LAWTON – Eric Sharum served on the Lawton Board of Education for 10 years and was a member of the Lawton Parks and Recreation Commission for several years.
Now, Sharum is hoping to take his experience in public service to the Lawton City Council. Sharum is one of three candidates for the Ward 4 seat on the council, currently occupied by Councilman Jay Burk. Burk is term-limited this year, meaning he cannot seek another term in office.
Barbara Curry and George Gill are the other two candidates for the seat.
Sharum, Curry and Gill will square off in the Aug. 23 primary election. The candidate who wins a simple majority of the vote – 50% plus one vote – will claim the seat. If no one wins a simple majority, a runoff election will take place Nov. 8.
Southwest Ledger recently interviewed Sharum about his decision to run, the city’s current direction and other topics. Here are questions and answers from the interview, edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: What is your occupation?
A: I’m the minister here at University Church of Christ.
Q: What made you decide to run (for the council seat) this year?
A: I know that Jay Burk was no longer going to be able to run, so he term-limited out. And that gave an opportunity.
I just feel that if I was going to run on anything, I think I wanted transparency – especially accountability – and a voice for the people.
Q: Are you satisfied with the city’s current direction? Why or why not?
A: I think you really need to be in the process to totally evaluate it, but I have some questions. I have some questions of where we are, where we’re going.
My biggest concern was, “You’re going to approve a budget and not realize that you don’t have any money for it?” Those kinds of things.
I think that with my word of “accountability,” I think that “sensibility” is a word I’d like to use. Just to be sensible.
If you’re asking people to be on a budget because gas prices are high, I think the city needs to follow suit and be the leader on that. I don’t think that we’re like the federal government, where we can print our own money. And since we can’t, then we’ve got to get other ways to try to look for the best way to finance what we need to do as a city.
Q: What skills do you have that would make you an effective council member?
A: Listening skills.
I think a lot of times, people get in a position because they like the title. I don’t go in with any agenda. I don’t go in with an axe to grind. I don’t go in with any ulterior motives. …
I learned this from being a school board member: You’re not there to run the school.
And I’m not there to run the city. You have a city manager that does that. You have people in place that are hired for that.
You’re overseers. And if you’re a good overseer, I think the skill set is to be a good listener, to be able to take those concerns from citizens and bring those forth to the body of people that are paid to do this.
Q: You mentioned transparency earlier. Do you feel that the city is not transparent enough?
A: Maybe “enough” is the key word. I think we can do a better job with communicating to the citizens of Lawton, better than just a headline in the newspaper that your water bill’s going to go up without any kind of informing process.
Q: If elected, what steps would you support to make city government more transparent?
A: I think there’s a couple of things the city’s doing well as far as how they respond to people, because I’ve called, and I’ve asked them certain things. I know they have an information director.
I think the biggest way is to utilize all the resources that we have with technology to be better connected where people are, as opposed to just saying, “Well, we’ll just put something on the website.” You’re assuming that people are going to be driven to the website.
That’s not where they live. They’re not living on the city’s website. … They also live on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and all of these other resources.
So, I think since you have a director for that – my side job is with the Oklahoma Sports Network that I have. It’s a digital company in a digital age. I think that we can do a little bit better job in communicating because there’s so many more avenues now.
One hundred years ago, it was newspapers and radio, and that was pretty much it.
Q: If elected, what are some of the things you would like to see the city accomplish in the next three years?
A: It’s not an overhaul. I don’t think the city’s in a bad shape.
I think there’s some stuff that needs to be looked at. Like FISTA, I’m sure is a big concern for people. Where we stand with that.
There may be some changes abroad. We have a senator retiring that was on a committee for so long. He was the senior representative. Now when that leaves, what is Lawton going to do? You know, being proactive.
I think we’re in a good direction of where we are, so I don’t think it’s an overhaul. But I just think that we keep growing and keep improving. There’s always room for growth and improvement.