Experience. VISION. Commitment.
Having government knowledge and experience does not need to equate to bureaucracy. In the right hands, the tools available to local governments will lead to smaller, more efficient government.
I intend to leverage the resources available only to the public sector to make our community more attractive for private sector investment and to provide more opportunity for citizens and business owners and more flexibility for property owners.
North Carolina has 100 counties and 552 municipalities. This means Person County is unique in having only one municipality. This should make it easier for the two local, elected bodies to come together with a shared vision and create momentum for Roxboro and Person County.
When I was Economic Development Director for Person County, I attended the monthly night meetings of the Roxboro City Council on a routine basis on my own time, because I understood that the elected body that controls public water and sewer, as well as housing growth, is the real economic engine for the County. As a private business owner, I have continued to attend or watch these meetings on a monthly basis.
The one place that these two elected boards overlap is on the Economic Development Commission. This means that the candidate who can have the most impact is the one with the most institutional and historical knowledge of these two elected boards combined with economic development experience and relationships.
I attended the January EDC meeting and heard it announced that there are 1,600 homes under approval in the City of Roxboro. This news was received with some excitement, as it should have been in a group focused on growth. The problem is that these are largely the same 1,600 homes that have been under approval for nearly 2 years, and most of them are still not under construction due to a moratorium that was placed on sewer in the parts of the City where the majority of the development is planned. That moratorium has not been lifted, but a solution has been funded, and I am confident that the developments will move forward this year.
Still, Roxboro and Person County saw tremendous development interest beginning in 2021, and we were not ready. Where would our small businesses be if those homes could have been built two years ago? How would our megasite have been viewed during all the heightened project activity if our population (and workforce) was growing at that clip?
I believe counties have personalities, and as a lifelong resident of Person County, I believe I know what that looks like here. Yet, one can have a personality and not know who they want to be when they grow up. I do believe Person County also has an identity crisis, with its people being torn between wanting a thriving place to live, work, and play, and not wanting to lose our character, which is hard to balance.
You may not want to see the megasite developed or rapid population growth, but, unless we have our infrastructure in place, we don’t get to decide whether we grow or at what pace.
My vision for Person County is to focus on strengthening our infrastructure in the areas of education (workforce development), water, sewer, transportation (including highways, rail, and our airport), and industrial site development so that we are equipped to bring in private investment to create jobs and increase our tax base to fund the things we need. These are perpetual efforts. We should always have projects in the queue in these areas. This puts us in the driver’s seat as a community.
Other priorities include leveraging our assets and partnerships for new opportunities, better promoting what we already have, and ensuring that property owners have the flexibility to get the highest and best use out of their investments.
Keep following as we move closer to the early voting period in just under 2 weeks, and, as always, thank you for your support!!
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