The race for one open Crook County Commission seat pits incumbent Crook County Commissioner Seth Crawford against Ken Fahlgren, former commissioner and long-time Prineville business owner.

The seat is a full-time job that pays $88,803 annually, and is one of three seats on the newly formed Crook County Commission.

In March, Crook County ditched its old form of governance — a court comprising two part-time commissioners and one full-time judge who operated as an administrator — to a commission with three full-time commission seats. The change went into effect immediately, and Crawford, who was the county judge at the time and voted against the decision, transitioned into his current role as county commissioner.

Seth Crawford

Crawford, 44, is from Crook County . His lineage dates back 100 years to when his grandfather moved to the area from Poland, he said. He has three daughters and his wife, Susan, is an accountant with an office in downtown Prineville.

“It’s just a place we really love,” Crawford said. “I’ve said that probably a million times.”

Crawford is running on the platform that his core values closely match the values found in Crook County residents: support of Second Amendment rights, the desire for a drug-free, fully-housed community and preserving the small town feel of Crook County as it continues to grow. He also believes in pushing back against policies and projects that may not be in line with those Crook County values.

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“You have to have somebody with a strong personality who’s willing to stand up for your community. I’ve shown that over and over again, pushing back during COVID, pushing back against Oregon Wild trying to take over our forests … again, federal overreach.” Crawford said. “If you don’t push back on this stuff, you really start losing the battle quickly. And that’s something that we can’t afford in Crook County because we have such an amazing community and such a beautiful place that we live.”

Crawford’s approach to governance also involves hitting the streets. His philosophy is that by being out in the community, commissioners can keep small problems from becoming bigger. Traffic is one example of that. By being out in the community, Crawford has seen first-hand the need for creating better safety measures along state Highway 126 and the community’s need for a second access road into Juniper Canyon.

Independent of the election, Crawford was eager to talk about the steps he is already taking to address these safety issues.

“We will have a minimum of three different options (presented to the community) for the lack of a second access in Juniper Canyon, specifically with engineering as well as initial cost estimates,” Crawford said about an upcoming community meeting on Oct. 29 at the Powell Butte Community Center. “It’s something that is super important, because both of those areas need to be addressed.”

Ken Fahlgren

Fahlgren is also a long-time Crook County resident. After he sold his Prineville automotive business that had been in the family for 36 years, he decided to run for a seat on the Crook County Court. He served as commissioner from 2009 to 2016, and from 2017 to 2020, he served on the county’s criminal justice commission.

“I’ve lived here most of my life, gone school here. I’ve built businesses here, I’ve owned property, raised a family, have grandkids here. I’m very tied to the community, and I feel like that it’s important for all of us to vote for the right thing to help in any way we can, to build a community that our grandkids can live and come back to,” Fahlgren said.

Fahlgren, 66, told The Bulletin he wants to come out of retirement to run again for the Crook County Commission because he misses the work. He has enjoyed his time retirement, but “sometimes people flunk retirement. I just need more things to be doing.”

If elected, Fahlgren intends to lean on his eight years of experience in county government, but he is also excited by the change Crook County made from a court-governed system to a commission-governed system. It makes perfect business sense, he said, and the update is something he thinks the county should have done long ago.

He intends to build on that forward progress by forging strong relationships with the other commissioners, the city of Prineville and local businesses. Building a strong economy and making sure Prineville keeps up with growth is also important to him. One area he intends to address is planning how the county will use money taxed from the Facebook Data Center staring in 2027.

“It’s going to be a lot of planning prior to that on how we manage that money and how we work with the public on what it is that’s expected. Those are challenges, but they’re good challenges. They’re exciting challenges … This isn’t a town dying. This is a town growing, and we need to manage it in the best possible way,” Fahlgren said.