This election year, KSJD News is speaking with candidates running for Montezuma County Commissioner to help voters learn more about their priorities and perspectives.
Today, we hear from Gerald Whited, a Republican candidate. Whited currently serves as public safety director for the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe and says his campaign focuses on public safety, long-term county finances, and supporting local economic growth.
LP McKay
So just to start, can you tell me a little bit about well, we'll just have you introduce yourself, but in that introduction, if you could tell me a little bit about your background and what motivated you to run for county commissioner.
Gerald Whited
Yeah, so my name is Gerald Whited. I'm running for county commissioner in district one. My current background has been with the Ute Mountain Ute tribe as their public safety director, and I've been down there for about 14 years. Other than that, I just I've always done one job since I've lived in Montezuma County. I came up here from the front range back in 2000 about 2012 I moved up here from Denver, and I have three kids. One's in the Air Force. My other daughter lives in Colorado Springs, springs, married to a Colorado Springs firefighter, and then I have a disabled son at home in which my wife stays home and takes care of him.
LP McKay
One thanks to your family for their service in all those different aspects, yeah, and thanks for being here, and I've been giving folks an opportunity as well here, if you're, did you mention if you're running under an affiliated party, yeah?
Gerald Whited
Sorry, yeah. I'm running on the Republican Party. I've registered Republican so, yeah. So running under that party.
LP McKay
If elected, what would be your top two or three priorities for the county in your first year of office?
Gerald Whited
Well, the first thing is, is we got to look at income sources. And I'll get into that later with some more things we're discussed, but you're always running for kind of one of the most important things to be looking for is income coming in. You got to ease the tax burden on the people that own property here, as we've seen with the new changes in from the Colorado, state of our everybody open. The tax bills have been a shock. Their eyes get wide open, and they're like, whoa, you know, because we lost our subsidies, the tax break that we had there, and then having the new assessor that hits every odd years, they do a reassessment, and so everybody's property rates have went up. Do the reassessment, because our cost of living is going so high in the county that it just ain't making sense. So when we have people that have lower income or fixed incomes or doing that, our farmers are just struggling to make it because we're so dry, we got to look at income coming in to try to ease some of that tax burden. And doing that, the other thing I have is, you know, we really got to help the sheriff's office. We all seen the KRW report. That's a huge report, and I really encourage people, if they really want to understand it, please print it out and read it. There's it out and read it. There's more to it, besides just funding, it's more to it, besides just adding officers. There's a lot in that report that shows some pitfalls, but it also shows how other counties the same size of ours are doing it. So please read that report, which I've read it multiple times, but we really got to look at making this place safer and helping the sheriff, whoever is elected sheriff at that time, and sitting down and really putting importance, because he's an elected official. We set his budget as commissioners. And doing that, I think he needs to come with us with a goal and a plan as an elected as being the sheriff, and saying, Look, this is the money I need to get to this goal, and this is how to improve our safety. He's the expert in us saying, and we need to take sit down and really take his word to heart and say, okay, look, maybe we can't give you as much as you need, but what's creative ways we can help you, and that can be grant writing. There's different grants you can go for in, like I said, working with the tribe, working as a public safety director, I've dealt with grants through the obj grants in different state, grants you have. But the problem with grant funding is we can't rely on that to pay wages, because when grant funding runs out, the wages are gone and but when we start looking at grants, grants can be a good thing, especially if they can cover equipment and different stuff. You can buy training those kind of things, and collaborating with different agencies and doing those things. So we have to get creative. But the only way that's going to happen is you we got to sit down and have a true, non emotional talk and say, Hey, we got to all live here. We all want to be safe. We all want to make it better. Let's sit down and let's let's meet the road. Let's say what the problems are. Let's get out there and sit down and have these hard conversations and see how we can help each other, but if the community don't feel safe, it just snowballs into all kinds of different things. And so those are some of the couple of the big ones. I know you said three, but our road and bridges are huge too. Obviously, road and bridge is always going to come up. That's infrastructure, all those things you need to make your county work. You know, you'd have the worst emergency in the world, but if you don't have a road to get there on that you can't do it. You ain't going to get help anyway. But so we really got to start looking at some of those things. And I think those are priorities.
LP McKay
Excellent. Well, thank you for answering that, and I'm sure we'll get to more as we as we go through our interview. Montezuma county is facing ongoing financial challenges. You touched on that a little bit in your first couple of answers there. How do you view the county's current budget situation, and what steps would you support to improve long term revenue stability?
Gerald Whited
So currently the budget, as you've been reading, everybody says we have this surplus sitting there. So when you look at it from a budget standpoint, having the surplus sitting there and in the general and doing that, I would say we're not terrible, but we're not great. We're. We're okay. So how I would look at it sitting there, but you're seeing a mess for cuts. And I'm gonna get into that a little bit, because I think there's a big thing that goes into this. One of the things is we're, I think, I think, don't quote me on this, but we're over 70% federal land in the county Montezuma County, so we have taxes that come in. That's called PILT taxes, which is payment in lieu of taxes and that. And that's money that we get for federal land that sits in the county that comes in. Well, there's a formula that this they use to give you that money. And I think that formula is jacked up. I think it's it's messed up. I've looked into it. I've done it because it has all different things that go in there, like population, minerals, how much minerals and stuff we have. All those things go in and I don't think we get a fair share shake in Montezuma County. Because, as you know, look, we're we have all the federal land we have here. We have the Four Corners National Monument, we have Mesa Verde National Park. We have the Canyon of the Ancients. I mean, we have a ton of federal stuff here that I think we should get our fair share. And it should all this formula needs to be reworked. So I think we really need to go at the levels, at the state level, and that say, Hey, we're not getting a fair shake. We need to speak up and say, Hey, this isn't fair to us down here. Their thing is, we start looking at Kinder Morgan. Kinder Morgan, back in 2010 was almost 60% of our income coming into Montezuma County. 10,025 we're under. We're at around 38 percentage. 35 38% coming in that's going down and every year. And if you're looking at this, every year, it's getting less and less well. The CO two starting to run out. They're talking about closing, slowing up, drilling, doing slowing wells. So we're going to have to make that difference up. And so having that pot of money is great, but you have to be super, super diligent in knowing all these other things are going away. And so as these things start going away, you still have to sustain accounting. You still have to make things happen. So you're going to have to start looking at different revenue for revenue streams, and that isn't taxing more, that isn't putting more tax on our people that own homes and and looking for ways that way, we got to start thinking outside the boxes, like, what are we going to do when this runs out? How are we going to do this? And so I'm looking at that, and we have to look at new programs for sustainability, like I said, in place in retention, you know, sustainability and retention, that goes back to leadership. We've heard that a lot, saying that, you know, turnover rate because We can't pay but it's also goes leadership is a direct reflection of turnovership, too. So like when we're talking the big turnovers at road and bridge and this and that I've heard they ran road and bridge by committee, not by supervisor doing this. We got to hire great supervisors, people that we trust in positions, and we got to make sure that they give us concrete goals and plans how to get to those goals. And the NESs county commissioners got to give them the tools to be able to accomplish those. And once we and once we do that, you're going to see it makes a better workplace. We can't micromanage. We got to, we just got to hire really good people to do the job and let them do their jobs and and hold them accountable. So like I said, as a county commissioner, we have a County Administrator, and really think that's our only employee, when it really comes to he's he manages everybody else as elected officials. Well, we got to hold him accountable, asking him the hard questions, why are these people leaving? Why don't they feel supported? We got to ask some questions here and and make it realistic, and say, Hey, because when you build good leadership, everything else sort of falls into place. And so it always starts with the good leadership. And if we're falling at the leadership level, then you got to turn around, look at yourself, saying, What are we doing that we ain't doing Correct? That's not making sense, and that's just leadership 101, and we just got to sit there and apply it to what we do.
LP McKay
Thank you for that. How should the county balance funding for core services like you've mentioned, road maintenance and public safety, two big ones on the top of everybody's list. But how do you balance that with all the other community needs that the county provides?
Gerald Whited
You're right that it's a juggling act, right? We always talk about, I have big budgets. Like I said, I working for the tribe. I deal budgets every day, so I totally understand the juggling aspect. Like, you rob one How you going to fix the other one? You know? So we got to look at this and some of those fixtures, like the sheriff, like I already brought up, I want him to come with a budget and say, here's how I can make the county safer. Here's my budget. And then if we're going to look at looking at that, and say, Okay, great. Now if we have to cut where, where would you cut? As you know, but doesn't hurt our county. And so we just, like I said, those conversations got to be had. Sometimes it's really hard conversations, and we got to do that. But it's super tough when you say, Oh, here's somebody you figured out, just cut it. No, he may not be able to cut it something, I mean, so you got to weigh what's great for the county versus, you know, maybe we can do without this. Maybe we can't in the two places you've never, I was always have been told. I mean, if you look at through across the US, you don't want to try to cut public safety and you don't cut infrastructure routes. Those are the two more everybody in the county. It don't matter if you're Republican, Independent, Democrat, it don't matter you. You need two things that everybody uses, or three things, use roads, use this public safety aspect of it, and you use our infrastructure. So those three things is important to everybody. That's non political. It's like you have to have those to make it county work. And going through that a great example of a grant that we I brought up grants, right? And I said, don't do it for wages. We had a CIP team here, which, if nobody knows what that means, they responded with law enforcement. Take some weight off. Law enforcement to respond to mental health issues that they were having, our emergencies. Well, the grant money ran out. There was no money to fund it. Now, the whole program's gone. So why? Why? It's hard to say, right. So when we start looking at programs, I think that was a super important program that we had here. It took the every law enforcement that we talked to enjoyed it. They needed it. They were like, it really took some pressure off us. Plus, you know, if someone's having a mental health breakdown, does it save us? Do we lock them up, throw them in the jail and do whatever and go that route, or do we look for to get them help, right? And so that team was sort of helping take some of that pressure off, but now it's gone because it was grant funded this and that, and we never built up sustainability to it. We were like, hold on, if this really works, why aren't we looking at it? And so that's a good example, why you don't use grants to try to do wages, because, you know, it can be a great program, and everybody likes it, and then boom, it's gone the next day. And, and so it's really hard to do that, and, and I already brought, like, the other approaches to it, like said, not micromanaging. That's huge. Let people put people in the right spots, let them do their job, support them to their jobs. And if they don't hold them accountable and not micromanage, they have in them. But the thing, one thing, I will ask them, what's your goal, what's your plan? Give me your yearly goal. Give me your plan. Give me your strategic 5-10, 10. Where do you see this going? Like we have projects that are going to take multiple years, not just done in one year. So how's your plan? What's your stages to get there? And if you're running behind, why? Or if you're you know, if your head great, what? What can we do better? Right? And so strategic planning, and holding all the departments to that, saying, Look, what's your plan? Not today, but in the next three years, next five years, next 10 years, right? As a commissioner, I'm only serving four, possibly eight, if I get elected twice, and so I got to set up for the next guy coming in if I get elected, or I got to do that. So we got to have this sustained over a period of time, not just what we're going to fix today and then all it's someone else's problem tomorrow. That ain't how we can do things. We got to look at it from a big perspective, wide view.
LP McKay
What role do you see the county playing in supporting local businesses, job growth and the workforce here in Montezuma County?
Gerald Whited
Well, one thing is getting the right businesses in the right places. So that goes into what I mean by that is some of the zoning importance we look at maybe possibly offering some incentives to bring different businesses in here, industrials in here. I don't know how that would look. It could look as far as maybe reducing some permit fees or different like I said, I don't know, because I'm not sitting there, but these are just like I said, you throw ideas, 100 ideas, and see what sticks. And that's one of some of the things that you can look at. But and then also making it like, you know, we have road impact fees, quicker permitting processes. These are all ideas that you can shoot out there and talk through. And, like said, if you get elected, there's three, two other gentlemen that sit there so but as a group, coming up with really smart ideas of just saying, How can we make it streamlined easier? Because one of the things I had heard when some businesses come in is, like, takes a long period of time to get through. Well, how can we streamline that? Maybe make it a little bit easier for them doing that? And like I said, just looking at those kind of aspects, because you want to be attracted and then, when you look at small communities, what do you all hear them say is, well, we'll give you come here and bring a factory in that gives 200 jobs, and we'll give you this break, this break, this break. Well, okay, if we give them a break in the long run, will it sustain us? You know, does it bring more taxpayers in? Does it bring more tax revenue in? Does it do things? So there's a big it's more than just one thing to say. You've got to look at the big picture and saying, Okay, how do you set that up? I don't have any exact answer, but these are just ideas throwing out there. Saying, Look, if you, if you're going to employ 200 people, that's 200 more taxpayers I have in here. This is more tax money. This is more sales. These are all these things that are coming in. So how do we go through what we're getting. Does that make sense? It's like, risk, reward type stuff. Affordable housing is a big thing. Like, I just, we just talked about, you know, living here. I'm 100% blessed when I moved here, when I did, when I bought my home in Dolores, I could afford it then, and I just got my appraisal right, and looking at and I'm like, Oh, wow, if I would have moved here today doing the same job I'm doing now, I couldn't even afford to live here because of what my rent would be or what my payments would be, and in in it, and that's what we're lopsided in this county with what we make wages versus what our housing is and and it doesn't work out. I mean, like we're talking about public safety, do we look at go, look. At maybe housing that goes along with, if you're here working as an officer, here, we have extra, better housing for you built. So that takes some, yeah, you're going to pay, but we keep it affordable so you can afford to live here. Play retention, right? We see cities are getting creative doing that. People are getting creative saying we're having employee incentive housing, or what that kind of stuff, doing it. Well, that's how you keep people, especially when you move to rural areas and rural counties, you have to give them because, like I said, they can't afford to live here, and it's sad, and it's we're losing that. We're getting priced out. And it's not just here, it's, it's everywhere across the US, but it's just, how do we fix it? Right? It's a global problem. And then we really got to invest in technology infrastructure, bringing bigger names here in the younger generation, like, what I mean by that is building with, like, bringing in our broadband and expanding and doing all these things, because we're losing a lot of our local kids. They're moving away, and they're not coming back. So we're training this job force right? And then this drop force takes off and moves somewhere else and doing it, but we but we really got to look technology as we run down is is going crazy. And if you're not in the game, you're way behind the game. And in order to bring infrastructure and things here as you try to do it, the first thing they look at, you hear a lot of people, what's your what's broadband? Do you have broadband? Do you have internet? High speed? All these things play hand in hand. So the infrastructure piece of doing that would really help support that economic development in the local businesses. Because you can sit there and say, we have that. And these local businesses that we're here now, we just have to stop taxing them to death. They get taxed for property tax, they get business tax, they live here and they get home tax. So they're taxed every way you turn they're getting taxed. And so we really got to try to do something to support them and keep there and and really saying, hey, look, we're a small community. And, like, I went to a meeting last night, they talked about Medicaid, Medicare cuts and that for our hospital. And the one thing one of the gentlemen said in the meeting, he's like, Look, if people would come to our hospital and do care here, it helps us. And so that's the same thing with our small businesses. We have people that stay local, shop local, do here, and we look at helping each doing that. It just keeps everybody going, and that's super important in a small community.
LP McKay
Yeah, I agree. Local again, non political on that one. So how would you work to make county government more accessible and ensure residents feel heard in decision making.
Gerald Whited
So this is I thought about this a lot because I've sat on different boards and doing this too. And yeah, public input at meetings is really tough. You have agendas you have to follow, you have to sit there, you have to get business done, but you got to get more creative outside of just those meetings. And so we they already do coffee with commissioners, but they do it at 10 in the morning, like a guy like me who has to go work a normal job nine to five or sorry, I wish it was nine to five from about 730 in the morning to whenever I get out of there doing that, we don't get time to get off to come talk to them, and neither does any of these other people, a lot of these people that work blue collar jobs, and they're out there busting their tail and doing stuff. They can't make those meetings because they're scheduled during the week, during times that everybody has to work. You know, if I told him, went and told my boss every day, hey, I'm going to coffee commissioners, he's gonna say, Well, why don't you just stay there and we'll find someone else do your job, right? But no, it's just the whole idea of, we got to make it more accessible to people. And if I get elected county commissioner, I've already told some people. I've been asked this, I'm going to quit working my full time job. I am my full time job will be being a county commissioner and and I think that's important because, like, just I run my department in public safety on the tribe, and there I have an open door policy. I want to have office hours. I want you there's a problem. I want you to come knock on my door. I want you to call me. I want to meet with you. And if you can't make my hours, call me. I mean, I'm doing it now. I I'm getting calls, going and talking to people. I'll go to your house. It don't matter to me, like I said, and also, it doesn't matter to me where you sit on the spectrum, right? I want to answer your questions. I want to hear the concerns, because I'm a big believer. I don't have all the answers. No one does and and so you do that, you're a lot stronger if you have 5-6-7-8, people chiming in on a thing, because you might have stuff that you've never thought about before, and people are bringing this up, well, I didn't know that affected that I didn't know affected you that way, and giving them a chance to tell you how they feel, also, you ain't gonna please everybody. We know this. You're not gonna make everybody happy. But you know what? You heard their concern, and you heard what they were worried about, and they felt they were listened to. And that in that is so big to me, and so being visible, attending events, going to meetings, creating really different ways to hear and resolve complaints. And so to me, I like I do my employees. I tell them, if you come to me with a complaint, I usually tell them, great, I'm glad you're complaining, but give me three solutions. What's your way to solve this problem? And so make them be invested in it. So if you're gonna come to me and yell about something and say, It's promo, how do you think we should fix it? What's your answer to this? So listen to me come and make them part of that process that I think when you make somebody, people part of the process, not in a meeting setting, but outside of that meeting, and make them part of that, they feel that they're being heard. They feel. That they have a say. And I think that's super important. And the biggest thing you can do is you got to be transparent about your constraints, budget, legal, feasibility. Those have to be super transparent issues. And like I said, you're some people are going to be mad, some people are going to complain. But what you need to tell them why you're doing it, why, how to make it feasible, and what was the constraints, why you were having those issues with that budget? And then also, you have to build a really consistent trust through being following through with all your commitments. So if you make a commitment that I'm gonna call somebody back, or you make say, Hey, meet with me on this day, you have to do everything. You need to do diligence to do that. Because, you know, like said, I grew up in a small community. I grew up where my neighbor could think totally different me, but if I shook his hand and I said, Hey, I'll be there for you tomorrow, I'll be Damn straight. I'm gonna be there tomorrow. You know, that's what it's like living in a small community. So follow up with the people. Answer their questions, and if you don't know, be honest. I don't know, and say but I'll find out for you. And then if you're going to follow up, make sure you come here. Leave me your number. Follow up with me. Up with me, or do that. I think those things are so important. And I think as a county commissioner, I'm not here to represent, you know, my feelings. I'm here to represent the people in in as I do this, you know, when you asked me earlier why I ran, and that's one of the biggest reasons I ran, is I want to represent the people. And what I mean by that is, I'm not a small business owner. I don't work for the county. I've never worked for the county. I have no relatives that work for the county. I just told you I worked. Only job I know is I worked on the tribe. But I've coached in this county with little kids. I've I've sat here and I run the Escalante softball tournament in Dolores every year for a big fundraiser. That's a two day tournament that we give money to disabled kids and veterans and doing that and and so I have no skin in this game. I'm running because I want to be that Commissioner that runs for the people, not because I have a hidden agenda, maybe or not that I can make something better. It's I don't have nothing to gain by being a commissioner. I have nothing to really gain by not, you know, by not doing it. It's just the idea of, I wanted to be the person to run, to say, give the people a voice and let everybody know. I go to work like you. Do every day. I get up every day like you. I know what the struggles are. I know how it is to struggle. I know how it is to do well sometimes, and I know how it is to give back to the people. I think that's important. I said we need to go back to have a commissioner that's just like every one of us.
LP McKay
Thank you for that. Up next, because I like to hear the second piece of this especially. But what do you see as the biggest challenge facing Montezuma county right now? We've gone over a myriad of them, but if you could just pick one everybody's got, and then what opportunity are you most excited about if you're elected? I feel like you kind of touched on it there.
Gerald Whited
But well, the sheriff's office, that's huge. I think that's the number one. I don't want to say it's number one because I can't say I want, I want to say it's one of the top and, like I said, because I'm not going to rate them one more than the other, because I think that we have a couple two things that are really important, but the sheriff's office definitely a super important for Montezuma County. We got to be safe. We got to feel our children are safe going to school. We got to feel that we're safe walking the street at night. We got to feel safe their neighborhoods are safe. We got to feel safe that our farms are protected, that no one's coming in and stealing something we left in our yard, right? So, so we really got to look at those issues and come up with creative ways and work with the sheriff and have that open talk, transparency, and really be like, okay, no feelings involved in this. Let's sit down and do business. Let's sit down and say, how can we work as a group to make us safer? And that's so important to me. And when we make decisions out of emotion, and then you get mad, and then the conversation stop, that's just as an elected official, you can't do that. You still got to represent your people. You still got to do that. So I really think that's super, super important, and we need to really start now with long, long term strategic planning where it's going to happen. We're going to run out of money, the taxing. We can't rely on this oil and gas money all the time. We can't rely on all these things. So we really got to look at a strategic, long term strategic planning to figure out how we can keep our county sustainable, because it's going to come to the point that it's, you're going to see some really hard decisions. And it's not cutting people. It's not raising tax I just, I'm not a raising tax guy. I hate it. I just, we can't just do that. We can't punish these poor ranchers and farmers and these people on fixed income to try to fund the county. We all on their own. It just, we just can't do that. And then one thing I'm going to bring up is we really start got to pay attention to our mental health and substance abuse problem that we have in the county. It's not a fun thing to talk about, but it is a problem and and like I said, and that's going to go with collaboration partnerships, like working with the tribe, maybe we partner with the tribes, both here and not even in our county, but opening up even, like with La Plata County, opening up intergovernmental talks and stuff, and saying, Hey, how can we make so it isn't just us doing it, it's we do a collaborative and say, Hey, we all have this problem. How can we make it better? And we don't fund the whole bill. We have to really build those collaborations with the tribal and tribal and all these other government and you say, hey, let's work together. And that's what it's about. It's in this, like I said, in the financial impact that we have right now, in the Financial Times. We got to start working with everybody else and seeing how everybody can help each other and do things, and how we can still get work done and still do do stuff, and I think that's just so important. So sorry I went on that, but,
LP McKay
Yeah, I think people got a good idea of what your what your agenda is. There. We're in our last few questions here. County commissioners often have to work closely with staff other elected officials. You've mentioned that a bit, neighboring governments, all levels, federal, who knows, international governments. How would you describe your leadership and collaboration style?
Gerald Whited
Well, I do this already in my job. I do this every day. I mean, I wouldn't say every day, but a lot of the days I have to interact already with some of our congressmen, some of our state representatives, and, like I said, different government agencies, whether it's like working with tribal council, what I do in my everyday job, crossing with the I'm an emergency manager for the tribe. So I work with Jim spratlin up here. Work with La Plata County. I work with San Juan, Utah, San Juan, New Mexico. I mean, we have, I talked to these guys every week, reaching out in collaboration. So I think it's, it's when you do collaboration with the intergovernment is saying, hey, what can you help me with? And then when we don't agree with something, saying, Hey, we have a problem with this, and speaking up. And I think it's really important, like I said, in a county, you really have to have that state, you know, up there with the state knowing how to talk to the legislatures, knowing how to do that, because that that plays a big role, and people don't realize sometimes how big of a role that actually does play, but it's huge, and same way, like when they come here, I don't, I may not like you, per se, as a congressman or as a but you know what? I still gotta play nice in the sandbox, because I need you to help me, and I need to convince you why we need help. And so that's what I do, that's, I already have that experience. I've done it a lot in it's and I think it's super important. And then I already work across inter, you know, the different counties. I have a proven record to do it. So I just think it's just super important, and it's big, especially now, when we're in the financials that we're going down the road with how crazy the government it runs is right now with everything, and the way, you know, the governor, the feds are fighting with our state level guy, we're going to have to get creative. I hope Did that answer that right for you? Yes, there's
LP McKay
No right or wrong. It's just we are but yeah, how would voters measure your success if you're elected, and what would you hope to point to at the end of your term?
Gerald Whited
So the one thing is, I'm going back to strategic planning. I would like to sit down with the other two commissioners, because, like I told you, there's three of us. One guy can't do anything you. You're a team. And that's the biggest thing. Is, you're running for an elected official that you sit here, you do work at a team. I'm not saying you're all going to agree. You're not going to do that, but you're you have to be a team. So when, when you measure success, that's why I'd say I would come out and be transparent about here's my three year goal, or here's my first year goal is my second year goal is my three year goal first years or do we got the sheriff's office funding, like they need to be doing that. Have measurable goals to hit, and if you do that, then being able to tell the public, hey, we're on our route. We're happy. This is where we're working. This is what we're doing, is our communication got better with the public. So I want to actually set measurable goals, and not just saying, Well, I was here for three years. Well, what did you accomplish? Well, we accomplished a lot of things. Well, like, what? But no. But the biggest thing is setting measurable goals that you can get to, and being able to tell people where you're at and and there's gonna be times you're gonna set a goal that you're not gonna be able to get to, but saying, Hey, we tried and we just couldn't get there. And so we had to punt and take a mulligan in golf, and we're going to go different route, but we're still going to try to get there and and I think that's super important, and that's how you get measured as an elected official. And like I said, you're not going to make everyone happy and you're you're going to have people that are going to be upset with you, and then you have people are going to be real happy with you. But the idea is, if you can explain it and be able to say, Hey, I did what's best for what I think for the whole county was, and everybody as a whole, and I think that's super important. But like I said, you're just one vote out of three, and so you really got to have some hard conversations with your other commissioners, which right now, both of them are, you know, decent men to talk to, and are great business owners. And they're elected there for a reason. So you know, you just have to be part of that team and say, Hey, there's some things that I have ideas. Were you willing to listen to my ideas too and then collaborate as a group? Because that's what you really need to do. It's more about collaboration than it is. I ain't going to sit here and lie to anybody and say, I can come in here and just make these changes, because if you do that, you can't you you are a team. And it takes work, and it takes collaboration, and it takes that, and you're going to have to really put that work in to make that happen.
LP McKay
And we've touched on all sorts of things in our time together. This is our final question. So if there's anything that we haven't talked on, anything that you want to touch on that we haven't yet, this is your opportunity.
Gerald Whited
No, I think we covered a lot of. Off being a commissioner is a hard job. It's not easy and and I've thought about that a lot. I've been asked, you know, some people friends, why are you doing this? And it's like, you know, I've been hit with challenges my whole life, growing up through dealing with my son, being hurt, working, being working, where I do the job I do in public safety, you you have problems every day, and you learn to fix them, and that's and that's how I feel. It's just like I want to, I like to be challenged, and I decided to run for Commissioner, because it's one of those things that I think is challenging. And I want to make a difference. I want to be that person that can say, feel good at the end of the day, that, or the end of a term and say, Hey, I did everything in my power, the most I can do, and I went in at 150% and that's all I can ask, to be asked to give. And that's, I think, that's with anybody and, and that's I would ask, you know, if you run, if you're going for a public office and you're running, please give it everything you have, because it's important to the people. It's important that people that put you there, they're asking you for a pretty good ask, a big ask, and and with the tough times that we have coming, and some of the things I see down the road, I think, I think if this is going to be it won't be an easy four years at all. It's going to be a very challenging four years. And I just hope to leave it better than if I get elected. I hope to leave it better for the next person that follows me, and so that would be one of my biggest things and goals. And I just appreciate you. You know, I seen the bashing you got on Facebook people saying, Hey, are you, are you gonna interview everybody and just everything? And, like, I said, that kind of stuff, it's like, and I really appreciate you giving everybody a fair shake. I really appreciate that. And that's just it. I just think everybody's voice needs to be heard, and hopefully the everybody decides who they want to pick. And my biggest thing Tell everybody is get out and vote. This is your election. This is this is who you want to represent you in the county commission for the next four years, and this at least one seat. So please get out and do your due diligence. Get to know the candidates. Meet them, call them, say hey, read them and and get to know the people one on one, because interviews like this are great, but when you talk to somebody one on one, you get to really know who they are and where they come from. And so please remember, we have the forums coming up.
LP McKay
Yeah, they're always on the KSJD calendar. So yeah, you can get those there, yeah.
Gerald Whited
And so please just show up and get to know the people. Because, like I said every election is important to me, and I think it's everybody does the due diligence to vote. I think that's super important.
LP McKay
Yeah, well, thank you for being here. I appreciate you taking the time.
Gerald Whited
Thank you very much. Ma'am.
