Earlier this week, an open candidate forum was held at the Churdan Library for those candidates facing the June primary for some of the Greene County elected positions.

Attendees got to ask questions and voice their concerns to the two Republican candidates for Supervisor District Five with Guy Richardson and Peter Bardole and the two Republican candidates running for Sheriff with Kirk Hammer and Jack Williams.

The Supervisor candidates addressed several issues, such as plans for bringing in more manufacturing jobs, to housing and over saturation of hog confinements in the county. Bardole believes that something should be done about the odor from hog confinements, pointing out that some companies and owners do a better job of mitigating that then others. Richardson said that he has supported hog confinements for the majority of his tenure on the Board, but that he would like to have more local control for future decisions of hog confinements.

The Sheriff candidates answered questions about overtime issues with the budget, having all patrol vehicles marked, jail issues and housing inmates in other counties to increasing the amount of deputies to have better coverage of the county. Hammer thought all the patrol vehicles needed to be marked and there is one vehicle that isn’t, which has the K-9 unit in it. Williams operates that vehicle and he said it is unmarked because he is a narcotics investigator and having an unmarked vehicle makes that part of his job easier.

Library Director Shari Minnehan told Raccoon Valley Radio that part of what they do at the library is to provide the public with information and Monday night’s forum was an example of that.

“This is a simple way that we can provide an opportunity for people to come and meet the candidates that may not want to go out of town to meet them for the Churdan residents. It’s just bringing the politicians to the people I guess a little bit, so they can get to meet them, and visit with them and ask questions.”

The primary election will be on June 7th.