What do you believe are the most relevant issues currently facing the county right now? And what would be your six-month plan to tackle them?

There’s three main issues that come to my mind first. First is political instability. So we’ve had a continuous practice in Josephine County of electing and recalling and electing and recalling. That’s unhelpful for government. It helps to, well, I just didn’t say it helps. It detracts from the mission of being able to provide services to the county residents. And my goal with that is to provide a trustful, transparent, calming presence that allows for conversation, allows for dialogue, allows for us to talk about issues. So that’s one important issue facing us.

I think we need economic development in our county. And the reason I think we need economic development is for the younger generations. I would really like to be able to find good, solid jobs for the people that are coming out of school, out of high school, out of community college, out of college, to continue to be in Josephine County and continue to make it what the kind of this nice rural county that we have and the unique character. There’s a lot of times you see the kids go out to other places. I’d like them to stay here and participate in Josephine County. So I think that that’s why economic Development is important. With that, I think that there needs to be a nice place for them to be able to buy homes that are reasonably priced so that they have a place to raise their children.

I’ll add the third one to that, which is public safety. If it’s not a safe place, no one’s going to want to be here, either from an economic standpoint or from a young family raising children. So we need to have a safe place for our children, whether that’s through police and law protection, or is it from fire protection away from wildfires and such? But we need to provide a place for really, for our next generation to be able to find a place called Josephine County home.