Alamance County’s board of commissioners has appointed a former member of Graham’s city council to serve on the county’s planning board.
In a unanimous decision on Monday, the commissioners selected builder Lee Kimrey, who now lives on the outskirts of Elon, to take over a post that had previously been held by Henry Vines of Snow Camp.
In approving Kimrey’s appointment on Monday, the commissioners rejected seven other contenders, including Vines, who recently announced his intention to run for a seat on the board of commissioners in 2026.
Kimrey served on the Graham council for two terms (eight years) between 2011 to 2019, before losing a bid for reelection in 2019.
Before they authorized this appointment, the commissioners heard from both Kimrey and Vines, who took advantage of a designated public comment period to share their respective credentials for the planning board seat.
Vines pointed out that he has become familiar with the issues around land use in rural parts of the county since he first joined the planning board two years ago to fill out the unexpired term of attorney Julian Doby.
Vines added that he understands the vehement objections that many rural residents have to all-out zoning, which doesn’t currently exist outside the county’s cities and towns. He nevertheless said that his own experiences have convinced him to support some form of zoning in unincorporated areas.
“This community needs some form of planned zoning in the county,” he insisted. “Without protection of you commissioners putting in place an ordinance to protect these citizens, we’re going to keep going into these issues over and over again.”
Kimrey made much the same point in his own pitch to the commissioners without actually invoking the epithet “zoning” to describe his stance.
“I think it’s important that the county designate industrial and commercial uses and where they can be located,” he said. “I think land use rights are something that’s important for all the citizens of Alamance County…By the same token nobody wants a landfill beside them. So, I think moving forward the county has a very delicate situation being able to identify these areas of growth for industrial and commercial [uses] while maintaining the rural setting that we now enjoy.”
In the end, the commissioners unanimously agreed to back Kimrey in lieu of Vines or any of the six other applicants. The county’s planning director Matt Hoagland identified the other contenders as Natalie Thacker, Jeffrey Stephens, Brandon Martin, Max Morgan, Jeff Throneburg, and Johnna Burkett.
