KINSMAN — Three candidates are running to fill two township trustee seats.

Bruce Bancroft and Jamin Banning are incumbent candidates, while Loren Hopkins is hoping residents will provide him a chance to serve.

Hopkins has been a dairy and crop farmer for 54 years. Hopkins retired earlier this year from being the Kinsman manager of Deerfield Agriculture Services. He has never run for public office.

He served for 20 years on the Victory Christian school board and was its varsity basketball coach throughout that time. For 25 years, Hopkins was on the Rock of Grace Church board and served as a member of its trustee board.

He spent a decade as the zoning chairman for Kinsman.

“My priorities include working with state elected officials to ensure that our townships will have the funding to support current services, such as EMS, police, fire and roads, especially in light of the possibility of losing real estate tax funding,” Hopkins said.

He plans to use his experiences on various church and school boards to carefully spend the funds the township does receive.

“We need to work with property owners and business owners to make our town look nice,” Hopkins noted. “We need to make Kinsman a place that people want to live in by making people aware of all the things that Kinsman has.”

“If we could attract more affordable housing, I believe people would love to move to Kinsman,” he continued. “It is a great place to live and raise a family.”

Bancroft and Banning did not return candidate questionnaires to the Tribune Chronicle.