OPINION —
I am happy to announce my candidacy for the position of District 3 Lee County Commissioner. This encompasses the Eastern part of the county, including Smiths Station. I served 25 years on active-duty military service. I saw much of the world and our great country. After I retired from military service, my family and I moved to Smiths Station. We chose it because of the people. We chose to call it home.
Your opinions and concerns are important to me. It would be nice if our current commission felt the same. Instead, they hide from the public they are supposed to serve. As they huddle behind their elevated podium at the Lee County courthouse in Opelika, they ignore the input of concerned citizens and do what they want to do anyway. They have deliberately chosen a time they know makes it difficult for people on Eastern Time to attend the meetings. They did it anyway. They need to be accessible and responsive, not hiding and making decisions that affect you, without your input. However, they have stated multiple times that they do not answer questions from the public during sessions. Do they just not care?
Their actions should be transparent and they need to be held accountable for those actions and even for inactions when they fail to act in the best interests of the people.
A decision like the poorly thought out and even more poorly executed public dumpster removal should never have happened. This should have been discussed publicly, in the district and we should have been given time to address it, to have our voices heard, right here, in the district. Not at the Lee County courthouse. You should have been given choices. I don’t believe in secretive resolutions done in the darkness, decisions made in a vacuum that place the county in a poor financial position and rob citizens of individual choice. The vote was taken while one of the commissioners had a financial interest. That’s not transparent. It is not accountable and it certainly is not in the best interests of we the people.
During my first deployment to Iraq, I was repeatedly shot at and felt the concussive waves from explosions, but I still had a job to do. I did not hide from my duty then, and if elected, I will not hide now, in the courthouse, behind a wall of secrecy and indifference.
I want to hear from you. Share with me the issues that matter most to you, and we will address them together, one at a time. I will hold public forum meetings in the district during my candidacy and continue to hold them even after elected, to meet with you and discuss real issues, in real time. And we can disagree and debate, but we need to communicate. Unlike the current commission, I am not afraid of differing opinions. Disagreement does not equal disrespect.
I will not support hastily and quietly, proposed resolutions, such as the one to remove public dumpsters. Nor will I support government-backed monopolies, enforced by government employees hired to shake down citizens for said monopoly. I will not support the infringement of 2nd amendment rights as this commission voted to do. I swore an oath to the Constitution for unending support and I understand the importance of all Amendments.
The Lee County Commission has made some hasty and poorly thought out decisions that affect our lives and even jeopardize our safety. This is not melodrama, this is fact. When our fire district cannot adequately function because the commission-appointed board fire district board members squandered funds, our lives are literally at risk. The Lee County Commission does not want you to connect those dots. Transparency is a must. To fix a problem, the problem must first be visible.
I enlisted to serve my country and the people of this great nation. My oath to our Constitution has no expiration date. My military service taught me a great deal about leadership. It gave me skills that I will use to give back to Lee County. I am ready to serve as your commissioner.
You can contact me at any of the following:
Davis4District3
@gmail.com
Brian Davis
P.O. Box 1081
Smiths Station, AL 36877
Facebook: @Davis4District3
X: @Davis4District3
Cell: 762-261-2705
Letter to Lee County from Brian Davis
