Shoshone County Commission Jon Cantamessa, Ken Tilton; Jim Vergobbi, Gary Waters

Shoshone County has two independent candidates seeking to unseat incumbent commissioners. One is a grocer from a longtime Wallace family; the other is an Osburn garbage hauler hoping to reclaim the commission seat he lost four years ago.

The county’s need for jobs and a bigger tax base is foremost on all candidates’ minds.

Jon Cantamessa is running against Democrat Ken Tilton of Cataldo, the District 3 incumbent. In District 1, Gary Waters is challenging incumbent Democrat Jim Vergobbi.

Here’s how they stack up:

Cantamessa, 56, owns Excel Foods. His run for office is motivated by an interest in improving the economy and minimizing the economic impacts of federal decisions on the traditional mining and forest industries.

Cantamessa, who has a degree in marketing, believes his business experience can help the county communicate with businesses that might relocate to the valley.

Tilton , 57, lives in Cataldo. Retired after 30 years in the telephone industry, he was appointed to fill a commission vacancy in 1999.

He supports police efforts to close down methamphetamine labs, and said he is eager to protect the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene and the St. Joe rivers from development.

His main interest, however, is “to get the EPA out of here.” He thinks the stigma of Superfund, represented by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, handicaps economic development efforts. The state, he said, “can very adequately and capably” clean up whatever mining wastes need attention when the Superfund project is complete at the former Bunker Hill smelter site.

There’s little that county commissioners can do to affect federal agencies, according to candidate Waters. He thinks a more effective way to attract businesses is to make sure the county is running efficiently. He doesn’t think it is.

His major case in point: waste management. Waters, who has owned a garbage-hauling firm for 30 years, said he offered to take over the county’s waste operations and save taxpayers $250,000 a year, “and they haven’t even talked to me.”

“If they waste a quarter million in one area, they could do it with other areas,” he said.

The 59-year-old Osburn man won the 1994 commission race, running as a Democrat, and served one two-year term.

Vergobbi contends that the county does a good job running its solid waste transfer station. He said that Waters overstates the amount of money the county has spent on waste management and defends the commissioners’ decision to turn down his 1997 offer to take over waste transfer.

“We looked at the numbers and I don’t think the numbers stacked up,” Vergobbi said.

Vergobbi said he’s running for re-election because he loves the job he’s held for four years.

A retiree, he said he has plenty of time to put in - more than the three-day work week required of commissioners.

Vergobbi shares other candidates’ concerns about the EPA and Forest Service and those agencies’ impacts on the county, but stops short of criticizing the federal bureaucrats.