By Eric Killough
Freelance reporter
Special to the Tribune

Pratt native Ryan Lunt will be facing incumbent Rick Shriver in the November 5 general election for the opportunity to serve as the Pratt County commissioner for district 3, a district that covers the county south of U.S. Highway 54. He has planned several community events to help area voters connect with the issues at hand as well as ask questions and put a face with a name.

On October 7 and October 28, Lunt will be at the Pratt Public Library for community meet and greet times from 5-6 p.m. Light refreshments will be provided. On October 19, Fulfill Med Spa will be sponsoring a charity cornhole tournament with a silent auction at the Pratt County Fairgrounds 4-H building to benefit ‘Linda’s Watch,’ an organization that raises funds to help cover prescription medication costs through local pharmacies. There will also be college football on television during the cornhole tournament. The tournament begins at 1 p.m. To pre-register for the charity cornhole tournament, please email lindaswatch4meds@gmail.com.

In addition to the cornhole tournament, and also at the 4-H building, Lunt will be holding a meet and greet from 5-7 p.m. Immediately following the meet and greet Lunt is sponsoring a live music event until 10 p.m. featuring the locally popular band ‘Space Madness’. The cornhole tournament and concert is a bring-your-own-beverage (BYOB) event.

Lunt was raised in Pratt, Kansas and graduated from Pratt High School before moving on to the University of Kansas where he earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental science. Lunt is employed by Pratt Energy, which runs the ethanol plant in Pratt, where he has served as the Environmental Health and Safety Manager for the past seven years.

Lunt’s responsibilities in his capacity with Pratt Energy include safety training; coaching nearly 35 employees; ensuring that safety and environmental policies are up to date and followed; assisting other managers with new project development; and serving as lead on insurance and engineering inspections. He said his reasons for running for a county commission seat at this time revolve around serving his community.

“I had been working in Denver, and when I moved back to Pratt I wanted to be involved in the community. Whether that was joining the USD382 Foundation, which I did when I first came back, to now being on the Board of Trustees for Ninnescah Electric,” Lunt said. “I have also served with the county’s public building committee, but my whole thing is I want to be involved. My kids are growing up here, I’m proud of the place, and I want to keep it thriving. Pratt County is going through a population decline and at the business level, as well as at the County, we’re having trouble finding work force. At the county level we have several people reaching retirement age, and we’re already short county employees. How are we going to fill those positions? How are we going to present Pratt in order to attract workers? This is going to affect our local economy. I think a good way to bring that work force is business development and growth. I don’t mean just bringing new business in, but actually supporting our existing businesses and helping them to remain sustainable and grow. Also, we need to try to bring in manufacturing that is outside of the agricultural sector.”

Lunt said that the county relies heavily on the agriculture sector, but to relieve some of that dependence and bring new people into the county industrial or manufacturing growth must be encouraged.

“We need to do a better job of selling the city and county. Some of the things we have here are pretty cool,” he said. “The Pratt Public Library, the Vernon Filley Art Museum, the Wildlife and Parks Museum, we have umpteen parks and trails. We’re in a pretty neat area, and we need to market that. We are also in a good location in terms of transportation with the rail lines, and major highways.”

Lunt said he was aware that there has been community chatter about commissioner’s salaries and benefits and he felt that at the county commissioner level there should not be medical insurance paid by the county.

“If they were full time county employees, doing county commissioner jobs from Monday through Friday 8 a.m. until 5 p.m., I’m all for that,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, the commissioners have to be available to the public, so there is a sense that they are always working for the public. But I don’t think it’s necessary to have health insurance through the county.”

Earlier this year, a community-driven petition resulted in a measure that will appear on the ballot in November’s general election. The proposed question is whether the county commission should expand from its current three members to a five-person board.

“I understand the difficulties of having a five-person commission, but I also understand the benefits. With a three-person commission, if a commissioner wants something all they need is to get a second person to agree. With a five-person commission there would be more representation, but we’d have to have five people that want to do it and that will come prepared to do it,” Lunt said. “I think that’s actually going to be harder to find than what people think. What happens if we don’t get five people to run, and we only get four? What happens if a district winds up with nobody representing them? These are all the questions that need to be thought through, and that’s why I am glad it’s going to a vote.”

If voters approve the five-member commission initiative, Lunt said he supported allocating the current total compensation for the three county commissioners among the five new commissioners, without increasing the overall funding.

“Pratt County needs to be looked at as a business, we are a business. We have employees and we have customers, the citizens of Pratt County, that we need to satisfy. We need to be run like a business and businesses look at developing, they look at the future. Businesses don’t sit there and look at the status quo. I think we need to review our wages and our benefits packages,” he said. “I’m going to go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and look at how other counties compensate their employees. I’m going to take the time to learn that. I will not go to a consultant and say, ‘will you tell me what we need to do?’ I’m going to take my own time and make an assessment as to where we’re at as a county. I’ll also be asking for the other commissioner’s and employee’s feedback. We need to be competitive.”

Lunt said he would like to see the county commission more involved with bringing ideas to the table for economic growth.

“There is a really good group of people there and giving them the resources and the funding to assist with building our community is critical,” he said. “I’m doing this because I really enjoy helping out in the community and being involved. I feel like younger people need to start stepping up in the community and start voicing their opinions. I’d like to see us start to bring in a younger workforce. I want to keep this place thriving. There is a reason my wife and I moved back from Denver, we had great experiences growing up here and want the same for our daughters.”

Lunt is married to wife Shea and together they are raising their two children in a house built by Lunt’s great-grandfather.