Beach appointed to Raines' vacant council seat

The Libby City Council on Tuesday appointed Gary Beach as the new member to fill the remaining term left behind by former council member Dejon Raines last month.

Of the three candidates who interviewed publicly Tuesday night, Gary Beach received three council votes to Gary Neff’s one; none voted for Dennis Souther. Only council members Brent Teske, Brian Zimmerman (who each voted Beach) and Allen Olsen (voted Neff) were present at the meeting.

Beach, a 2015 city council candidate, after the meeting said his appointment to the city council offers a fresh perspective on city business and future projects.

“I think I’m objective enough because I don’t have an agenda. That’s the biggest thing. The only thing I want to see is the City of Libby move forward.”

Beach, a Libby resident since 1989, has worked as a project manager and operations supervisor for Noble Excavating since 2009. He said his work involves working a variety of trades, including utility projects, emergency response and site work. He also said he’s been an active part of determining budget projects much larger than the $4 million final city budget proposed Tuesday night.

“I deal with budgets that are much larger than this. I’ve managed a budget that is twice this,” he said.

“You need people with supervisory skills to work through a lot of these issues,” Teske said after the meeting. “I feel he was as qualified, if not more, than the other candidates.”

Beach ran for a council seat in the 2015 election but lost out. Beach said he has attended three or four meetings in the past year.

The crowd immediately disputed the appointment of Beach over Neff. Prior to the appointment, a few members of the audience endorsed former Council member Neff as the candidate for the job.

Neff, a now retired Libby resident for six years, provided three specific reasons he wanted to run for office, the first being what he called a debt of service. He said he had been present for every city council meeting in the past year but two, and had only missed one council meeting. Neff was appointed to fill Bill Bischoff’s vacated seat in September of 2015 and held the position for four months. On Tuesday, he said he would like to hold the council seat for the next eight-to-10 years.

Several crowd members cried cronyism from their seats in the back when Teske, Zimmerman and Williams voted Beach.

“There is no cronyism,” Teske said after the meeting. “The only advantage that Gary Neff had was Gary Neff had a head start by being on the council and being informed about some things.

As far as [Beach’s] qualifications, I feel like he’s as qualified as anyone else sitting up here with his military experience, his work experience, his life experience. He does also have some technical aspects and skills in construction.”

Neff echoed several philosophical themes brought by Neff in his interview, which mostly centered around working as a cohesive council focused on progress. He noted his work with other Libby-sized towns that seemed to have found their new economic base after losing the majority of their industry, like Wallace, a former mining town in Idaho.

“We really need to move forward in a positive way and rebrand ourselves,” Beach said during the interview.

On Wednesday, Council member Allen Olsen gave Beach a cautious endorsement.

“I don’t think Gary Beach is a bad guy, I just don’t believe he was the candidate for the job,” he said. “I think we owe Gary Beach an opportunity, but he was not the most qualified person for the job.”

Although former Council member Dejon Raines’s term is set to expire in 2019, Lincoln County Elections Administrator Leigh Riggleman said the seat will be up for election in 2017 to fill the remaining term with a candidate of the voters’ choice. During his interview, Beach said he would like to continue his career as council member if given the chance.

“There’s a lot of grief within the community,” Beach said. “We have to come together and find some common ground instead of just rehashing the same problem month after month. I look forward to hearing from everybody; that’s the biggest thing. It’s going to be good and it’s going to be bad but it’s part of the gig. I’m just here to move forward.”

Reporter Seaborn Larson may be reached at 758-4441 or by email at slarson@dailyinterlake.com.