Ramm in race for Lincoln County Commissioner

Kim Ramm of Odessa is the third candidate running for the Lincoln County Commissioner District #1 position in the August primary.

Ramm and her husband Dale Ramm are the owners of Ramm Hardware in Odessa, a franchise of the Do It Best corporation.

Kim Ramm is also known locally for her political activism. She says that she has been interested and involved in politics for almost as long as she can remember. She was on the Odessa Town Council for eight years, retiring at the end of 2011.

She has also been a member of the Odessa Public Development Authority (OPDA) since its inception and is now seeing the work of that organization begin in earnest to reap rewards in the form of permanent new jobs.

As a business person, Ramm has seen the repercussions of state mandates on small businesses. In dealing with governmental regulations imposed on businesses, she experienced first hand how much of a burden was involved. Large companies would have no trouble absorbing the extra cost, but small businesses would be in a very different position. As a result of these experiences, she became more and more involved in the political arena.

In fact, she ran for Lincoln County commissioner once before when former commissioner Bill Graedel retired. Then and now, she entered the race at the urging of other members of the Lincoln County Republican Party.

If elected, Ramm says she will focus her efforts on three main issues. The number-one issue is water. The declining Odessa area subaquifer means that additional sources of water will be needed for municipalities, for domestic farm wells and for agricultural irrigation. She says she feels that multiple approaches to the problem should be utilized. She would like to see the government finish the Columbia Basin Project, with the canal system extended to Odessa area farmers. At the same time, she feels that rehydration of the Lake Creek system is also a viable option that ought to be pursued as well.

The second issue Ramm wants the commissioners to address involves revitalization of the county’s small communities. She says her work with the OPDA has shown that careful planning and cautious money management can lead to job growth and new industry in Lincoln County’s small towns. She feels government must make more of an effort to attract and keep new business.

The third issue, Ramm says, is to demonstrate fiscal responsibility. She doesn’t like the idea of raising taxes and doesn’t believe taxation is the way to pay for county services. If revitalization is successful, she says, counties will earn more from the increase in business than they would from raising taxes.

Kim and her husband Dale are both products of eastern Washington. Dale grew up on the family farm near Ruff and went to school in Odessa. Kim was born at Fairchild Airforce Base and grew up in Edwall (her mother’s hometown) and Lind. Her father took a job in Lind, so the family moved there while Kim was still in first grade, allowing her to complete all 12 years of schooling in Lind.

While still in high school, she became a certified nurse’s aide, then attended Spokane Community College intending to pursue a career in nursing. She met Dale at SCC, where he was completing an Associate’s Degree in heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems. Kim was just a few credits shy of graduation herself, when she and Dale decided to get married and move to the family farm at Ruff to lend a hand to Dale’s father.

Dale farmed for a few years and held a couple of other jobs while Kim drove school bus. When the Odessa Trading Company decided to sell off its hardware store business, the Ramms were ready to try being their own bosses.

Getting a bank loan was difficult then, especially since the loan was for inventory only and not for a building. They had opted to buy the inventory first, then, if all went as planned, the building at the end of five years in business. That was fine with OTC, but not with the banks they approached. Eventually, however, Rainier Bank in Ritzville took a chance on them and advanced them the money, while just about everything else that they owned was used as collateral.

Ramm Hardware is still going strong and remains one of Odessa’s most satisfying success stories. The Ramms have three grown children and grandchildren have now also started arriving. The Ramms still live in the home they bought when they first moved to town.