Candidates for Christian County Presiding Commissioner attended a forum on the square in Ozark Thursday evening, hosted by the Christian County Headliner.
Terry Bible and Jered Taylor are both running as Republicans. There are no Democratic candidates, making the August primary the deciding vote in the race.
Both candidates introduced themselves and took questions gathered from the public.
Bible noted his experience in law enforcement on the highway patrol and in the military. He described himself as a public servant who had dealt with some of the worst situations residents of the community find themselves in. He pitched a downhome community driven approach to addressing problems.
Taylor touted experience serving as a State Representative in Jefferson City, as well as his corporate work and work under Congressional Rep. Eric Burlison. He pushed his familiarity with the state government, which he said could help support projects in the county related to things like transportation and natural resources.
They took questions about their thoughts on how the county should approach data centers, the county's recently closed recycling center, their experience with large budgets and their priorities.
Here are excerpts from Terry Bible:
“I promise that I will do the absolute best job that I can possibly do for the citizens of Christian County. I'm not going to promise anything else beyond that... I would like to work on incentives and benefits for, for county employees. And that carries a lot of weight because we've got a lot of employees across the county... I want to make Christian County a better place to live, work, serve, retire, open a business...”
And Jered Taylor:
“One of the things that I think we need to do a better job of is getting the input from Sparta and from clever and Nixa and Ozark and Highlandville and Spokane, and coming together and advocating for larger projects to bring those projects into Christian County... I want to make sure that we're transparent with the people. I want to continue having public meetings inviting you all to attend those and answering questions, answering those hard questions. And I also want to make sure that as your presiding commissioner, that I'm protecting the budget..”
Bible and Taylor will be on the Republican ballot for Christian County Presiding Commissioner in our primary election this August 4.
