Shelley J. Towler, the Republican candidate for Albany County Commissioner, decided to run because of zoning regulations that were affecting people’s property rights and personal rights.
Towler said the county is being overly restrictive in its septic and waste water policies, which is one of the policies creating economic hardships for residents. She said current policies prevent some residents living on the east side of town from hooking up to a public septic system.
“People are already having difficulty because they cannot sell their homes,” Towler said. “These policies are making the property valueless.”
Towler’s background is in law. She graduated from the University of Wyoming’s College of Law in 1999. She has worked as a county prosecutor and with a large national property corporation. She also has experience in real estate, real estate investments and land use planning.
“You have to understand what you can implement in a community of a certain size,” Towler said. “My first priority would be to start to clean up the regulation so that we don’t have over burdensome or intrusive regulations.”
She said she plans to look at the budget and find ways to generate more revenue that do not come out of taxpayer pockets, such as finding a way to deal with the large government entities that sit on county land and do not pay taxes.
Albany County needs to attract businesses that create some kind of product and bring in outside money, Towler said. Businesses in the community that are services are great, she said, but they only circulate the payrolls in the area.
Towler said she thinks the county needs to support the beef and lamb industry by not creating burdens on an industry that brings revenue into the county.
“Certain regulations can do a better job of protecting the residents without bankrupting residents or bankrupting the county,” Towler said.
