As voters from District 5, it has been interesting to watch the various candidates – all with very different backgrounds, throughout the run-up to the March 3 primary election.

Each touches on issues they believe are important to voters and provides the solutions they believe would work best.

One of the candidates can provide much more detail on a broad range of topics. Her experience shows. She has been dealing with the various levels of local and state government for the past four and a half years on the priority issues for Lake County – fire protection and recovery and ramping up the devastated economy. She has shown her ability to bring grant money to the County.

Additionally, she has attended every Board of Supervisors meeting for the past eight months, met with the heads of all the county departments and built strong relationships with the county supervisors and state officials and talked to hundreds of Lake County residents.

One issue that particularly tells the story is fire insurance, which is indeed a big problem for our County – not just for homeowners, but for the ancillary real estate industry businesses, and for all those who would like to move to Lake County – another blow to our hard hit property tax rolls.

One of the candidates sent out a mailer recently stating, “I will use my years of business experience to take on the big insurance companies and renegotiate fairer rates for Lake County homeowners.”

The more experienced candidate has been in constant contact with our state Assembly member and senator who represent Lake County reporting the devastating impact of the fire insurance cancellations and increases.

In researching the issue, she discovered that a Lake County zip code had been omitted from the mandatory one-year moratorium on insurance companies non-renewing policyholders in certain areas of the state.

She immediately notified Assemblymember Aguiar-Curry and State Sen. McGuire who represent Lake County and asked them to do all they could do to correct the error. She received assurances that they would take the matter to the state insurance commissioner. A couple of weeks later, a revised list was issued including the once-omitted zip code.

Getting things accomplished to improve the lives of Lake County residents comes from building strong partnerships with all who have a part to play, not by going it alone. Relevant experience counts.

Please join us in voting for Jessica Pyska for District 5 supervisor. Her extensive list of endorsements from organizations and individuals spanning all political ideologies demonstrates that her partnerships are already strong and she will be effective from day one for all members of her district and Lake County.

Harry and Roberta Lyons live in Lower Lake, California.