"6. What do you see as a Pocahontas County Commissioner's greatest challenge?"

Note: The Pocahontas Times asked all county commission candidates to answer 6 questions, to be published one each week. Below is my response to this week's question.

A county commissioner faces many challenges, any of which could be deemed the greatest given the right time and circumstance. So to name just one of them is a little simplistic.

On the surface of it, the myriad issues and problems that come before the commission are themselves the challenges. But underneath it all, the real challenges lie within the very personal and intimate nature of the commissioner themselves.

How do you deal with controversy? Are you afraid of your constituents? Do they have a point, and should you be listening a little more closely? Are you a leader? Do you have a vision for what we are and where we should focus our efforts? Is that vision self-serving, or is it what you have observed and perceived from the community itself? Are you a patient soul? Do you have humility? Are you friendly, are you fair? Can you laugh? Can you be wrong at the right times? Can you fall and stand back up? Can you fight, can you yield?

I consider such questions all great challenges and their answers requisite to the task of public service. They will, after all, manifest themselves in the actual decisions made. I personally have found no better place than Pocahontas County as a landscape in which to grapple with such questions, these personal challenges that play out in the actions of any public servant.

But for me, as a would-be county commissioner, there is in fact a challenge I consider greatest. It is the challenge of understanding where we are right now and how we want to shape our future. As the elder generation and current guard of Pocahontas County ages and passes on, the need for the younger generation to assume that post is a mirror that won't turn away. Living here is always a challenge, and money is always short. But the charge for us, the younger generation, is to uphold and improve our quality of life as we carve out our livelihoods.

We are Pocahontas County, the most beautiful and unique in all of West Virginia, and we need to embrace and protect this. It is our home and our strength, and serving this incarnate hope and dream that we are is, for me, the greatest challenge I face.