pleased to welcome harlan schober to conversations with the candidate harlan is a democrat and is running for a washington county commissioner he is an incumbent so without further ado we'll turn to the question harlan what skills and qualifications did you bring to the role to the office of county commissioner and will you continue to continue to bring well i think that from my business in my local government background i had thirty two years as a manager with a team to be had sixteen fourteen years actually building homes and with my own company called schober homes i think on the local government standpoint i had twelve years of school director in charge of houston and sixteen years as a supervisor township i think those skills of working with the local government working with people at all levels i think is really equipped me to be county commissioner sounds like a diverse kind of skill set well it's something that you're working with people you're solving problems i think that use your business sense i was going to be a math teacher at one time in my life so i love to work with numbers and make sure that things come out specially when budgets and other things and i've had to do that a lot had lots of negotiating with our local police departments or public works or school or school teachers and so i've done a lot of that in my background and that really does come together the county is so large and diverse that these  things help me do the things we need to do as a commissioner tell me some of the important issues that you think the commissioners will be facing the county you will be facing in the next four years place well i think i can talk about a number of things one is job creation that's one of our main priorities you know south point has been so successful but it's pretty much filled up and so we've been looking for where is that next business going to come in if you look at the gas industry it's here so it's a big issue from an environmental standpoint an economic standpoint and so those are things that we're still in progress in that area so i think that's going to have a lot of to do with what we do over the next four years i look at the human services side you know with our health  our seniors are our jail system our drug and alcohol problems i think that's a big issue we need to address and i think that some people say we need to put more police on the road for drug and alcohol i think we have to go the other direction start changing some mindsets in society we need to start treating these people that are getting into trouble before they go into incarceration let's start treating with mental health drug and alcohol we have a number of issues that we need to work in as we move forward it's just very diverse and it takes a lot of time and effort in many directions so what would be some possibilities in the drug and alcohol area and does the county have funding to do that we have been putting money in the catch the person after it's done right and you know that's sort of are always the tail wagging the dog type of thing you know a lot of crime and as coming up so one of the things that we're doing is what we call pretrial services when someone is involved with any type of low level of breaking the law and said let's take a dui and throwing someone in jail we have other options we can do and these are programs we're to start very shortly and working with all parts of the county where we would take an individual and maybe we would say look you have to go into treatment you might wear a monitor so that we know you're not drinking that's just one example but if we start at the front end the process i think basically it reduces recidivism and they say we don't have to worry about the crime as much at the end now none of these things are the perfect answer but those programs at the beginning i think can start helping people rather than that that they've done some crime and all these things that we're working on right now within our drug and alcohol programs or mental health programs or housing you know with the homeless if someone doesn't have to nickels to rub together just  getting up in the morning and have kids to feed and don't have anything in your pocket job creation is really important so it all ties together and jail speaking of the drug and alcohol jail is a very expensive alternative it is even though we're one of the lowest cost wise in the area sometimes where you have also many people there that maybe should have to sit in jail should do something else and it's very important if someone is dangerous to society they need to be in jail if they are someone and that basically could be rehabbed where they could be getting money maybe paying child support they can't pay child support sitting in jail let's have programs and those are the things we're going to start really working and we've been working on but we're going to heat we're go speed up that process so we have better programs where the judges know they have a program that they can send people to but we need to get before that even before they commit a crime and that's the area where we really need to kind of reach out to people attitudes if you value your life and others and we get people to think that way i think we'll have less problems later on talking about the drilling in the county are you satisfied that the safety issues and the environmental issues have been adequately addressed i know some of those at the state level but i've been very involved in that being the supervisor and now a county commissioner in the county commissioner sort of an odd situation it's usually the regulation is at the local level and we're at the state level or at our e p a at the federal level and so i really think that we have to more work in the area of environmental protection i think we've done a lot more with act thirteen and even though some people did not like the act thirteen regulations it was actually more stringent than what we had prior with the old gas and all acts all right so as a local supervisor i saw things i could do before that i now couldn't force but also honestly i think we have to do better  i think safety has to weigh safety is short term where if you have wells you have pipelines compressor station you need to have distance between that and anybody that lives nearby that is the first thing in safety of something happens it's contained on the site second thing is i think the environmental of air and water and i think we need more monitoring we need to understand that when you have groups of wells in an area does that change them one well and so i think as the state moves forward with that and the money from act thirteen others go into that we need to keep developing that expertise at the state that we can't do it on the local what's too expensive but i think that needs to keep on moving and i think we have to balance everything we do the economic side of the gas industry is mean we know that reassessment is going to be done and is the data being collected now what is the role of the commissioners once the figures are in well there's a lot of things being done now between now and two thousand and seventeen when the new tax assessors to come out and i have to state up front you know we kind of were forced to do reassessment but at this now that we're in that it's that's water over the dam i think now our job is county commissioner is to do everything accurately and there's a number of steps that we all can work together on to make this accurate first right now throughout the county they're doing what we call our data collection process and that says that they're coming out they're majoring they're asking questions about your home or your business and as we want that to accurate as possible which is why they ask you questions where they basically say that you have information to return and you want to do that now so the data collection is accurate the next step will be they will send out some assessment process when you were doing informal review here's your chance to talk about it and make sure everything's accurate before you get a final assessment it comes out important to note that assessment and your tax bill are two different things assessment says we have  your proper value on your property and then once that's done across the county then a merely just set that mill is really reflect revenue neutral gathering of taxes over the county right now hundred nineteen thousand properties thirty seven million dollars when i'm done i still should be collecting thirty seven approximate same money is important to know and ask those question i hear this all the time make sure you know if your tax if your cessna goes up three times that does not mean your taxes go up three times right that is something each individual property is going to the milage will be a just they were going from twenty five percent market to one hundred percent i mean twenty four point nine mills at the county will go down by right away yes so that's we have to get a lot of information out to the public dialogue is important excellent i want to give you this final minute to tell the voters why they should vote for you wow ok well this is my fourth year as commissioner i believe that there's many things i've started like booking centers and other things lot of programs to try to improve the county i think over the next four years i'd like to be able to be here to continue their recess and process we need to be accurate that's going to happen job development that's going to happen i really think that i can probably use what i've learned in my background to help us move forward in the county and it's the best place to live in my mind that's why i've been here my life thank you very much thank you susan and the election is on may nineteenth may nineteenth please get out and vote no matter who you vote for get out and vote we need people to be represented thank you very much thank you