The East and West Lane County Commission districts offer a wealth of opportunities for leadership. Each district stretches from the more densely populated areas of the central county over half its long span, one from the Willamette Valley west to the Pacific and the other east to the Cascades. West Lane residents are fishers, farmers, and foresters, with a strip of high-traffic tourist destinations and a concentration of health care providers along the coast, several small school districts, and a few rural towns surrounded by sparsely populated miles of woodlands and family farms. East Lane surrounds Eugene, encompassing the bigger towns like Cottage Grove and Creswell, and then stretches into the Cascades. It also has a few small towns (some recovering from recent fires) and school districts, vast tracts of productively harvested forests, some river sport hubs, and skiing on the slopes at the eastern end—many economic activities that are weather dependent. Somehow, the East and West Commissioners have to master the intricacies of the core social and economic needs of these diverse regions and figure out how to work with the other three commissioners to create policies and programs that work for the whole county. This is no small assignment!
Anyone who wins 51% of the vote in this local race gets the position; if no one does, the race continues in November.
In this program, the four candidates for the West County seat being vacated by the incumbent and the two candidates for the East County seat will describe their ideas and priorities for serving the people of Lane County and their qualifications for leading. A fifth candidate, Rodney Graves, dropped out of the race.
KLCC News Director Rachael McDonald moderates this forum. This program aired on KLCC Monday, May 2nd.