Q & A With Flint Hartwig on Chelan County Commission Race

Flint Hartwig is a candidate for Chelan County Commissioner, District 3 The seat is currently held by Tiffany Gering who is not seeking another term.

Hartwig is a former principal in Eider Construction and has no prior political experience.

KPQ-What will you try to improve about Chelan County government for its residents in the next four years?

FLINT HARTWIG-   I think I've been saying this and I'll say it again, it's going to be 1000 little victories. You know, if I can get one farmer to keep his farm and one builder to get a building going, I'm going to be pushing hard for that.  Also, I would like to see just some real austerity measures, some some real cuts where they're needed.  in the county budget right now, each department head is obviously,  very interested in keeping their department fully funded.  But this next round of taxation doesn't have the dollars in it that the previous round did, and there's going to be shortages.  In fact, they're, they're going through budget hearings right now, and there's just going to have to be some some cuts made.   And I think that my business experience and my my background in business, there's down years and up years, and you cannot just continue to raise your budget, your operating budget, every year, unless you have the revenue to support it. So basically, if there's bureaucratic things that don't make any sense. You know, we're still doing geotechnical analysis on every single lot. This has been nothing but a pain for builders.  There's no actual benefit you can point to because it was all kind of a knee jerk reaction to Oso, when the when the mountain slid in Oso (Washington).   But prior to that, nobody needed a geotechnical report, all the way back to the founding of the county.  Kind of similar in the way that the airports in America still make you take your shoes off, right? Because there was a shoe bomber. I don't even know when 80s, 90s, and we're still doing it. When other nations you know, and I have traveled all over the world, you don't take your shoes off in other airports, just, us.  So it's this kind of stuff that we can get rid of that report, and we can get rid of bunch of other stuff too.

KPQ- You and your opponent have picked up endorsements from current and former electeds (odfficials) Would you care to charachterize a distinction for voters?

FINT HARTWIG-  I think the big ones to hit on would be, obviously, Tiffany Gehring, who's exiting that seat, but also Shon Smith, who would be sitting on that board with me, and also Brant Cappell as well as Chris Willoughby who both ran in the primary. Anyone can go to my website and see lists of many others, so just in the name of time, I'm not going to list everybody out, but I think that the reason why I'm getting these endorsements is because we're kind of at a crossroads as a county and maybe as a nation, where it's going to take some decisive actions. And the reason why I'm the better candidate for this is because I will jump in and take those actions.  I'm not going to just go along to get along. And it's it's coming down to where the the things that we put into place right now will have an effect on our children.   And you know, Brad's a nice guy, for sure, but I can't see how you can spend  literally decades in either government affairs or school board, House, Senate, all of those offices are basically making policy that the rest of us have to live with.   I'm on the other side of that coin. I've been having to live with it forever. And now that I've been in in the industries that I've been in,  I get to go to the other side.  So my first hand experience is the same experience that the vast majority of the people who live in Chelan County have.  It's when you go to the county, what is your interaction going to be like? I've been there and he hasn't, so that's why I'm the better candidate.

KPQ- Let's talk about homelessness. How should the county's role in addressing that issue change? Or how would it change in dealing with the homeless if you're elected?

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FLINT HARTWIG-  calling a group homeless is kind of a pretty broad brush to paint with, right? Because if you actually go out and interview them, there's a bunch of different people in different sets of circumstances, and there are a minority of folks that are in actual need of the services that the county provides. And I think as a well to do society, we absolutely need to take care of the poor among us and people who are there by circumstance.  I think that's an absolutely critical component of having a functioning society. The issue is that there's no screening, so the government funded programs where your tax dollars are going, they say this is a drug free environment. We absolutely enforce a drug policy. The problem is that they don't. They will not allow you to get high in the parking lot. But what you do inside your RV is your own business. They will not allow you to trade drugs openly outside, but soon as they step behind the closed door of a motor home, it's fine. There's also prostitution, as well as a lot of violence and and it's obviously a hotbed of drugs. We can see this because we're literally dragging dead bodies out of these parks. So there's no enforcement, and so rules without enforcement don't really mean anything. The people who you want to help, that you'd like to see get off the streets, can't actually go to these facilities, because they're going to be around people.  If you were trying to get clean, you want to be around people that are truly trying to get clean. You can't go into the nest of the most drugs in town per square yard of anywhere in town, and expect to stay clean. So the folks that you want to help actually can't go to these facilities. They steer clear of them, and that's a shame. We should help those folks that want help. There's people who are perfectly clean who would like to go in and get off the streets, but they can't be around all those drug addicts, so we need to separate it out and and it's time for tough love.

KPQ-  You have raised your concerns for Chelan County's revenue picture.  How will you try to improve revenues and cut expenses?

FLINT HARTWIG-  Well, stuff like Microsoft is definitely helpful. Growing our local economy, getting businesses fired up. You know, it's kind of a shame, because so many people are moving out of the area, leaving, you know, Tiffany (Gering), I just talked to her today and it's not just her leaving, it's also two or three more families that are going with them. They all decided together to leave.  And on my wife's side of the family over in Seattle, her aunt and all of her cousins, they all packed their families up and left, right?  So the way to get revenue is you need to spark business.  You can't actually legislate success. You can set up environments where businesses are successful and the way that works is actually to get government out of the way so the more we can make a business friendly environment. You know, every every new million dollar home that you see get built, a lot of people say, I don't like that house being there. Well, those people are paying probably $11,000 in taxes into the pool, and if that house didn't get built, they would just buy another house that might have cost $500,000 or $600,000 but that just drives people off the bottom of the real estate ladder. So we need to provide a bunch of houses at the bottom of the real estate ladder to entry level homes.  Working class folks can buy them for $250,000 and that's a 800 square foot two bedroom house, real simple, has one bathroom and a small kitchen. Right now, the zoning isn't friendly to that. So I'd like to see that happen. That'll drive more jobs, it'll also drive more revenue. So basically, you build businesses, and you build real estate, and that's what pays the taxes. So that's on the supply side of the money, and then on the demand side of the money, you stop spending on on what I'll call silly stuff. You just flat out don't do it anymore.

KPQ-  Your opponent has relationships with current and former electeds. So how do you overcome what some would say is your inexperience?

FLINT HARTWIG-  No, I I'm going to go ahead and agree with him. If you want a representative who has great relationships with government officials everywhere from here to Washington, DC, then you should probably vote for him. If you want a elected who has great relationships with you and local business and has been here and is going to be representative of the people, then you should vote for me, because at the end of the day, the Chelan County Commissioner is your representative.  All these other agencies from all the different bureaucracy that exists in Washington, they have tons of representation of their own. And at the end of the day, the person who needs to sit there in the gap and represent the people of Chelan County is the Chelan County Commissioner. So if you want somebody who has super strong ties to the people in the streets and everybody around here, then, then I'm your guy for sure. And as far as learning the procedures, I can learn the procedures.

Hartwig and 12th District State Senator Brad Hawkins are on the General Election Ballot November 5th.  Hawkins is not seeking re-election to the legislature and moved to Chelan County earlier this year as the result of redrawn legislative maps.