{"id":98398,"date":"2018-08-13T16:54:24","date_gmt":"2018-08-13T22:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/sattley-one-of-four-running-for-county-commissioner\/"},"modified":"2018-08-13T16:54:24","modified_gmt":"2018-08-13T22:54:24","slug":"sattley-one-of-four-running-for-county-commissioner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/sattley-one-of-four-running-for-county-commissioner\/","title":{"rendered":"Sattley one of four running for county commissioner"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Jessie
Jessie James Sattley, of Dolores, is on the November ballot for a Montezuma County commission seat as an unaffiliated candidate.<\/span>Jim Mimiaga\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Jesse James Sattley, of Dolores, has petitioned onto the November ballot for Montezuma County commissioner representing District 1.<\/p>\n

Sattley, 70, was raised in the county and has worked as a farmer and rancher for decades. He was a county road maintenance worker and mechanic for 26 years. As an unaffiliated candidate, he had to gather 178 signatures to make the ballot.<\/p>\n

\u201cI represent the working class, and if elected, I will work for them,\u201d he said in an interview.<\/p>\n

His campaign platform includes no new taxes, more conservative government spending, and fair, independent decision-making.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re a blue-collar community, so on all decisions, I\u2019ll keep that in mind. If it helps them, I\u2019ll vote for it; if not, I won\u2019t,\u201d he said. \u201cI won\u2019t just vote along with the other (commissioners) if I disagree with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sattley is especially concerned about government overspending and said he believes the county must stay within its financial means, avoid projects they can\u2019t afford and keep a strong reserve.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a question of needs versus wants,\u201d he said. \u201cDo we really need to pave a road if we can get away with just chip-sealing it? Should new equipment be bought, or can we maintain what we have? If we can do something in-house, we should, instead of contracting it out. I think there are some savings there.\u201d<\/p>\n

He is against a proposed county sales tax because it \u201cputs a burden on the working class. You have to get by with what you have. That\u2019s the way I was raised.\u201d<\/p>\n

He feels that the local economy has been hurting, noting that local construction companies have left town and oil and gas and logging industries have diminished.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the time to tighten the belt,\u201d Sattley said. \u201cI feel the county needs an audit by a third party who is not from the area to see where we stand on the budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sattley said that if elected, he would advocate for more input and ideas from employees on improving department efficiency, and he would reject favoritism.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe working people know a lot. They need to have more of a say,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Sattley supports outdoor recreation, and as commissioner would work toward \u201caccess for all the different users.\u201d<\/p>\n

He feels that some users are not as compatible on the same trail \u2013 such as horses mixing with cyclists and motorized users \u2013 and that more thought should be put into making some trails just for horses as a way to reduce conflicts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many more users on the trails now, and to make it more fair, dividing uses in certain situations seems practical,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The reduced access to area lakes because of the invasive mussel risk is also a concern for Sattley. He said he understands the problem, but feels more effort is needed by the county to add boat inspection stations at McPhee and other lakes that have restricted or cut off motorized access.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to protect our water from these mussels, but I think if we try harder, we can do that and also keep up access for our citizens,\u201d he said. \u201cA key part of that is working with state and federal agencies that manage those waters to get what we need.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sattley is one of four candidates in the race for the one open commissioner seat. The other candidates are Republican Jim Candelaria, unaffiliated Steve Chappell and Democrat MB McAfee.<\/p>\n

Sattley said it appears his campaign is low-budget compared with other candidates, but that he is running it based on what he can afford.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m only spending within my budget, the same way I think the county has to be run,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He welcomes people to call him about his views and plans if elected at 970-882-4691.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unaffiliated candidate from Dolores says balanced budget is priority<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":98399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[281,1724,21,308,280,60,109,976,1762],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-98398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-agriculture","tag-budgets-and-budgeting","tag-cortez","tag-local-elections","tag-mcphee-reservoir","tag-montezuma-county","tag-montezuma-county-commissioner","tag-outdoor-recreation","tag-sales-tax"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98398"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=98398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}