Lee Livingston said he first ran for Park County Commission in 2012 because then commissioner Joe Tilden said he'd have "lots of fun."

He's sure had to work through a lot of different issues in his long tenure, which came to a close following the Nov. 17 meeting.

"I'm having lots of fun today," he said, smiling. "I'm really, really proud to be part of this team ... I've been lucky to have a lot of good board members to serve with, and a lot of good folks working for us. And it's been a good time, and I'm looking forward to moving on."

Chair Dossie Overfield presented him with a plaque and thanked him for his services, followed by all the commissioners who thanked Livingston for his time on the commission.

"It was so easy learning from Commissioner Livingston during that time," Scott Mangold said. "I appreciate what he has done and the people of Park County really owe him quite a bit for what he's done for us here."

Livingston has been through years of high and low revenues, dealt with budget cuts and how to spend federal money during Covid. He said in a later interview that dealing with Covid was one of the toughest times as a commissioner, and said maybe they would have done things differently knowing what they know now, but “I thought we did as good as we could with the information we had.”

Livingston said when he joined the commissioners in 2013 he came just at the end of a period of good revenue streams and at the start of what would prove to be a stretch of budget cuts.

“The worst part of budget cuts was putting off needed maintenance for our infrastructure,” he said, adding that delayed maintenance generally ends up costing more in the long run.

While Livingston didn't join the commissioners with an agenda, he did have the idea, as a longtime small business owner of an outfitting company in Wapiti, that he could run the county like a business.

“I mistakenly thought I could run the county like a business, and you can’t,” he said. “Local government is a service you run for the community. If you ran the government as a business, you wouldn't have a lot of services people rely on because they wouldn’t make financial sense.”

However, he said, he was able to use that business sense to save the county money at times, like one they managed to pay just $2 million in local funds for a $13 million project.

While he’s been able to help steer many debates, he said the most interesting debate he was ever a part of he actually wound up on the losing side.

When Yellowstone National Parks was in talks with the county to partner in its school in the park (it wound up partnering with Park County School District 1), Livingston was the only no vote, saying he still thinks it was an unconstitutional decision.

But largely, he said he sees the county is in a good spot right now, as good as it was when he first started as a way to be involved more than a decade ago.

"It's been much easier with commissioners like Mr. Livingston to follow in the footsteps and his example of being basically open minded no matter what we do," Lloyd Thiel said at Livingston’s final meeting. "And one of the best advice early on was commissioner Livingston said, 'you know, we may not always agree, but we move on to the next subject."

Former Park County Sheriff Scott Steward said when Livingston was first running Steward told him his thoughts on what the commissioners did well — or didn't do well.

"And then I became one [a commissioner] and I had to go to Lee and ask how it really worked," Steward said. "It's been a pleasure, Lee, as always."