Correctional Officers, Deputies and Dispatchers almost spend more TIME with their work family than with their actual family. While at work, their TIME is spent working to serve the public and keep everyone safe.

Keeping on the TIME theme, we would like to remind motorists that when you are driving in the poor winter conditions, that you should allow yourself more TIME to get to your destination safely. Remember to give the snow plow drivers a little extra space and TIME when following them. You should stay back at least ten car lengths behind the snow plow, which should be far enough back to stay out of the snow plow cloud. Take the TIME to scrape your windshield free of snow and ice. Also, remember to turn on your headlights when it is snowing (or raining).

For all of the new young drivers out there, which I personally have two, know that it takes many winters and TIME to learn all of the little tricks and precautions that you learn from driving on snow covered roads over several years. I am sure that you young drivers hear this all of the TIME, but dress for the weather when you are driving. Like your mother always tells you, wear a hat, put on gloves/mittens, don’t wear flip flops in the winter and wear a coat. Keep a blanket and shovel in the car in case you get stuck. Remember, DON’T TEXT WHILE YOU DRIVE.

We would also like to remind all of the experienced drivers out there that when we get that first new snow that it takes TIME to get reacclimated to driving in the snow covered road conditions again. This is very evident in the fact that there were over 20 accidents on Feb. 4 and a day later with the same winter weather conditions, there were only six accidents. It takes our cars and trucks a little extra TIME to stop on snow covered roads compared to the dry roads of the summer.

Thank you for spending a little bit of your TIME with us. Take care, we will see you again next TIME.