Business owner Rob Jones, of Moses Lake, took the Grant County Commissioner District 2 seat in January for four years.

And after the first month, he said, “for the most part, it’s just drinking through the fire hose,” referring to ingesting much information at once.

“I’m still in the process of learning,” he said. “It’s a really big position. One day, we’ll be learning about trash and the county landfill. The next, we’re learning about the Homeless Task Force.”

The owner of Moses Lake’s Carquest Auto Parts-Levis Auto Parts and LINE-X said he’s a Washington native, living in a handful of cities on the west and east side. He said he’s using his business knowledge as an elected official, but it likely would take “a couple years to get a good grounding on it (being commissioner).”

“It’d be a joke to say you’re going to know everything in six months,” he said.

But that didn’t stop him from seeking election.

“I want to make a difference,” he said of why he chose to run for office.

Jones won election to the office in November 2020. He spoke with the Columbia Basin Herald in December and February. The Herald will publish in the near future an article about Danny Stone, a second new Grant County commissioner.

Jones, a Republican, said his decision to run was spurred after Grant County Commissioner Cindy Carter, who took the District 3 seat again last year (now in her 15th year), helped him with a “property rights issue” recently on one of his business properties, he said. He didn’t wish to divulge details about the matter, but said he didn’t realize how much impact local government could have until then.

“Everything got resolved so fast,” he said.

He added he didn’t understand why some elected officials were taking vacations while constituents were suffering with lost jobs, no food and the like.

As far as the Grant County Health District’s role in communicating safety protocols for the COVID-19 pandemic, he said the organization was staying within its bounds.

“They don’t really have any control,” he said. “They just do what they’re supposed to do (as mandated by the state).”

One example, he said, was Ten Pin Tap House & Restaurant/Papa’s Casino opening an outdoor area in a tent, which have might have run counter to state mandates for COVID-19 at the time, but the health district hadn’t closed it.

“I’d obviously be in favor of businesses being open,” he said, adding because he was a business owner and lost about $500,000 in 2020 due to COVID-19.

“There’s not any way to make that up,” he said.

And taking out loans to keep the doors open was just bad business, he said. However, he said he understood the reasoning behind business closures and restrictions.

The health district “isn’t really abusing the power they have,” he said. “They’re not going after anyone ... . They’re your friend, your neighbor.”

When riots hit larger cities, such as Seattle and Portland, following George Floyd’s death during an arrest by Minneapolis police, Moses Lake remained peaceful, he said, with one march through town.

“To me, it’s not an issue,” he said.

He said he and and his friends, some of whom are people of color, had conversations about police brutality and targeting Blacks, and he said he couldn’t understand. However, he said he knew he’d never understand because he was white.

“I have friends who have problems, but I think it’s very relevant to your life circumstances,” he said.

He also mentioned he didn’t understand why people wanted to remove names and monuments because they were correlated with slavery or other history, as those issues might repeat themselves unless discussed with other generations.

“It seems weird, you want to brush all this history away,” he said. “In another 100 years, people might not even know it (slavery) existed.”

Upon taking his seat, Jones said one of his priorities was ensuring folks who suffered from COVID-19 restrictions would get all the help they could. However, he felt somewhat like he was “walking in blind,” which could be debatable because he said he had been taking notes for months during commissioners meetings, before taking office.

After helping relieve people’s COVID-19-related issues, Jones said he’d tackle what came his way, such as the landfill in Ephrata. The dump recently raised prices for people dropping off trash, he said, which would help some, but higher prices likely were on the horizon to ensure the county could acquire more land for another landfill.

“But it still doesn’t allow for expansion,” he said of the current prices. “That’s an issue.”

Possibly in another eight to 10 years, the current site would be inadequate, he added, but he wasn’t sure of the timeline. If that happened before a new site was ready, Jones said the county would have to pay to have trash hauled elsewhere, which was more expensive. On top of that, it was recommended the county close its rural drop sites.

At the commissioners meetings Jones attended, he said he noticed documents didn’t seem readily available to the public prior to sessions, so folks didn’t know anything about the issues ahead of time.

“For me, it’s just about transparency,” he said. “And, people don’t seem to come until it affects them.”