A sparse crowd turned out to hear three candidates vying for seats on the Montezuma County commission discuss their views and plans if elected.

The forum, sponsored by the League of Women Voters, featured three hopefuls running in the Aug. 8 primary race. Those winners will then be put on the November general ballot.

For District 2, registered Republicans will choose between challenger Ray Gallacher and incumbent Kent Lindsay. That winner faces Democrat Tony Valdez in the general election. Valdez is unopposed for the Democratic party nomination Aug. 8.

In District 3, registered Democrats will choose between challenger Lyle Rice and incumbent Kelly Wilson. The winner faces Darrell Veach in the general election.

Lindsay, Wilson and Rice attended the forum. Gallacher was absent because of recent surgery.

For his priorities, Wilson listed planning, health care and the national monument as critical issues for the county.

Rice said landowner rights, law enforcement and education were his top concerns, while Lindsay felt that the impacts of growth were paramount.

Rice, who has campaigned for utilizing local funding over outside sources in financing county services, said he wants to push for getting legislation passed that would allow state lottery funds to be put towards schools, thereby freeing up money to go towards law enforcement.

A constitutional amendment provides that lottery funds will go to parks and recreation.

All three candidates said they had read the proclamation designating the Canyon of the Ancients National Monument. Lindsay worried that language regarding access to the monument, and private and leased grazing lands within it, was too broad and up to interpretation.

Wilson said the monument "was a fact of life" none of the commissioners wanted, and that the big fight now is getting local representation on an advisory committee being formed to help dictate a management plan for the 164,000-acre parcel of desert canyonlands scattered with cultural Anasazi ruins.

"Now we’re up against the Federal Advisory Council Act, which says these people are chosen from somewhere else," Wilson said.

On the future, Rice, a self-employed developer, said there needs to be "guided growth" rather than controlled growth, but that no growth led to stagnation.

He said that development has drawbacks.

"As you exercise your rights, then others are stepped on," he said, adding that the county’s land-use plan "gives development input from the bottom up," rather from the top down.

Wilson said state ballot initiatives designed to force growth restrictions on counties may work well for unzoned, crowded Front Range counties, but not for smaller ones, especially Monte-zuma County, which has a Landowners Initiated Zoning system being implemented.

"For us to arbitrarily draw a line around a town and say, ‘This is a certain zone,’ is the most asinine thing to do regarding protection of landowner rights.

"Our growth needs to be controlled locally," Wilson said.

Some issues were touched upon that county commissioners have little control over, yet they revealed political philosophies.