A Democratic contender for Alamance County’s board of commissioners has been unceremoniously bumped from the county’s planning board despite the unanimous support of his colleagues that he remain on this appointed advisory body.
The county’s all-Republican commissioners ultimately rejected the proposed reappointment of Anthony Pierce when they refreshed the planning board’s membership during their latest regularly-scheduled meeting on Monday.
This snub of their one-time rival didn’t prevent the commissioners from accepting four other suggestions that the planning board had made to fill the five seats whose terms had been set to expire at the end of December.
Last month, the advisory board unanimously endorsed a slate of nominees that, in addition to Pierce, included veteran board members Ernest “Smokey” Bare and Stephen Dodson.
The group also suggested newcomers Henry Chandler and Richard “Tom” King to fill two other positions whose former occupants had reached their maximum term limits or had not applied for another appointment.
The commissioners went on to accept these proposed appointees on Monday with the notable exception of Pierce, whom they swapped out for Andrea Webber – one of five other applicants who had failed to make the planning board’s cut in November.
A second-time candidate for the board of commissioners, Pierce had been one of the Democratic Party’s three standard bearers in this year’s race for the county’s governing board. In support of these candidates, the party had waged a vigorous advertising campaign that tarred certain Republican office seekers as enemies of public education.
In the course of this blitz, the party’s leaders had largely spared Republican Pam Thompson, an incumbent county commissioner who had previously served on the Alamance-Burlington school board. They pulled no punches, however, with fellow incumbent John Paisley, Jr., who had blasted the schools in his capacity as the chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners.
Nor did they go easy on Ed Priola, a Republican newcomer who had publicly accused the local school system of financial mismanagement.
In the end, the Democratic Party’s strategy backfired as the GOP made a clean sweep of the three available seats on the county’s governing board. Pierce’s loss at the polls nevertheless allowed him to apply for another term on the planning board, and on November 14, the nine-member group included him among its preferred picks for the five seats that were slated to become vacant at the end of the current calendar year.
When he presented these recommendations to the commissioners on Monday, Alamance County’s planning director Matthew Hoagland conceded that it may seem a bit unorthodox for this sort of proposal to come from a subordinate advisory board.
“The Alamance County planning board is somewhat unique in that it votes to recommend board members to fill vacancies on their own board,” he acknowledged that evening. “But the board’s vote on these individuals was unanimous.”
Hoagland told the commissioners that, in selecting its proposed appointees, the planning board’s members had rejected five other people who applied for these same five positions. He noted that the county still has active applications on file for Andrea Webber, Natalie Thacker, Brandon Martin, and Jeffrey Stephens. Meanwhile, the fifth applicant, whom Hoagland identified as Lindsay Causey, had reportedly withdrawn herself from consideration on November 15.
Hoagland subsequently told The Alamance News that, as idiosyncratic as it may be, the planning board’s tradition of recommending appointees to the commissioners is actually spelled out in the board’s official bylaws. This provision, which also appears in the county’s unified development ordinance, states that “the planning board may offer a recommendation to the board of commissioners for board candidates, but such recommendation shall not be mandatory for appointment.”
[Story continues below special subscription offer.]
Hoagland added that the selection of these prospective board members was somewhat simplified in November when the board invited any and all applicants to make their case for inclusion in its list of preferred candidates.
Hoagland recalled that the board went on to hear a short pitch from each of the three incumbents who were up for reappointment. Chandler and King also presented themselves to the group, and with no other applicants in evidence that evening, the board voted 9-0 to recommend these five individuals to the commissioners. The planning director added that this unanimous endorsement included the three incumbents who appeared on the list.
During Monday night’s meeting, Paisley proposed a revised version of the planning board’s slate of recommendations which substituted Webber for Pierce while retaining all four of the advisory board’s other suggestions. The chairman’s slate received an immediate second from Steve Carter, the vice chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, before the rest of the board voted 5-to-0 to accept Paisley’s selections.
Read the newspaper’s editorial page views on planning board appointments: https://alamancenews.com/elected-officials-not-advisory-boards-should-determine-whos-appointed-reappointed-to-advisory-boards/
