School Board Member Challenges Sup. Logsdon in District 9

Patti Logsdon (left) and Maqsood Khan (right).

In the southwest corner of Milwaukee County, four-term Supervisor Patti Logsdon is running against Franklin School Board member Maqsood Khan to hang onto her county board seat.

Khan is a gastroenterologist for Aurora Health Care and a member of the Franklin School Board. Logsdon is an accountant who has served on the county board since 2018.

District 9 is bordered on the west by Waukesha County and includes sections of Franklin, Hales Corners, Greenfield and the city of Milwaukee. It is one of only three county board seats with a competitive race this election cycle. Voters in the district will pick their new representative on Tuesday, April 7.

County supervisors are elected to two-year terms. The nonpartisan position pays $32,819 annually. The county board is the legislative arm of Milwaukee County government, tasked with financial oversight and approval of the approximately $1.3 billion Milwaukee County budget.

In interviews with Urban Milwaukee, both candidates weighed in on their reasons for running and the most pressing issues they see for District 9.

Why they are running

Logsdon said she wants another term on the board to continue applying her financial experience to oversight of county spending. “I need to continue on the board,” she said. “I need to continue with the follow up and the transparency.”

Khan said he has had a “successful experience” as a school board member and believes he will be able to work collaboratively with other county supervisors to find solutions to problems facing the county. That’s something he thinks is lacking under Logsdon’s leadership, he said.  “I think there’s definitely room for improvement and better collaboration and getting things done,” he said.

Hales Corners Park Pool

Both candidates are eager to work on finding a way to reopen the Hales Corners Park Pool, which has been closed since 2019. It’s one of several county pools that closed during the COVID-19 pandemic and never reopened as Milwaukee County Parks struggled with a lifeguard shortage and lack of funding. A recent assessment estimated it would cost approximately $600,000 just to repair the pool enough to reopen.

Logsdon noted that she has already worked with the local Franklin Lions Club to program the pavilion in the park, and said she wants to work with local community organizations and private businesses to lease and reopen the pool.

Similarly, Khan said, “There must be a public-private partnership.” The county and another entity could work together to share the responsibilities to run the pool, he said.

Primary focus if elected

Both candidates mentioned the budget as a primary concern. In 2026, county policymakers had to close a $46.7 million budget gap. In future budgets, supervisors will likely be required to make significant cuts to close growing funding gaps.

If re-elected, Logsdon said she would focus on trying not to raise taxes. “I want to keep our tax dollars down as low as we can, yet I want to save some of the stuff that our residents and our communities are accustomed to that Milwaukee County provides,” she said.

Asked whether this was possible, she said, “In a perfect world, yes.”

Logsdon also said she believes there is massive fraud in the county’s social services programs, echoing claims right-wing media and Republican politicians have made about programs elsewhere in the country. “People aren’t going to like what I’m gonna say… we have a lot of fraud going on in Milwaukee County, and I’ve been trying to work on that,” Logsdon said. “What goes on in other states, like Minneapolis, like Michigan, is happening here in Wisconsin.”

Logsdon said she is working to collect evidence of the fraud and that she thought it would make “somewhat of a dent” in the county’s annual budget gap if stopped.

Khan also mentioned the county budget. “The county is raising less revenue and spending more, which is not a kind of healthy way to have a county government running,” he said.

He said he wants to see “optimal utilization of tax dollars,” which means investments in the parks system and public safety. Social media and digital devices are leading to unhealthy habits for many kids, he said. “How do we promote healthy habits in the kids to go outside? For that, we have to give them avenues, whether it’s bike rides, whether it’s parks and trails, whether it’s a swimming pool.”