Commissioners talk about zoning, sales tax increases
Mariel Williams
editor@mitchellnews.com
At a recent meeting Mitchell County commissioners discussed personal priorities for the county’s next five years.
Most priorities related to commonly-discussed issues such as disaster recovery and housing, but a few big changes were broached.
Commissioner Steve Pitman suggested the county should consider raising sales taxes and Board Chair Jeff Harding suggested introducing limited zoning at the major entrances to the county, to make the area more attractive to visitors.
“We will now go into board comments, and the comments for tonight will be your plan — immediate needs and your three-year, five-year plan,” Harding said by way of introduction.
Masters: Recovery & fire risk
Commissioner Harley Masters spoke first, focusing initially on disaster recovery.
“My first-year plan is to figure out what to do about all of our revenue loss and just try to get by and not have to lay off any of our county employees,” Masters said.
Masters also expressed concern about continuing to deal with storm debris and the fire risk associated with the excess number of downed trees in Mitchell forests.
“I’m very worried — we’ve had numerous structure fires,” she said. “There’s been some conversations about getting our ranger position filled, so hopefully that’ll be a sooner rather than later fix.”
Masters said she wants to make sure the county’s current projects are completed and that the county’s next board is set up to continue county business successfully, as she does not expect to be part of the board four years from now.
“I probably won’t be on the board after the three year mark, but just making sure between now and the time I go off the board that we set the next commission board up for long-term sustainability,” she said.
Ellis: Building inspector
Commissioner Lee Ellis also expressed concern about storm recovery, including individual, business, and revenue-loss recovery.
“I think part of that process for improving the county economically is I think we need to — one of the biggest complaints that I get on a pretty regular basis is the lack of a Level III building inspector, except at certain times during the day,” Ellis said. “That’s a void that we have, and I’m hearing that from local industries, and I think we need to take a look at that.”
Hiring a Level III building inspector was an issue that Ellis mentioned during his campaign for the board in 2024 as well.
“I’m not for spending money, but I don’t know how else we dig out of this without getting the right people in the right places to help us dig out of this,” Ellis said.
Blevins: 226 traffic
Like Masters, Commissioner Dale Blevins also expressed concern about mitigating fire risk in the wake of Hurricane Helene (downgraded to a tropical storm after slowing down over land).
“If we have a dry summer this year, we’re going to be in trouble,” Blevins said. “We’ve got to have some kind of plan of action.”
Longer-term, Blevins said he is concerned about traffic conditions on N.C. Hwy. 226.
“Two twenty-six is a big need right now, from Gillespie Gap all the way over to here [Bakersville],” he said. “Sometimes I’ll sit in my school bus at Carters Ridge for seven or eight minutes … just to get turned off to take kids home; it’s nothing but a line of traffic as far as you can see.”
Both Blevins and Ellis said that supporting Mitchell County Schools is a big priority for them as well.
Pitman: Fiscal responsibility
Commissioner Steve Pitman said that in his view, the county’s most immediate need is to get back to normal operations following the hurricane, and to pay special attention to employees’ needs. He also wants a renewed focus on fiscal responsibility.
“It’s the citizens’ money that we’re in charge of,” Pitman said.
“I think we really got to challenge folks [in county administration] this year to look at their budgets,” Pitman said.
Pitman said that long-term, he believes the county needs to consider raising local sales taxes. He noted that a number of Mitchell County residents do some of their shopping in Johnson City, Tennessee, where the sales tax rate is 9.5 percent.
He also noted that sales taxes are paid, in part, by visitors passing through the county.
“I know this is very not popular, but if we go about it the right way, a sales tax referendum to change what the sales tax is here … we could share that burden of taxation with every person that comes through Mitchell County and take some of that burden off of citizens,” he said.
Masters noted that this kind of increase would not apply to certain exempt products, such as food, medicines, and other essential items.
“That’s a very good point — it’s not every item,” Pitman said. “I think … it’s an opportunity, to get the county some money back and reduce some of the taxes for our citizens.”
To be better prepared for future emergencies, Pitman said the county needs some kind of emergency management command center. And further down the road, he expressed concern that local infrastructure needs to be improved.
Harding: Housing, corridor zoning
Harding also said the county needs a Level III building inspector, especially given the need for more construction.
“I’m a very impatient individual, I want everything to be completed quicker than normal,” he said. “With the situation we’re in with our buildings, with our housing, we desperately need to look for a Level III building inspector.”
Harding said that it would be a good idea to revise the county’s emergency management and disaster preparedness plan in light of what has been learned from Helene.
“I think we need to have employees, if possible, that are multi-task,” he said.
Harding also said that quarterly joint meetings with Bakersville and Spruce Pine authorities will be necessary to recover from the hurricane.
In the not-to-distant future, Harding said, he would like to see more workforce and high-end housing constructed.
“We’re in desperate need of housing,” he said. “We need to try to find investors to buy into this and also see if there’s any possible grants to help us out.”
Harding mentioned several other key priorities and then indicated that he wanted to introduce a proposal that might be unpopular.
“I’ll go ahead and cut my own throat with this one,” he said. “The state that our county’s in, we’re trying to clean it up. But in the process of cleaning up … I seriously think we need to look at corridor zoning along all our main entrances, because if entrances coming into your county look bad — and 226 is a nightmare; [U.S. Hwy.] 19E going into Avery County is a nightmare — we’re not going to get people to come into our communities.”
Harding said that further down the road, he would like to see everyone in the county have access to high-speed internet in five years and noted that this would have been helpful in situations in the past where local children missed a lot of school.
“Thank you, board, for doing this,” Harding said. “I want to say to the citizens of Mitchell County you have a very dedicated board of commissioners — in my opinion — that’s going to put their nose to the grindstone and their hands to the plow.”