Wilson, a Democrat who represents District 3 of the county (around Mancos and south of Cortez), is seeking a second term in office. He will be challenged in the primary by Lyle Rice, founder of the MontDolores Homebuilders Association, who announced his candidacy a month ago.

Wilson has a three-page press release listing more than a dozen issues on which he has worked as a commissioner, ranging from seniors’ care to land-use planning to the McElmo Dome controversy.

Although all the issues are important, he said, clearly the latter is right at the top.

The commissioners had supported a bill by Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell to create a national conservation area on 164,000 acres of BLM land in Montezuma and Dolores counties. However, Campbell withdrew his support for the bill last week, citing a lack of local consensus, and a committee hearing on it was canceled.

Wilson said he did not believe supporting the NCA bill had been a mistake, even though many locals were vocally opposed to any new designation.

"The people said to leave it alone," he said. "But we see what’s happening in Sand Canyon [where visitation has increased dramatically]. It’s not going to be left alone. Something needs to be done.

"I don’t like the idea of control being outside of the area. That’s why I went to the NCA, because of the 15-person thing. [The bill would have created a 15-person advisory council to oversee the area.]"

Wilson said he does not envision the county trying to challenge a national monument designation in court, something that the Utah Association of Counties is doing in the case of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument.

"We don’t have the money," he said.

Among the other issues Wilson has been involved with during his tenure is land-use planning. The board has been working to implement the unique Landowner-Initiated Zoning system adopted by the county in 1996, which allows property-owners to zone their own tracts.

"I think it’s working," Wilson said. "It’s going to be a continuous growing process for a while. I lived through three other attempts to zone the county in the past, and the whole idea of this is that the people who own the land and pay the taxes should have the right to put it into the zones."

A new permit system for high-impact projects is also working well, Wilson said.

Also high on Wilson’s priority list is seeing the construction of the new county jail, which is being financed by a sales tax approved by voters last fall. Construction bids were opened Thursday, Wilson said, and are being considered.

An area of particular concern to Wilson is senior citizens’ issues. He has worked extensively with seniors’ groups in the area and says those issues will grow more critical in coming years.

"We’ll see a tremendous increase in our senior population in the next few years," he said, adding that the county already has more than 50 percent of the nursing-home beds in the five-county economic-development district known as Region 9.

Wilson said he also enjoys envisioning projects far into the future. Among those he’d like to see are a major events center at the county fairgrounds, a bypass around the city of Cortez, and a biking-hiking trail system leading from the fairgrounds around Cortez and out to Totten Lake.

He said he is "enthused" about the idea of a gondola to the top of Mesa Verde and would like to see some form of mass transit in the area.