BISBEE — The five candidates running for the Board of Supervisors District 2 seat met Tuesday night for a forum sponsored by the League of Women Voters at the Bisbee Senior Center.

The candidates, Republican Harvey Allen, Democrats Ann English, Charles Flanagan and Joe Green, and non-partisan candidate Matt Cook agreed on many issues, including water sustainability, development and government transparency. The candidates also agreed that District 2 has not been represented well by Paul Newman, who currently holds the seat but decided not to run again so he can run for the Arizona Corporation Commission. All of the candidates promised to read the packets of information prior to the meetings, attend all the meetings, show up on time and treat the other supervisors with respect to get things accomplished for the betterment of the county and the district.

Flanagan and Cook are the only two candidates currently employed, and both said they would quit their jobs if elected to attend to county business full time. The candidates were asked how many meetings they had attended in the last four years. The responses were: Allen, three; Cook, three; English, 10 to 12; Flanagan, two; and Green, 15. Flanagan noted that he decided not to attend meetings at the time he announced his candidacy. Most of the candidates were adamant about making the county government and its workings more transparent and accountable to the public and said they would make changes to the notification system for issues of great concern that would affect the whole county, such as a power plant or large development proposal, and would inform more citizens at the beginning of the process and possibly even slow the process down for more public input. The candidates also responded to the question: In your own words, what is the job of a supervisor?

“The job is proscribed in Arizona Statute 11-250, 251,” Cook said. “There is an entire list of things that we do. Essentially, we supervise the officers and the hired directors of the county in their work. We vote on taxes, vote on buying and selling land, et cetera, et cetera. So that’s the basic job of the county supervisor. There are 52 specific items that technically make up the job description. But, as far as supervisor of District 2, what we have are a few issues that are apparently the significant ones in our particular district. One of which is helping the public define how much growth, where we want growth, what kind of growth that we want as a district …”

English responded, “Probably the most important job is to try and make sure the budget is balanced and that all areas are taken care of so that you can move the business of the county forward. That means you have to set a tax rate that will bring in the amount of money that isn’t coming in from the state or other sources. As the board of supervisors you sit as the board of the county library district, the flood plain district. So you are in charge of many different areas as a board … I think you have a unique relationship with the other elected officials, in that you have a budgetary relationship with them and sometimes you have the ability to turn down requests for manpower, simply because of budget.”

Flanagan answered, “The most important factor is the board as a buffer between the Legislature and the people who elect them. They are tasked with oversight of the budget … It’s kind of interesting since you are talking about three people who have to work together to oversee the effective operation of government in the county … We can set important tasks, goals and objectives that we want to achieve and that should be based upon feedback from people in the district. By setting through strategic planning goals objectives and tasks that clearly outline what the employees do, so that we are not enforcing personality, but using our personality to work with others to do what is right for the people in our county.”

Green replied, “Typically what we have in our government is a separation of powers — legislative branch, judicial, executive. The Board of Supervisors can do all three and does do all three … The most important work overall is probably the legislation of land use policies … Another area the board of supervisors can work in that they have not done is economic development. Most people in this room, I would venture to say, do not know the supervisors can spend up to $1.5 million a year on economic development in Cochise County. It spends zero. … We’ve got to change the economic situation in Cochise County. There are too many people who live in poverty in this county and that’s got to change.”

Allen, the last one to comment, said, “There’s not much more I can say … I think one of the most important things is doing the budget and setting a tax rate that the residents can live by … They do make some big decisions that affect every one of us.”

The candidates will all be on the ballot for the Sept. 2 primary, but only the Democrats will have candidates who are elminated after that vote, since there are three Democratic candidates — English, Flanagan and Green — vying for a place in the Nov. 4 general election.