ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
The Seward County Commission will be seeing some new leadership in the coming weeks, and one of the candidates looking to fill Presephoni Fuller’s former seat is Don Barr Jr.
Barr is certainly no stranger to Liberal or Seward County, and his devotion to the area is what prompted him to run.
“I’ve lived here since 1974 – I didn’t grow up here, but I graduated from Liberal High School in 1975. I drove a truck for a lot of years,” Barr said. “My mom and dad worked in school district, and now I’m a shop foreman for large trucking outfit and take care of their maintenance. I did work seven years for the county and Road & Bridge take care of that maintenance. I am definitely maintenance-oriented. I’m tired of people trying to get away with just spend, spend, spend, and it doesn’t seem like there’s any stopping it in terms of checks and balances, and it’s got to stop sometime. It’s not going to be easy to deal with, there’s, there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye, than what the general public sees, but there needs to be transparency with everybody on everything and not just cherry picking what gets shared. I think that would make the general public a little happier, maybe a little easier to deal with, instead of everybody being mad at everybody. Let’s put it all out there on the table and see what happens. Let’s tell everybody the full story, and instead of having five commissioners, let’s have 30,000 commissioners in a roundabout way. I’ve lived in Liberal for more than 50 years now, and I’ve seen a lot happen in that time, so I feel like I have a good ear on what the people want. I’m not a politician and don’t have an agenda to help just myself, I really want to be able to help everyone as much as I can. I also did work for the county for a time, so I do have an idea of how things work at that level.”
Barr said there are many facets he would like to see fixed throughout the county.
“One of the big issues I see is a lack of transparency with everybody. Another big thing is money issues, and I think another issue is management – I’m not going to say their management is bad, I’m just saying their management maybe lacks some needed oversight,” Barr said. “I feel like there’s a ‘Can’t say no’ attitude with some of these people in their departments, or they don’t ask enough questions of why X or Y is needed. I very well might be wrong with that, but it looks like there could be more work done in that regard. Maybe we could not spend so much and save a little bit, like most of us regular people have to.”
Barr also admitted it will take a lot of work to smooth out the current tax situation.
“I admit I don’t know the entire situation, and once we start doing a deep dive into everything, you probably have 1,000 papers to look through to gauge a full understanding of how this happened and how we’re going to deal with it,” Barr said. “One way to deal with it is, is going to be to try to not spend so much money. Maybe we could combine a couple of departments, or maybe we could have employees who would be able help in multiple departments, and maybe we could save a little bit of money that way. And as bad as I say this, maybe every department head needs to take a little cut in their budget. You have to be careful when you do that, because you have health and safety involved in that like with the Sheriff’s Department, you have EMS, you have all that. So it can’t be across the board, but you’re going to have to look at every department and see if there’s anything that you can do without jeopardizing safety. I don’t know whether that would happen, but it’s just a thought because everybody in the county has had to sacrifice in order to make this work. The buck has to stop sometime.”
Barr said he also has mixed feelings about hiring a Chief Financial Officer (CFO).
“I’m not sure spending an extra $100,000 or so for somebody is THE way to go. I can’t see why you can’t just take all these five commissioners, all of whom are intelligent, and they could deal with this money situation. I feel like they could come together every week or so, look everything over, and deal with it that way,” Barr said. “It’s almost the same with the county administrator – you have five people who could administrate things – granted, there’s a lot of phone calls and a lot of meetings and a lot of other work, but if you want to serve and serve the people and you have to make some sacrifices. If you don’t want to do that, then resign so somebody else who wants to serve can do so. That’s what being on the commission is all about, to serve your community, not collect a paycheck and have status, which isn’t important to me.”
Should he be chosen, Barr said he is ready to get to work.
“Everybody says you need to be a politician to be able to do this, but I don’t believe that’s true. I think you just need to be an honest individual, looking out for the masses, and not just yourself,” Barr said. “I don’t have a personal agenda. If you want to get elected just because you have a personal agenda, you’re not the right person for the job, because you have to serve everybody and not just a few. I’m honest – at least, I like to believe I am – and I would serve the county the best I can if I end up getting chosen.”
