Candidates come forward for District 3 seat on Polk commission

Before the end of next month, the Polk County Commission will be stepping up to choose a new member once again. This time with a board now with five members instead of four, they’ll have to make a 4-1 choice on who will serve as the next representative from District 3 in the Rockmart area.

As of press time over the weekend, five candidates had thus far submitted their names for consideration for the District 3 seat.

Those included Edwin Britt, former Polk Board of Education District 6 member Hal Floyd, former District 3 commissioner Larry Reynolds, former Aragon Mayor Ken Suffridge, and Tim Yarbrough.

They’ll be going through the same process as the recently selected District 1 Commissioner Jose Iglesias, who was sworn in on Monday after press time by Probate Judge Linda Smith for his short term in office.

A question and answer session is being held this coming Monday night for the upcoming October work session, with each getting an opportunity to answer questions that are generated from the commissioners, who will be watching from the audience.

Each member will be given 1 minute to respond, with each getting a turn to take a question first in line.

The Monday, Oct. 2 work session will start at 5:15 p.m. If the same schedule is followed as the Aug. 30 special session for the last question and answer session, it will be held before the commission gets to regular business for the night.

As was also the case last time, though these candidates have stepped forward, the process is not yet closed and others are able to submit their names for consideration through county manager Matt Denton, who can be reached at 770-749-2100 for more information on how to be considered.

Here’s some brief information about each of the candidates who have put in their application for the job:

Edwin Britt

A former longtime employee of Suhner Manufacturing in Rome with more than 20-plus years on the job, Edwin Britt is seeking a new job as a county commissioner as one of the candidates.

Britt said his main focus if he were to be chosen as a commissioner is to work on attracting and bringing industries to Polk County.

“I went outside the county to work for many years, and I’d like to see jobs be brought in here for my kids and other people’s kids to work,” Britt said. “We need to bring in some kind of industries here to the area, and not just more fast food restaurants and stores.”

Britt said he also wishes to do more to provide answers to local residents about the Polk County Landfill, and what the county plans to do about what he and others have called a growing problem at “Mount Trashmore.”

“Whenever you bring an industry in and drive them down one of our main roads, and you bring them down Highway 278, all they have to do is pass Mount Trashmore and see and smell it,” he said. “It drives people out of Polk County and keeps us from bringing good jobs here.”

He said he specifically feels that Denton and the commission should be providing more answers about the landfill and many other issues.

Britt, who is divorced and the father of two sons, said that though he isn’t working professionally anymore at Suhner as a production supervisor, he said his past work and life experience gives him a particular viewpoint he believes would be beneficial to the commission.

Hal Floyd

Rockmart’s Hal Floyd is one of three candidates who needs no introduction to the community. He was the first plant manager at Tiptop Poultry in Rockmart, and served up until the beginning of August on the Polk County Board of Education.

He resigned from his position back before the start of the school year — and replaced by Judy Wiggins — in the District 6 seat for the Board of Education.

Floyd, a longtime resident of Rockmart after he moved to the area to open the Tiptop plant in the late 1980s, ran for the Board of Education seat on a campaign of both managerial and budgetary experiences, and on providing more transparent government for local residents to better understand the decisions made by the school board.

We reached out to Floyd for a statement, but he was not immediately available for comment at press time.

Larry Reynolds

Another candidate who has previous experience with local politics is Larry Reynolds,

Reynolds, who previously held the seat he seeks to be the replacement for from 2009 through 2012, looks to return to the county commission following his loss to gain the seat back from former commissioner Stefanie Drake Burford in 2016.

His hopes are that if given a chance to serve again, he might bring better communication between all the commissioners on the board.

“I think that a lot of people think there’s not a lot of communication between the commissioners, and I think I can talk to the factions — if there are factions on that thing — and get them talking together again about issues and see if they can’t have some better communication than it appears now,” Reynolds said. “Looking at votes, you can see there appears to be some splits.”

Reynolds, a U.S. Navy veteran who served after graduating from Rockmart High School until January 1965, went to work at 21 at Ford Motor Company’s Atlanta assembly plant for 40 years, and has been retired for more than 20 years.

“I was born and raised in Rockmart, went to elementary school in Rockmart and graduated from Rockmart High School,” he said.

His hopes are that if selected as a commissioner, he can do more to help the community he loves.

Ken Suffridge

Former Aragon Mayor Ken Suffridge is hoping that his experience on two different boards will give him a leg up in the competition for the District 3 commission spot.

Suffridge — a longtime member of the U.S. Air Force and later the Air National Guard — previously served as a Gwinnett County Commissioner before he and his wife moved to Aragon, where eventually in 2012 he ran for office and won as the new Mayor of Aragon. He’s also served on local planning boards, the Board of Elections and also several nonprofits.

Now he’s hoping his longtime military and local government service will give him a chance to serve.

“There are several reasons I chose to be considered for appointment to the recently vacated Commission seat in District 3. I feel serious attention needs to be given to some critical issues, including, but not limited to; Economic Development, the County Airport, landfill issues, personnel matters, animal control, planning and zoning, code enforcement and public safety,” Suffridge said. “I know what it takes to be the people’s representative.”

Suffridge lately has been serving the Polk County Republican Party as a public information officer.

Tim Yarbrough

With a number of years of management experience under his belt, local resident Tim Yarbrough is hoping his credentials and opinions about local issues will help him get selected to the District 3 seat.

Yarbrough, who started out as a chemist at Bekaert Steel in Rome and later went into full management at the facility for 22 years, now is finishing up his career at Angelica.

He stepped up as a candidate for the seat in order to help solves several issues the commission has faced over the past year. Among those, he feels that issues at the county airport, the landfill, the police department and the fire department all need answers, ones not being provided by the county commission at present.

“I haven’t walked a mile in their shoes,” he said. “I’m the guy looking over the fence, and my grass is always greener on my side. But one of the big issues is transparency, and I think that several people — Frank Plant has touched on it, along with Ed Burnley and Glenn Campbell — have talked about it. I think everyone would agree that they should just let the people know what’s going on.”

He calls Polk County home with his fiancee Brenda.

Check back online at Polkstandardjournal.com for more on the County Commission’s question and answer session being held next week.