LETTER: Eileen Lowery for county commissioner

I write in support of Eileen Lowery for county commissioner. Eileen began her career as a Montana educator in 1989. She became a champion of mental health services in California, becoming executive director of Mental Health Recovery Centers in 2006 and co-founder of Manzanita Mental Health Services in Ukiah in 2008. She is a director and treasurer of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Since moving to Kalispell in 2011, Eileen has worked to become a highly qualified candidate for county commissioner, attending meetings of the Board of County Commissioners, listening to testimony and debates, and consulting with heads of the county’s operating departments to understand their concerns. She has been instrumental in providing training in crisis intervention for first responders and in mental-health first aid for educators. She is vice president of Friends of the Library.

Eileen hopes to delay the need for a new jail costing $40 million or $50 million by creating space for detainees in newly vacated county attorneys’ offices and diverting detainees to expanded state prison space in Shelby. She advocates increased use of home detention and better monitoring of community service requirements. Also expanded rehab services for addicts and domestic-violence offenders.

Eileen would bring good sense to a commission that needs it. Our current commissioners have treated us to embarrassing spectacles such as kowtowing to Muslin-hating extremists who cheered as commissioners approved a letter to the State Department rejecting resettlement of refugees. It was a pointless show of ignorance and irrelevance, because immigration policy is not a county responsibility. The commissioners also approved a private bridge from Flathead Lake’s pristine north shore to Dockstader Island, the owners of which returned repeatedly for time extensions and frills on their bridge until even the commissioners said “no more.”

The county commissioners now have their most fateful decision before them — whether to approve a potentially enormous water-bottling plant near Creston. The present commissioners are property-rights zealots who rarely consider infringement of property rights of neighbors or of the community at large. It’s time to broaden the views represented on the board of commissioners by electing a thoughtful and objective person like Eileen Lowery. —Bill Cox, Kalispell