Candidates for Rowan County commissioner shared their goals and knowledge to the public prior to the official early voting start for the primary election on Thursday, Feb. 12. The Rowan Chamber of Commerce invited candidates to a forum on Feb. 10 to answer questions about employee retention, infrastructure projects, public safety and public schools.
The forum started with an introduction from moderator and Professor of Politics and History at Catawba College Dr. Michael Bitzer. He started by giving background on the importance of public participation in local elections and then gave each candidate a minute to introduce themselves.
The candidates sat in the following alphabetical order: Jonathan Barbee, Robert Hartsell, Jason Hinson, Michael Julian, Bobby Kemp, Daniel Lancaster, Karla Foster Leonard, David Trexler and Ray Pope. Pope was the only Democratic candidate.
Hannah Addair and Alissa Redmond, the other Democratic candidates were not there. Josh Harrington, Patrick Smith and Angie Spillman from the Republican election were not present.
The candidates were split into a group of four and five to alternate answering questions.
County budget priorities
The first group answered a question about the county’s budget and how they would prioritize the funds.
Hartsell started off talking about the budget class he took during the leadership program for the Rowan County employees.
“We were given the wants from all the departments. We looked at those wants, and then we were asked to cut $3 million from those wants because the county didn’t have enough money to pay for everything,” Hartsell said. “We have to find grounds in the middle where we find what is really needed and what the county absolutely absolutely has to have to take care of the citizens.”
Hinson followed that focusing primarily on funding public safety and the school system.
“Public safety is the No. 1 thing. Given the outside municipalities, public safety sticks with the volunteer fire departments,” Hinson said. “We bring in a lot of businesses here, and we got to work with the public school system and colleges to make sure that we’re adequately training the kids to go into businesses we’re bringing in.”
Julian highlighted the importance of emergency service support and funding career and technical education in the county that is currently not present.
“We gotta take care of our emergency service people, so that we continue to keep them here because we are losing a lot of them to other counties because they’re getting paid better in Cabarrus County, Iredell County, even Davidson County,” Julian said.
Kemp echoed the sentiments of the candidates before, saying that funding should focus on the Sheriff’s Office and first responders.
“We’ve got to take care of our sheriff’s department because our county is growing, and right now they’re understaffed. They can’t keep officers here because they come in on a training period, and once they get trained, they take a job somewhere else and leave our county,” Kemp said. “We got to have more officers the way the county is going. The crime rate is going up.”
Barbee closed out the question reiterating the goals of the other candidates and then talking about what exactly it means to have a budget. He thinks that the county should utilize different technology to prioritize the budget items.
“Instead of the normal traditional methods of what our budget is, I feel like we should be able to use new technology in order to make sure we can cover things like extra benefits for our employees as a county and across the board,” Barbee said.
County employee retention
The next question to the second group focused on employee retention, particularly regarding public safety officers and teachers.
Leonard started the answers focusing on increasing the compensation for public safety officers in particular who leave after training.
“We are spending a tremendous amount of money to train really great people here at home just to have them leave. That creates a lot of instability in our community, but it also creates a vacuum of talent that we have invested in. So, I think it is important that their compensation is appropriate,” Leonard said.
Trexler touched on his career as a firefighter and how important it is to compensate those people for the dangerous work they do.
“Every one of them when they leave home I pray that each one of them make it back home. They don’t have a seven-to-three job, go home and that’s it. They risk their lives,” Trexler said.
Pope reiterated the importance of paying public safety officers more, and he also added teachers citing his experience as a teacher.
“As a teacher of 37 years in North Carolina, we’ve never had enough money to pay us,” Pope said. “They’re losing people because we’re not keeping up with the surrounding areas. We’re falling behind in salaries, so we’ll fall back to one of the principles I will make my decisions on. There is no such thing as a free lunch. If you want something better, quite frequently, you have to pay.”
Finally, Lancaster also talked about the importance of supporting public services and the main focus should be communication with these departments about their needs.
“One of the things I think is going to be very important is making sure that we have communication with them so we know exactly what their needs are and what their wants are. So, you can try to make those things possible,” Lancaster said.
Economic development and public school reputation connection
Another question to the first group was about the connection between the economic development and public school reputations in Rowan County.
Julian started off this question focusing on the necessity of developing a technical education program for high school students who want to go directly to work rather than college.
“I truly believe that we need a true career and technical education high school so that those students that do not have the desire to go to college can come right out of high school and have a job,” Julian said.
Kemp focused on creating more training opportunities for people getting jobs with the big companies in the county rather than expecting prior experience for all positions.
“I think we need to sit down with them and say ‘we need to have a training program,’” Kemp said. “We need to tighten the buckle on that and make these companies give people in Rowan County jobs, give them opportunities before they bring people in from outside the county into Rowan County.”
Barbee followed, talking about a project he helped with that would create portfolios for student projects that they could showcase. He also emphasized that the county should invest more of its funding itself.
“A child can perform a project, and it should be able to follow them in a portfolio, basically the same as showing ‘these are the types of grades I got. We want to make sure that that can follow for whatever company they’d like to go try and hire themselves into,” Barbee said.
Hartsell emphasized that the colleges, particularly the community colleges, are already partnering with the high schools to make sure that students can find jobs after high school.
“We have things that are there. We need to expand on them, and we need to really focus on the youth. The youth that we have should be able to leave high school and be able to become employed. Most of them can’t,” Hartsell said.
Hinson also highlighted the programs that the high schools have already for technical training, but he said that they should expand it more.
“We used to do all the mechanics and different things in the high school, HVAC, so, I think all that can easily come back,” Hinson said. “There’s things that we’re going to have to have in this community as far as workers.
Major transportation projects
The final question of the night for the second group was about major transportation projects happening in the county, particularly the addition of another exit off I-85 into north Rowan County.
Pope started the answers by talking about the pressures of larger populations encroaching on Rowan County and how the county has to continue to stay prepared for these changes.
“All the problems of larger populations will come our way, and if we are not ahead of the game, it’s going to be more difficult than we would like to face,” Pope said. “I would advocate that we continue to stay ahead of the curve. I would advocate that where they are properly placed, where they assist us in moving traffic, they’re always gonna be a good idea.”
Lancaster talked about the importance of the land use plan in figuring out where to prioritize growth, and he also argued that the county needs to continue looking for bigger pockets to maintain the fund balance.
“Obviously, there are some projects that we’re going to have to look for bigger pockets to help us pay for to make sure that we’re going to keep moving forward in Rowan County,” Lancaster said. “Obviously, talking to people at the state level, talking with people at the federal level and also booking for grants that help lighten the burden on the Rowan County citizens to make sure that we can keep moving forward infrastructure is going to be important.”
Leonard highlighted her experience personally advocating for this project as the director of business advocacy, so she talked about the benefits of the specific exit on I-85.
“What that will do is that it will open land that already has power, water, sewer, gas, electric right on the 85 corridor, and that is the perfect and best way for us to protect our farmland and our rural land that is further out into the county. It will open up access and jobs and opportunity in a way that we haven’t seen since we were able to successfully complete the Beatty Ford project,” Leonard said.
Trexler closed out this question talking about how this project will lose residences and affect traffic in East Spencer.
“People are building houses in there. They’re gonna lose their houses, the school, the church. I mean, is it worth it to us?” Trexler said. “We don’t need to put no more traffic on that end of the county.”
Candidates were asked one more question on what excellence means to them when thinking about Rowan County’s welcome sign slogan “a county committed to excellence,” and a moment to give concluding remarks.
The entire forum was streamed live on the Rowan County Young Professionals Facebook page, and it will stream multiple times through the election season on the local government channel. Early voting starts on Thursday, Feb. 12, and the primary election day is March 3.
