BELLE FOURCHE—Questions from the public took center stage May 7 as Butte County candidates gathered at Grap’s Burgers and Brews to face voters directly.
The room was filled with eager constituents ready to ask a variety of questions. The moderator for the evening was Tom Brunner. He took questions, passed the microphone and kept the event rolling along.
When anyone had a question, they simply stood up and asked, allowing any of the candidates on hand to respond. The candidates that were present were Cory Tolley and Dr. Doug Larson, both running for District 1 Butte County Commissioner. Annie Cap, running for Auditor, Stephanie Lippincott running for Register of Deeds and Jason Kari, incumbent running for District 5 County Commissioner.
There was a lot of information shared about property tax and sales tax and how complicated it is getting that information from the state.
A question was asked specifically to Stephanie Lippincott, who is running for Register of Deeds. She was asked what relevant experience she has for the position she is running to be elected to. She replied, “As my job was an assessor, I have the unique knowledge of knowing how to read legals. I also trained for a little while in sales, so I was able to understand and read the various deeds that came into our office. And I definitely have Julie and Mary Beth’s support and they were going to train me…so that is my experience.”
A few of the questions that were asked include: so there’s a lot of interaction in between the county and the city. How would you try and strengthen the county’s relationship?; And, there’s been a lot of talk back and forth about buying or building a new building for office space. What are your thoughts on that, if you have any here?; What is your view about tiffs in general?
A question was asked to Annie regarding the recent legislation change altering the dates for school board and municipal elections to be aligned with either the primary or the general election time frames for this upcoming election.
“That legislation, it’s always been an option for the schools and the cities to hold their elections at the same time, either combined with us on our ballot or just on the same days—they’ve always chosen not to do that. They’ve always held their elections in April and the reason for this legislation was trying to get a bigger voter turnout in those city and school elections,” explained Cap. “We have the same polling locations, everybody chose to combine with our election. So what that means is there’s one ballot… if you have an election for your school or your city, it will be on the county ballot, so there’ll be one ballot.”
Cap was then asked to expound on what kind of ballot people will get for the primary election.
“So a primary election is to decide who’s going to go on the general ballot, right? So say you have four Republican governors running for governor, it’s just to narrow it down so they have one governor on that general election to run against whatever other party, a Democrat or Independent,” explained Cap. “I’d say a majority of our candidates are Republican, so if you are not a registered Republican, you’re not going to have any candidates to vote for, because we’re only trying to decide for those parties which one goes to the general election—unless you’re in the Newell School District. This time for this election, everybody will have something to vote for because of the ballot question.”
Additionally, there are a few Butte County candidates who are running unopposed, according to Cap, their name will not appear on the ballot. So Cap, Jason Kari and Chad Erk will not be on the ballot. “So when there’s no opposition, everybody will get a certificate of nomination, no opposition, following the election,” said Cap.
Cap told everyone there would be something for everyone to vote on, since there is a ballot question, Measure A. Brunner explained, “that’s something that will be on our ballot in Butte County, and it’s a simple yes or no—shall we require the County Commissioners to do an ordinance to prevent data centers from coming to Butte County? …the ballot very closely mirrors the petition that was signed by over 500 people and a very good cross section of Butte County signatures.”
Michelle Evans, local business owner, was a driving force behind Measure A. She was on hand to discuss the reasons behind why this is meaningful to her. She explained, “if you don’t know what a data center is—how many of you have iCloud? How many of you have Dropbox—anything that is on your phone goes into not the sky, but into a data center. It is a building full of servers, and they work all day and all night. They create noise, they create pollution, a whole bunch of things.”
After 500 signatures were gathered, the measure was put on the ballot to let the people decide what happens to their land and community. She said, “This measure asks a straightforward question—Measure A: should Butte County create an ordinance to prohibit the construction of data centers? A yes vote would require the County Commissioners to draft that ordinance. A no vote would be leaving things as they are today.”
Evans maintains that this is not about stopping progress—it’s about giving our community time. Time to gather facts, learn from other areas and make informed decisions that protect our land, water and way of life. It would put a five-year moratorium on data centers.
Cap reminded everyone to get out and vote, noting that voter turnout is usually low, at less than 25 percent. Primary elections are June 2 and everyone will have something to vote on their ballot.
Read the full issue of the Belle Fourche Beacon by clicking here.
