TUESDAY RUNOFF: West wants Precinct 1 commissioners court spot

May 25—Dax West wants the Precinct 1 seat for himself. He has been busy raising cattle at his place near Callisburg for the last few years, after working in education and other fields, and now he wants to step up in the community.

Register: Who are you and why are you running for the Precinct 1 seat?

West: "I'm a long time resident of Cooke County Precinct 1. My, my family goes back five generations here," West explained. "I just feel like that now is my time to give back to the community and give to the people of Precinct 1 a new vision, new ideas and a new hope for the future."

Register: What would be your top priority?

West: "In the first term, I want the gain the respect of the community. And to do that, I'm gonna have to make the tough decisions on what is best for the county as a whole and the best for my voters in Precinct 1," West said. "If that's working with the court to get important issues for all citizens of Cooke County passed through the court, for the rural voters out in the county, we need to make sure that the roads are properly maintained and to start a project immediately on water control and drainage."

Register: So what would you do with the county's roads? Most are chip-and-tar or gravel, and the Farm-to-Market roads are maintained by the state.

West: "It's about runoff. It's about the lay of the land, the flow of the water," West said. "The water is what's creating a lot of the erosion to our gravel roads and having long-term effects on our chip seal roads.

If we would go in and address the issue of drainage in the long term, we would lessen our maintenance bill or our maintenance expense on maintaining these county road — water is the number one destruction of gravel roads."

Register: Short of blacktop for all county roads, how can the gravel and chip-and-tar road beds be protected?

West: "The one thing that, that I have looked into is that if the oil is placed on correctly, you lessen the opportunity for the water to get underneath it," West asserted. "By over spraying your oil about eight-to-10 inches on both sides, you will get a better seal on your chip seal. If you control the water and you maintain the water level in the bar ditches by having a consistent flow to move the water away, you lessen the probability of losing that ship seal to start with."

Register: Other than roads, what else do you think will occupy your time if you're elected?

West: "Well, roads are about 20% of what a commissioner does, although the commissioner has 100% control of his relevant bridge budget," West said.

"Everything else is conducted in the commissioner's court with four other individuals ... the number one issue that comes to mind with me is our radio system for our emergency services. You know, we need a better radio that is good for everyone. You know, the radio system we have currently is good for the majority of our emergency services, but there are those services that are kinda left to fend for themselves in a way. I feel that if we can get in the budget and get creative, and look for a way, that we can supply radios to all of our volunteer fire departments."

Register: What do you think of the current court?

West: "I feel like we have to look outside the box at what we've been doing," West said. "I'm not saying it's wrong, but we need some new ideas, some new vision.

And I believe there's a lot of well-qualified men on that commissioner's court that would given the opportunity, they will look outside the box for new ideas and new visions. With their help and some ideas that I have. I feel like we can take Cooke County in a more positive direction for the future."

Register: And what would you do about all this growth creeping in from Denton, Sherman and elsewhere?

West: Well, you know, growth is something that you cannot stop. It's going to come at some point, but I feel like as a commissioner's court, it's our job to get out in front of it to the best of our ability to shape the growth for the betterment of the citizens of Cooke County.

"The growth is on the south border with Denton County. There is some major growth coming from the east to the west out of Grayson County. In the month of March, they [announced] the building of a big resort on Lake Texoma. You know, as the way the crow flies, that's not too far.

"Yeah. So we have to prepare for the future. Other communities have experienced the same type of growth. We must educate ourselves where they did things right and where things went wrong, because if we sit back and wait, we're gonna wake up one day and we're gonna be a small Denton County and I don't think there's anybody here in Precinct 1 that wants that. They moved from that type of environment to Precinct 1 to be in the country."