Candidate's focus is on job creation in the valley

Kalispell business owner Terry Kramer says if he’s elected Flathead County Commissioner for District 3, his business experience will be put to good use creating more jobs in the Flathead Valley.

“I believe government needs to have a business leader,” Kramer said.

Owner of Kramer Enterprises, a local construction company, Kramer Consulting and Management and RAJN Holdings, Kramer has also served as president of the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce and the Flathead Building Association, director of Habitat for Humanity, on the Flathead County Board of Adjustment and on the Ashley Lake Land Use Advisory Committee.

In 2008, Kramer won both the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce Businessman of the Year and Builder of the Year awards. Kramer also founded the local iteration of Operation Finally Home, a program which builds mortgage-free homes for veterans.

This wide range of experience is exactly what Kramer believes a commissioner needs to help create job opportunities in the Flathead. Kramer said he’s not only succeeded in his own business, creating jobs through Kramer Enterprises projects, but has helped other client businesses succeed.

“I know budgets. I know numbers, whether the county budget or the economy,” Kramer said.

Kramer emphasized that cooperative efforts will be necessary if the goal of economic improvement is to be met, both within the county and between counties.

One such effort Kramer proposes would be to create a diverse board of government and private citizens to meet and address economic issues in the valley. Members of the board would represent local chambers of commerce, manufacturing and industrial entities, the tourism business and everything in between. The board would ensure that the county commissioners “keep a link to what’s happening in the valley.”

Kramer also mentioned importance of the Montana Coalition of Forest Counties, which brings together the forested counties of western Montana to manage the area’s rich timber resources.

Montana’s tax on business equipment is one economic factor Kramer would like to see end, although he acknowledged the tax’s benefit to industrial communities.

“It benefits Columbia Falls, but it inhibits bringing business here,” Kramer said. “It’s a very stifling tax on business.”

The financial hole left by eliminating the tax would $5 million in the county budget, Kramer said, but he believes it would be possible to fill that hole without raising taxes.

Management of the 911 dispatch center is an “internal structure that needs to be addressed,” Kramer said, but the economic state of the valley is a bigger priority.

“We just need to work through it. It’s a new thing,” Kramer said about the dispatch center, adding that additional levies aren’t necessarily needed to make it work.

Regarding the Whitefish planning and zoning “doughnut,” Kramer said the city-county dispute can be easily resolved through civil discourse rather than lawsuits and litigation. A new group of commissioners could provide new dialog, and “there’s no reason the county and city of Whitefish can’t sit down and work it out,” Kramer said.