Three face off in primary for Blaine County commissioner: Shane Fox

Shane Fox, a Blaine County employee and computer specialist, is running against incumbent Frank DePriest and Blaine County farmer and rancher Kevin Mellville in the Republican primary for Blaine County Commissioner.

Mellville has not responded to multiple calls requesting an interview over the past few weeks.

Fox is the Blaine County Mosquito and Weed District assistant supervisor, but in the time that he’s not working for the district he helps other departments improve their technology, and he said the technological knowledge he brings is among the reasons he feels he is the best person to be county commissioner.

He said he moved to Chinook in 1991 and graduated high school there four years later before going to Montana State University, getting a degree in earth science with an emphasis in geography and minors in computer science and geographic information systems.

Fox’s area of interest was precision agriculture and said he went to school to learn a subject that would allow him to come home and contribute to the community.

“That was my ultimate goal at the time,” he said.

This goal was achieved in 2017 when, after working for an engineering firm, he said, he finally found a way to get back to Chinook, initially working on a friend’s farm and ranch before taking a job with the county at the Mosquito and Weed District.

From there, Fox said, his involvement with the county snowballed, using his time not spent working for the district helping out other departments and county entities improve their technology and set up new systems.

He said he’s done work for practically every department at one point or another including the commission, scanning historical survey maps and putting the last 100 years of road petitions into a searchable database that will allow them to look up information on road petitions past and present easily.

He said he’s also created a mapping system to help forecasting and budgeting for the Blaine County Road and Bridge Department, created a database of Blaine County Museum donation records and is building an application for analyzing and creating data visualizations with county budgets.

Fox said in his time at the egineering firm he worked at he also accumulated quite a bit of knowledge about things the commission regularly deals in, which he also touted as an asset, along with his research abilities.

While Fox said his technological knowledge is an asset, he wants to make the jobs of everyone at the courthouse easier in other ways too, which he thinks he will be able to do as commissioner.

He also said he wants the commission to be more active and visible in the community, one that doesn’t have a huge amount of resources, something he thinks he can do as well.

He said he wants to bring a youthfulness and energy to the courthouse which he hopes to provide as part of the commission as well.