If there is one overriding thing to be said about last Tuesday night's Meet the Candidates event, it would have to be that it was different from the normal debate forum you might expect to see in a professional setting. Those who gave up their evening to be involved and informed citizens were subjected, instead, to activists in the audience giving long-winded opinionated speeches from the floor supporting their own or their candidates' positions instead of allowing the audience to hear more from the candidates themselves. Even the moderator, who was not running for any office and was in charge of maintaining order, usurped time from the important event to give her own opinion speeches. The activists, some closely associated with the Sheriff's Department, may have thought their candidates were less capable of expressing themselves in the debate and needed points to be made by their surrogates instead.

Now to actual candidates present at the meeting. Those were District 1 contenders Doug Tamminga and John Tighe, District 2 candidate Richard Hodges, and District 3 opponents Lillian Wissel and Mark Dowaliby. District 6 Congressional candidate Steve Ward drove up on his Harley with his wife, Susan, to address the small gathering.

Senator Ward joked with the audience and spoke about his business experience which, he says, exceeds that of his opponent in the race who is running as a businessman. He also spoke about successfully passing fiscally responsible measures in Colorado despite a Democratic majority in the state legislature.	click for larger photo Senator Steve Ward in Shawnee (Photo by Park County Bulletin)
Ward said that, during his time in public office, his priorities included responsible spending and balanced budgets and he would continue those efforts if elected to Congress to represent District 6 in the seat currently held by Tom Tancredo.

County Commissioner Candidates Doug Tamminga and Richard Hodges said that some limited increased development and infrastructure improvements would be needed to attract new businesses and jobs and improve the economy in the county. However, Tamminga said that raising taxes was undesirable and should definitely not be considered until cost-cutting and streamlining the county government was fully explored and implemented. He expressed a need for the county government to "tighten its belt" and restore lost trust and confidence. Tighe, on the other hand, believes that the current government is operating at high efficiency and that county employees are giving all they have to the effort. He does not think cuts are called for or possible. He believes that the answer is to increase revenues through higher county taxes and other funding. Both Dowaliby and Tighe said they believe that increasing sales taxes, as the commissioners attempted to do last year, was the answer and the county's problems stem from the voters' unwillingness to pass such measures.

Hodges was well-prepared with facts and figures and had done research on the current budget. However, he admits that he is the "newbie" and doesn't yet have all of the answers to the county's problems.

Hodges predicted, though he does not advocate, a future of beryllium and molybdenum mining in Park County. He said that he did not welcome those industries, but thought their arrival in the county was inevitable. He also commented that these types of industries would bring jobs that would provide pay higher than is otherwise available currently in the Park County private sector.

In an emphatic response to a question from the floor, John Tighe denied that he promised voters in 2004 to extricate himself from any conflict of interest by leaving his job as deputy and detaching himself from the Sheriff's Department in order to serve as an independent commissioner. His close tie to the Sheriff's Department was the main issue argued against Tighe in his original run for commissioner four years ago. He now insists that his decision to stay in a position of conflict was positive for the community because he was able to take his additional paid job at the school and provide help to the students and community after the school shooting in 2006. In justifying his politically unpopular position of conflict, Tighe reminded the audience of the painful loss of Emily Keyes and how valuable he thought he was to the community in that crisis. He argued that other commissioners had second jobs outside of their commissioner duties and denied that he felt conflicted having his second job involve working in the chain of command of the same County Sheriff's Office over which he holds budget control as commissioner. He said that he never felt biased.

One suggestion to draw more business to the county introduced by Alma Mayor Mark Dowaliby called for passing a county sales tax increase that could then be split with new businesses as an incentive to attract new enterprise. Dowaliby promoted the idea that he said had worked well in the Town of Alma. A large sales tax increase, such as that proposed in the fall of 2007, would have to pass the voters and government spending limits on the money would have to be removed in order for the county to then give a portion of it back to new businesses. The voters in the county have refused, two to one, to authorize such tax and spending increases in recent elections.

Incumbent candidate Lillian Wissel stated that her years of experience in various county offices most qualified her for the position of commissioner for District 3. She has also served as interim appointed commissioner on two occasions when commissioners died while serving in the office. She is currently serving in the position after her appointment by the Republican party leadership. Challenger Mark Dowaliby contends that his years as Mayor of the small town of Alma best qualifies him as the leader for that position. Both Wissel and Dowaliby suggest that increased county revenues may be needed, but have different ideas about resources. Wissel advocates looking for outside funding rather than asking the voters to pass tax increases to deal with immediate management problems. Dowaliby contends that the county needs a general sales tax to make more money available to the government and said that local taxpayers will pay a smaller portion of the sales tax than visitors to the county.

Tamminga said that the county needed to stop the practices of recent years under which the commissioners give excessive raises to certain upper-level employees, create new, expensive, and unnecessary management positions, and incorrectly allow the personal use of county vehicles by county officials and certain employees. He said that the money currently misspent needed to be used to solve the county's budget problems and serve the taxpaying public instead.

Candidates Tighe and Hodges expressed a distaste for letting any government employees go. "It's horrible to fire people," Hodges said. Tighe said that it was important to support people working for the county "from the top down." One of the audience activists, in another speech from the floor, argued that no county employees should be fired because they were the only ones in the county with money to spend and continuing to pay all of them was good for the economy.

As the visiting activists promoting their own favored candidates were allowed to monopolize the meeting, a few people walked out. The Tighe-Dowaliby promoters appeared to believe that people needed to hear them express their opinions rather than to hear more from the actual candidates running for office. The pair in the audience gave speeches in favor of keeping the county exactly the same except for getting the government more money from taxpayers. They traveled fifty miles that night to support their candidates.

The night was long, imbalanced, and tedious due to lack of meeting management. Knowing the audience members, however, there were few, if any, undecided people who turned out for the meeting. This may have been no more than a sermon to the saved.