Mark Peck Interview

Challenger Mark Peck is running for Lincoln County Commissioner.

Peck, 55, is an Air Force veteran of 20 years. After retiring from the military, Peck worked as the quality assurance and security manager for the Montana Department of Corrections.

Peck is married to his wife, Terry, and has four children and six grandsons.

Why are you running?

Just to sum it up, the county is at one of its most critical points in its history, with the budget issues, the economy issues.

I grew up here. I couldn’t wait to get back here. I feel that I have been blessed with opportunities from a management and leadership standpoint in my professional career being able to do a lot of things. Being able to work, have opportunities to bring people together and solve a lot of issues. I think that I can help. It is up to the people to decide whether that background fits what they think that the county needs.

I think I have a skill set, and I think I can help. I am not going to say that I am better than anybody else. This is what I have got, and this is what I am willing to do.

What do you think is the role of a commissioner and what is the top priority should you become commissioner?

Managing that budget, both from the income standpoint and making sure that we have that correct. That is the number one role of the commissioners is to manage that county budget. To manage the services and provide the best services that we can to the citizens.

You know, it is really not a political position. It is a leadership and a management position. We don’t make laws. We provide the necessary services to the citizens of the county. That is kind of a unique role in government. Once you step above that you get the state agencies, not that they don’t serve the people but they don’t do direct service as much as the county does.

Number two, on the leadership side, is being strongly involved in the economic welfare of the county. The recreational and the cultural welfare of the county. Working aggressively with the Forest Service and outside agencies to get economic development and make sure that we are healthy not only from a public safety standpoint but from an economic and cultural standpoint.

Where specifically could you start to cut? Are there any areas that you think that this is a spot that could take a larger load than maybe some of the other ones?

There is no fat anywhere in county government. They have leaned things out pretty good.

Obviously, the two biggest targets are the sheriff’s department and road. Those are your bigger budgets. They also provide very critical services. I think that it is unfair to those departments for me to say which ones. I would just step back. We have got to run that analysis. We have got to involve the department heads, and we have to involve the citizens. You have to get the input on that from the departments and from the citizens.

What do you think is this county’s biggest infrastructural need? How do you go about adjusting that?

First is that Flower Creek Dam. That has got to get done. I applaud the commissioners. I hear that they are weighing in and going to Denver. I think that should have happened sooner.

I think that they are doing the right thing there. That dam is an absolute critical thing for Libby. I think the port-of-entry issue up in Eureka is a big issue. The back up and wait times hurt them economically. Those are the two most critical. That is not really a county, that is a pseudo-county organization. The commissioners don’t tell them what to do, but that could be a huge boom for the county. Unfortunately, we are so separated that it doesn’t probably mean jobs for Eureka, but more money in the coffer. What is good for Eureka is good for Libby.

You mean it would be more jobs for Eureka, but not for Libby?

No. It would mean more jobs for Libby, but it would still offset this cost of county government. It would still be a benefit to Eureka. We need to support the economic developments that are going on up in Eureka as well. That infrastructure, the hospital is a real boom for the county. Medical care is a huge infrastructure issue. I would say those are the most critical.

What kind of relationship do you see going between the state, county and city with the EPA and moving towards more local control?

I have got some really deep concerns. The EPA is finishing this project up. They are going to leave. I don’t see the state stepping up to the plate as much as they should. I see the Department of Enviornmental Equality kind of running from the responsibility. It upsets me when the county is told that we are going to have to pick up some of the cost of whatever is left over here after people leave. If we don’t get this transition right, we are going to be saddled with expenses and processes. We have homes at all different levels of exposure, but they are all clean. I am not really blaming the EPA here, but as knowledge changed, you know that is why they kept going back and redoing things. One of my concerns is that you have a homeowner that is sitting there with this leave-and-seal-it concept.

Three things happen to a home. Number one they dilapidate and fall down, which creates an exposure. Number two, they burn, which could possibly create an exposure. Or, number three, people take care of their homes and remodel. Now this homeowner buys this home and well, yep, it is clean. Then they decide to remodel and they find out that, boom, they have to bring in all of these specialized people that work with asbestos and do all this different.

From a political standpoint this transition is really up to us and the state. The EPA is not going to stay here. Quite frankly, I don’t want them to stay here. We need to get beyond this thing.

This area has a very long history of using natural resources, do you think we need more of that and how can we go about that?

There is no question that we need more of that. I think we need to be a little smarter on how we go about it.

The traditional way is that timber does timber and wildlife does wildlife and we all just do our thing. There are mutual benefits for both of us there. Number one, I think U.S. Fish and Wildlife and timber people should be meeting and using timber harvest more in line with wildlife management needs. That is one way. Number two is — and it is a long battle, it is not just something that county commissioners can sign a resolution to make it work — the federal laws that we are dealing with, the Endangered Species Act and the Equal Access to Justice Act, which is the litigation side of things, are broke and need to be fixed. I am not anti-grizzly bear. I am not anti-bull trout, but I don’t think that the science matches up with the requirements of the law. This hands-off approach to grizzly bear recovery is, in my opinion, actually detrimental to all the other species and detrimental to the grizzly bear. You can track the decline in timber harvest in the Kootenai National Forest and in Lincoln County and private land. We are losing good elk habitat. We are losing good mule deer habitat and you see those numbers almost track with Fish and Wildlife numbers.

If you track where those numbers were at in 1988 and where they are at today, there is a fairly equal decline with the timber harvest and the ungulate population. Elk were not a real native animal here. There might have been some, but never in the numbers that we are seeing now or saw 20 years ago. They planted them in here in the 1940’s or 30’s when they first started out of Yellowstone Park.

Bottom line is that biological creatures need three things. They need shelter, they need food and they need to procreate. We are killing this. We can do both of these. There is a lot of shelter for grizzly bears, but we may need to change some timber concepts, the way we log. We need to change the discussion because we are not doing anybody any good.

The other side of it is we have got to get past this conflict of pitting wilderness area against resource management like the two are mutually exclusive. I think that they are all in same toolbox. I am not anti-wilderness, but I am little tired of being held hostage by it.

Politically we have polarized this thing into these false arguments.

There have been a lot of well-publicized battles with the county and fire districts. How do you think things have gone down?

I think that the way that whole thing went down was a tragedy. I think that there was a general lack of communication and leadership early on and it was allowed to kind of follow the track of a fire. If you let it keep burning, it just gets bigger. I think that it is improving.

We need to get the lawyers out of it. The key thing is that we need to remember who we are serving and why we are serving. Public safety is about public safety and serving the citizens. I think that if we refocus on that it will go a long way.

The other side of it is we have to respect, as a county commissioner or anybody, you have to respect jurisdictions. You may not like the way they are doing things. We just need to refocus on who we are serving and why. It is up to the citizens out at Cabinet View what they want to do. I don’t know that necessarily having another fire department is the right thing. I am not saying that it is the wrong thing.

One of the problems with having a lot of independent fire departments is you have a lot of duplication of services. That tends to lead to them fighting and territorialism. A lot of that is healthy, but there is a tipping point. I think that we have reached that here.

I mean they have fire coverage that is going out there and providing excellent fire coverage. From a legal standpoint, insurance purposes and things like that, the citizens are not in a fire district. We need to solve that.