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Gail Turner
LAWTON – County government has changed dramatically in the 24 years since Comanche County Commissioner Gail Turner began his service on the commission, he said.
“Our monies haven’t changed much, but our expenses have changed a whole lot,” he said in a June 13 interview. “We’ve had a lot of growth out in the Elgin area, particularly, but really in the whole Eastern District. There’s been a lot of growth – a lot of subdivisions that have started up and built houses.”
Turner said that growth has created more traffic out in the county, which has caused more wear and tear on county roads. Additionally, the cost of fuel and other essential items has risen over the past 24 years.
Turner, who represents District 1 on the commission, is seeking his seventh term in office this fall. He will square off against Lawton businessman Charlie Hale and Elgin resident John O’Brien in the June 28 GOP primary election.
The candidate who receives the most votes in the primary election will claim the District 1 seat, as no Democrats are in the race. If necessary, a runoff election will be set for Aug. 23.
Southwest Chronicle recently interviewed Turner about his bid for a seventh term and other topics. Here are questions and answers from the interview, edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: What is your occupation?
A: County commissioner.
Q: How long have you been in office?
A: This is our 24th year. We’ve got a great team of guys at the county barn.
Q: Why did you decide to seek office 24 years ago?
A: Basically, we wanted to make a difference, change some things and improve some things in the county and some projects. We’ve got a lot of projects out in the county that we’ve been very proud of that we’ve done that are kind of out of the box, I would say.
Our team kind of thinks outside the box, and we’ve done some big drainage projects and big roadway projects that most county commissioners don’t do.
We’re very aggressive about helping the volunteer fire departments fight fires. We’ve got grader guys that are really good to help, and we have our water trucks that are geared up to fill up the firemen’s water trucks. We can even do some grass (fire) fighting with our water trucks because they’ve got sprayers on the front.
We’ve got a big project coming up next year that we’ve been working on for over 15 years on Trail Road, from just south of Spencer and Trail Road where the concrete bridge is – about a short half a mile.
That project will start, and it will run to Welch Road, and it will straighten out those curves. It will straighten them out and raise the elevation of the road, so that will make the area where the two bad curves are on Trail a whole lot safer.
That project got set back because of funding. We should have gotten it done a couple of years ago, but because of the funding of things, it got set back. But I feel very comfortable that we will get it done next year, because it’s on the list to get done and bid out next year.
We’re finishing up a big bridge right there by the county barn on Meers Porter Hill, which was a very crooked, dangerous bridge. And there got to be a lot of traffic on it because of the increase in houses that were sold right east of the county barn.
We’ve had a lot of young people and suburban-type people that were using that road instead of just farmers. It was a pretty slanted bridge, so this is going to be a lot safer. It’s not perfectly straight, but it’ll be a lot safer. That project is almost completed. …
We’ve worked real close with the Comanche Nation. We really want to brag on them for the money that they’ve spent in our county.
They’ve done a fair part of the Eastern District. The projects around the schools and the small towns have been a big impact on the small communities where they spent the money, for making them a lot safer and giving the small towns a new look. …
Comanche Nation’s been a very good partner in helping fund projects within the county, on both sides of the county.
Q: Why did you decide to seek a seventh term?
A: A lot of these projects we’ve been working on for many years, and you like to see them completed. So that’s one reason. The other reason is we’ve got a really good team of guys at the county barn that are real easy to work with, and the taxpayers that we deal with are very easy. We like improving things, and we’ve got some projects that we haven’t gotten done yet. And I’d like to see some of those projects finished before I decide to retire.
Q: What skills do you have that make you an effective commissioner?
A: I spent five years in financial services learning how to deal with people and stuff.
I grew up as a farm boy, and then we had a dirt construction business that we actually built roads and stuff in subdivisions for over 10 years.
Between the financial services with dealing with people and handling money and stuff like that – I owned my own business, so I dealt with payroll myself. And then when we did the subdivisions, it gave me a lot of input with working with engineers and working with grades. Kind of fine-tuning my farmer skills.
In farming, you learn a lot about drainage and roads and how the water runs. But doing the roads in the subdivisions and working with the engineers has been a really, really big help with working on the roads and stuff.
If we get in a situation, we use the engineers to size our big drainage pipes and to look at the projects to get some clarification. Smaller projects, we usually make our own decisions. But if it’s a bigger project – if it’s over a 3-foot horn – we usually get a drainage proposal from the engineer to make sure we put the right size pipes in there.
We try to do it right.
Q: Do you think you are more effective now than you were when you first took office?
A: I think there’s no doubt. Number one, me and my team have had a lot of experiences and we’ve done a few things wrong and mostly right. You learn from experience what works and what doesn’t work.
Luckily, we’ve got a really good team that works together. That helps our productivity and helps the quality of the work that we’re putting out now, compared to when we started.
We’ve got a lot better equipment than we had when we started. … When you have better equipment and better hands, you’re going to get a better product.
And so, I think there’s no comparison to the quality and quantity of jobs that we can do now, compared to when I started.
Q: Looking back, how would you rate the county’s performance in dealing with the pandemic and the upheaval that it caused?
A: From the courthouse on down, I got very few negative calls.
I think overall, the county handled it very well. We kept doing business at the courthouse – the courthouse was closed to the public, but yet things flowed through that needed to flow through, in most cases.
At the county barns, we didn’t change the way we were doing business as far as our production. We had some of the guys go straight to the trucks, some go straight to the graders.
We didn’t do nearly as much meeting at the barns and stuff as we did before. We tried to do a lot more on the radio and the night before, so we didn’t have the guys together at the barn in the mornings.
Q: If you are reelected, what would you like to see the county accomplish in the next four years?
A: The projects that we mentioned. I’d like to see them finished and carried out.
And then, we’ve got some other projects on the books that we’re planning on – smaller projects, some big drainage pipes we’re going to put in.
We’ve got some more smaller bridges. We’ve got another dangerous bridge that’s pretty slanted on the east side – it’s on Cache Road, east of Bethel. …
You never get all the projects done that you’d like to see. It’s always nice to improve things, so we just want to keep making things safer and better for the Eastern District.