LAWTON – A former detective with the Lawton Police Department, Josh Powers is hoping to serve the public in a new way.
“Now that I’m no longer a police officer, I still feel the need to serve my community,” he said in a May 25 interview. “I’ve never been a person that sits back and complains about things and not be willing to do something about it.”
Powers is challenging Comanche County Board of Commissioners Chairman Alvin Cargill for the District 3 seat on the commission. The two men are on the ballot for the upcoming GOP primary election, set for June 28.
The race did not attract any Democratic candidates, so whoever wins the GOP primary election will claim the seat.
Southwest Ledger recently interviewed Powers about his decision to seek a seat on the commission, his skills and other topics. Questions and answers from the interview have been edited for clarity and length.
Q: What is your occupation?
A: I am a self-employed, at this point, business owner. I own multiple companies. Everything from real estate to the firearms industry. I’m one of the owners of Ares State Armory, me and a business partner.
Me and my wife, we own the Allstate Insurance Agency in Duncan.
I’m chairman of Comanche County Rural Water 5.
I was a police officer until last year. I retired in May 2021 from the Lawton Police Department. I was a detective there, and I worked financial crimes. I did that for four years, and then I worked late patrol, gang unit. I was on the department dive team – a bunch of stuff like that for the PD.
Right before that, I worked for the Hilliarys for a year before I got on the police department.
Q: Why did you decide to seek a seat on the county commission?
A: I am a strong believer that if I want my voice heard, then I need to be part of it. One reason why I’m one of the founding members of the Pecan Creek Fire Department (and) a founding member of Comanche County Rural Water 5 and why I’m running for Comanche County commissioner at this point.
I believe it’s time for a change.
Q: What kind of change?
A: A positive change. I’m one for being more transparent with taxpayer dollars and having an open-door policy. I feel like you shouldn’t be nervous about making a phone call to your elected officials, and your elected officials are bound by being elected to answer your calls and return them.
Q: I thought I saw somewhere on your Facebook page or something that you were calling for greater transparency on the part of the county. Can you cite any instances where the county has not been transparent?
A: Social media is a way of communication between the people and elected offices, or people and businesses. There is no social media page for Western District.
I feel that there should be a social media page for Western District, and it should be updated weekly with the current projects that are going on in the county so that the people know where their dollar bills are going.
As far as an exact instance, I wouldn’t say that I have anything that particular.
The CCIDA (Comanche County Industrial Development Authority) – that’s not the county commissioners. … Being there at the meeting was one thing. I found out a whole lot more. But to the average citizen that wasn’t able to attend, they didn’t know anything about what was going on. All they saw was the bad side.
Because all that could have been explained on a social media platform, in the open, and everybody could have seen it was a bad decision no matter which one we had to pick.
It wasn’t a win. It was a lose-lose. It was unfortunate.
Does the Hilton offer something to Lawton that nobody else can offer and bring people here? Absolutely. But at the same time, it was just a bad deal.
Honestly, after learning what I did, it was a bad business deal from day one with the way the original stuff was put out. I think there should have been oversight or better terms on that particular contract.
Q: So, back to the original question. You talked about the need for a social media page for the Western District.
A: Not just a social media page, but just more transparency. It doesn’t matter to me what platform it’s on. It just needs to be more transparent. Social media is one of the many things I’ve thought of. I still have more brainstorming and would like to speak more with legal and stuff like that about it. Because they’re going to have what they say about it, too: “You don’t want to do this, or you don’t want to do that.” But at the end of the day, it’s not just what a lawyer determines, because a lawyer would rather you never say a single word to anybody. I understand that. But as an elected official, you have a duty to inform your constituents of what is going on, especially when it’s your money and you’re the steward of their money and how it’s spent. That’s the whole point of being elected.
Q: What skills do you have that would make you an effective commissioner?
A: I was a police officer for 11 years. I investigated financial crimes, white-collar crime.
I also served as a normal police officer, so my integrity is there. I left on good terms.
I obviously know the needs of public safety, which the county commissioners set the budgets and stuff for some of the public safety in the communities.
I was a founding member and part of the Pecan Creek Volunteer Fire Department’s original board. I know the needs and the resources that it takes to run those fire departments and have good communication with all the fire departments in the Western District.
Next would be I’m a businessman. I own multiple businesses. I’m familiar with real estate, real estate law. As far as somebody comes with budget and things like that, I’m familiar with having to deal with all that stuff.
Basically, I check off every box, except I don’t know much about roads. But I do know that there are qualified people who work for the county that do know a lot about roads. They should be the ones giving any input on how the roads are done and which roads need to be done.
I encourage, also, the community to alert us to the roads that need to be done. Without their help, we can’t identify the problem areas.
And then also, I’m really big in training.
Lawton Police Department was leaps and bounds above most agencies in the state when it came to the training. We had more training than was required by state law, and we could take additional any time we wanted, for the most part.
I believe in continuing education. I think that’s how you adapt and conform to things that happen as we go along.
Q: How would you rate the county’s performance in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic? What did the county do well, and what should it have done better?
A: I really can’t answer the “well” part. Sorry. I would definitely say things need to be reconsidered: The amount of time the Comanche County Courthouse was shut down was unreasonable. It has now created a huge backlog in cases for the DA’s office, civil court and several other divisions in the county courthouse. It also closed things like the county barn, where the public wasn’t allowed to come in and speak.
The jail problems during COVID weren’t handled properly. They did the best they could with what they had at the time. But we should never have that problem again now that we have learned from it.
Q: Are you satisfied with the county’s current direction? Why or why not?
A: No. I feel there’s still a lot of waste going on with taxpayer dollars. There’s no transparency. It’s difficult to contact your elected official. Basically, the direction (in which) the current commissioner for the Western District approaches economic development. He, instead of finding other means to help and address the situation at the jail – which the jail has been a mess for a long time – no matter how much money he threw at it out of the economic development – the CCIDA – is not going to fix the jail.
There are population problems, and everybody at that courthouse has to work together, from the judges to the DA’s office to the commissioners to the jail staff. If everybody is not on the same page, there is absolutely no way to make that thing work the way it needs. So by killing economic development, all we did was stop growth and stop jobs in Comanche County and not do, really, anything to change the situation at the jail.
Q: What challenges do you expect the county to face in the next four years? Do you think the county is prepared to meet them?
A: The one that probably nobody wants to say, but I’ll say it, is that we are probably, in the next four years, going to have another recession. At that point financially, if we’re not prepared, we could have major negative effects to the operation of the county courthouse and in District 3. If we don’t bring in the taxes because the money’s not spent, then that means we don’t get to fix the roads. We don’t get to fix the bridges. We make payroll as much as we can without having to cut staff.
Also with public safety: We definitely need more sheriff’s deputies during the next four years. We don’t have but sometimes two deputies for the entire county of Comanche. That’s not even one deputy per district. There’s no reason for that to even be an issue here. Officers may not even have backup if they have to respond to something – if both are on something on different sides of the county.
The tax dollars people pay, they would like to see – from what I’ve been told – an increase in law enforcement within the county, not just the city limits of Lawton.
We have deteriorating roads that we’ll be facing within the next four years. I feel we need to build them back correctly, and right, more so than we need to fix problems partially and cover as many as we can.
I’d rather do fewer projects and do them correctly, so they withstand time, than do partial jobs on stuff to save money.
Q: What would you like to see the county accomplish over the next four years?
A: I’d like to see growth and economic development. I’d like to see the roads and infrastructure upgraded to be a lasting job, not something that’s a patch job but to actually make that better. I’d like to see the county fairgrounds continue to grow and hold more events and bring in out-of-town patrons. I’d like to see the sheriff’s department grow in size, and I’d like to see an increase in funds available for our local volunteer fire departments.
Q: If you were elected, what steps would you support to make those things happen?
A: Growth and economic development: By funding CCIDA properly.
Doing a better job of repairing roads: That’s simply by letting the foreman and the construction workers advise what needs to be done and make sure they have the proper training and tools to accomplish that.
Growing the fairgrounds: Continue to modernize the fairgrounds to where we can bring in more out-of-town events.
Growing the sheriff’s department is simply funding. The funding is not enough currently to grow. If they don’t receive more funding and more support, then it will never be able to be improved.
Increase funding for the volunteer fire departments.
Editor’s Note: In the fourth question, Josh Powers referred to the Comanche County Industrial Development Authority’s March 28 vote to waive $1.68 million of a loan to Lawton Lodging Lenders LLC, which operates the Hilton Garden Inn and the adjacent convention center.
Under the terms of a financial settlement with Lawton Lodging Lenders, the entity is still required to pay $740,000 toward the remaining debt of $2.42 million. That payment will reduce the total loan to $1.68 million, and the CCIDA will waive the rest.