Alex Griffin, candidate for Columbia County Commission District 1, recently sat down with the Augusta Press to talk about his vision for the county.
Griffin is a longtime resident of the county, as were his parents.
“This has just always been home for me, and I loved growing up here,” said Griffin, who left the area for college and graduate studies before moving back with his wife. “I really just knew this was a place I wanted to come back to and live, to raise my family.”
The father of three said he wants to make the county a place they might someday want to settle down in as well.
Griffin said his top priorities for Columbia County are to focus on investing in “health, wealth and safety.”
“As it relates to District 1, it’s just maintaining what we have…I think everyone that lives here loves it for the same reasons,” he said. “It’s a safe community, it’s great schools, just great quality of life…so it’s, how can we continue to just keep what we have?”
Health
Griffin works full time as the assistant vice president of innovation at the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) Foundation.
“Our job is to manage the endowment of the medical school, and through that provide resources to the universities so that they can do their job improving health and health outcomes,” he said. “I want to carry that goal of my full-time job into the county government. How can we continue to improve health outcomes in the county? And for me, that’s expanding access to health and health providers.”
He added that he would also like to work on increasing the number of health providers and incentivizing the “growth of doctors and nurses.”
Wealth and safety
Griffin said he wants to look at ways to increase high paying jobs in the county and keep property taxes low.
Griffin’s thoughts on safety in the area were succinct: “They do an incredible job with what they do and I’m not gonna disrupt that at all.”
He said his focus is continuing to provide the sheriff’s department with what they need to keep the county safe.
“Just give them what they need and know that they’re the professionals that know how to keep us safe,” he said.
Investment in amenities, recreation
Griffin noted that he also wants to focus on county parks and recreation amenities, so that Columbia County can “better compete with Greenville, Charlotte and Atlanta, and other places that maybe we’d lose people to.”
Education
Griffin earned his Bachelor of Business Administration in finance and real estate from the University of Georgia and his MBA from the University of North Carolina’s prestigious Kenan-Flagler Business School.
More information on Griffin can be found on the Alex Griffin for Commission Facebook page.
