Editor,

I see from the voter’s booklet that my associate Scott Jackson is running for the No. 1 commissioner’s position at North Whidbey Fire and Rescue. I’ve known Scott since we both started at North Whidbey Fire in 2006. We attended all the training together and progressed through our careers together.

I highly recommend Scott as our next commissioner. The community deserves a change, it deserves forward thinking and new ideas. We live in a very challenging time as posted in your editorial of Oct. 18.

Scott is an Island County dispatcher (one of the best, in my opinion) so he is not only aware of the medical and fire needs of the community but the law enforcement needs as well. This gives him the distinct advantage over his opponent since he has a great working relationship with the law enforcement community in the county. In today’s violent and volatile environment, the fire department depends more on law enforcement than ever before for the safety of their responders.

The time to start changing and modernizing our community politics is now…. time to move out the old and bring in the new… time to have accountability and oversight (a mismanagement of $230,000, as reported in the Whidbey News-Times, is not proper oversight).

Let’s back Scott Jackson for the beginning of a new cycle of North Whidbey Fire and Rescue commissioners and management.

Jim O’Connor

Division Chief

Special Operations NWFR (retired)