Grant County commissioner takes office

Grant County commissioner takes office

EPHRATA — Carolann Swartz was sworn in as a Grant County commissioner Friday.

Swartz replaced outgoing commissioner LeRoy Allison after winning the November election by 365 votes.

A Moses Lake resident and co-owner of J&M Electric, Swartz said she’s been preparing for the position a little bit each day. Recently, she went to Olympia to learn about the position. The three-day orientation outlined the history and duties of being a commissioner, she said.

“I can see what the job entails,” Swartz said. “Obviously every day is going to be something different. I’m going to learn all the time.”

Along with the orientation, she met with several county agencies, such as Grant Mental Healthcare and the Grant County Health District.

“This is all prior to taking office,” she said. “(I’m) trying to get a grasp on what’s going on and how it’s going to affect everybody.”

She also plans on learning from the other commissioners.

She said one of her biggest challenges will be the county budget. The commissioners recently passed the 2009 budget, which cut funding to less than 2008 levels in several departments.

“Big cuts are going to be made in order to balance the budget and make sure we have the money available to take care of the programs we most need,” she said before the budget was passed.

“Some really hard decisions have to be made as far as jobs and trimming costs. So I think that’s really going to be the biggest challenge.”

Swartz has the experience of helping run two businesses, she said. She ran Swartz’s for 12 years, selling furniture, dishes, cookware and linens. Swartz and her husband Don purchased J&M Electric in 1979.

While growing up in the Moses Lake area, she went to college at the University of Washington, where she met her husband. They married after he graduated college and she traveled to Boston, Mass., while he went to graduate school. They moved to New York City, before returning to the Columbia Basin to go into business with her husband’s parents.

“We came back here to be in business with them,” she said. “One thing lead to another and we ended up buying J&M Electric.”

She said the area was a good place to raise their four children. She became involved in her children’s school activities as well as various bond and levy issues.

“There’s something about (the area),” she said. “There’s the friendliness of the people, or the sense of community … There’s all these connections that take place … Being from a small town, it’s a good life to live.”

Along with her other activities, Swartz paints, does photography and spends time working in her 7-acre yard, she said.

“I’m out in my yard a lot,” she said. “I tell people, ‘I do a lot of my heavy thinking on my John Deere mower.’ I paint pictures and write speeches and think about things, just doing mundane activities, such as mowing my lawn. I like it. Some people think I’m crazy, but I really enjoy mowing my lawn.”

She also is a Soroptimists member for 34 years, and a member of the Philanthropic Educational Organization, which helps women with their education, she said.

“I try to work it in because those groups are very important to me and I do what I can do,” she said. “Obviously I will be having less time to do all that. Still, I feel they’re very important, so I will continue to support them any way I can.”