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Editor’s note: This is the third story in a series of stories from Monday night’s forum.

The Republican Party of Covington County held a candidate forum Monday night at city hall, giving several candidates the opportunity to speak to citizens on why they are running.

The second article in the series ran in Tuesday’s paper with comments from Greg White and Kyle Adams running for chairman of the Covington County Commission.

After they spoke, candidates running for District one of the Covington County Commission were given the opportunity to speak.

Kent Colquett:

Colquett is a native of Opp and was commissioner for 12 years until 2008.

“First of all, I just want to say thank you to all of the county employees for what you do,” Colquett said. “Without county employees, commissioners are nothing. I love the people of Covington County and I think the people in the rural areas deserve a commissioner that will ride the roads again as we did years ago. With my past experience as a commissioner, I know how to move this county forward. I would appreciate your vote March 3, and this is a county wide election.”

The last person running for district one is current county commissioner Kenneth Northey.

Northey has lived in Covington County his entire life and resides in Opp where he has been the owner/operator of a poultry broiler, hay and cattle farm for the past 29 years.

He is married to Kim Northey who is a rural carrier for the United States Postal Service. Together, they have five children and five grandchildren, one of whom is forever watching over them from heaven.

For the past 12 years, Northey has been on the board of directors for the Covington County Alabama Farmers Federation, serving as president for the last five. He is currently serving as the Farm-PAC representative for Covington County, which is a political action committee of the Alabama Farmer’s Federation. Over the past decade, he has served on the board of directors for the Covington County Cattlemen Association and has been recently elected to serve on the ALFA State Poultry Committee. He also serves on the Resource Conservation and Development Council, and a non-profit focused on planning and implementing projects that aid in making the community a better place to live. Additionally, Northey is a member of the Alabama Poultry and Egg Association.

One thing that Northey stresses is being transparent with the people in the county.

“The people need to know what is going on,” Northey said. “One thing that we did when I first started was implementing videos of our meetings and putting them on Youtube.com so if anyone wanted to see a meeting all they had to do was go back to that date pull it up. You can see what is said and what was done and it hasn’t been edited or anything. I believe in transparency, I believe in the trust of the people and I believe in what we do.”

Throughout his time in the commission, Northey said there have been several transitions.

“We have had an engineer retire and had another one come in,” Northey said. “We have done things to improve equipment for the road department, and for the past three years we have done a cost of living raise for our county employees, which all of the commissioners opted out of. Also, the commissioners have not taken any money for mileage. That saves probably more than a $100,000 for the county. We are just trying to do things that save money for the county. We are here to serve the county and that’s what I want to do.”