Myra Mansfield running for County Commission in District 8

Myra Mansfield has announced she is running to serve as an Anderson County Commissioner for District 8 in Oak Ridge. The district includes the Emory Valley, Hendrix Creek, and Woodland voting precincts.

Mansfield is a native Oak Ridger who grew up in the district where she is asking to serve, a press release said. She attended Woodland Elementary School, Jefferson Middle School, and is a graduate of Oak Ridge High School. After high school, she received an associate degree in accounting and a bachelor degree in business management. Later in life, she returned to school to receive her master’s degree while studying counseling.

The release said Mansfield has invested her adult life in business and nonprofit leadership, government and community service, parenting, writing, and public speaking. As a hobby, she has been involved in numerous multimedia projects. She loves history and historical research. Over the years, she found herself being offered a series of opportunities to use her leadership skills to bring positive transition to organizational structure, the release said.

Mansfield’s husband Jack worked as a law enforcement officer with the Oak Ridge Police Department, where he retired as a lieutenant after 33 years of service. He now leads a young church in Oak Ridge. They have three young adult children, a son-in-law, and two granddaughters.

For years, Mansfield has been involved in the local community and has served law enforcement agencies, inmates in the jail, children and young adults, and citizens of the community, the release said. She has served as an Oak Ridge police chaplain, an Anderson County Sheriff’s chaplain, and on the boards of Anderson County Drug Court and Anderson County Preschool. She has served on the Anderson County Domestic Violence Task Force, on the Contact CareLine, and as an Oak Ridge Schools substitute teacher. She is part of the Oak Ridge Ministerial Association and the American Red Cross disaster relief team. She has also served in several areas of church leadership, the release said.

It said Mansfield’s most recent employment was in the position of client services director with a local nonprofit called Choices Resource Center. In this position, she coordinated services and support programs for clients while supervising more than 50 volunteers. She and the team provided support for hundreds of young people as they made critical decisions about their lifestyles and their future, the release said.

If serving as an Anderson County Commissioner were about politics, Mansfield said, she wouldn’t be interested. She believes instead that it is a position of civic responsibility—an opportunity to work hard and bring positive change. While the incumbents have served a combined 28 years on the county commission and have made various accomplishments, she believes it is time to bring new strategies and innovations to county government. Her initial goals while holding office are to:

• Reduce taxes as a way of becoming competitive with surrounding counties through restructured spending and cost-saving technological updates,
• Foster non-partisan cooperation with other leadership so that progress is made toward bringing jobs and new residents to Anderson County,
• Implement best practices that make government services more accessible, accountable, responsible, sensible, and efficient, and
• Bring a season of positive change through vision, planning, and hard work so as to prepare our government for the next generation of leaders.

In the press release, Mansfield said: “When you go to the polls to vote in the August 7 election, you have the opportunity to choose two out of three candidates for District 8. I am asking you to cast one of those votes for me and give me the opportunity to serve you with new strategies and positive changes.”

To contact, Mansfield call (865) 220-8826 or (865) 712-8027 or email her at [email protected]. More information is available on her website at www.myramansfield.org.