Voters in next month’s Republican primary will have a rather independent-minded field of contenders to consider for the county’s board of commissioners.
With their contrasting views on school spending, corporate incentives, and countywide zoning, the party’s five would-be nominees are about as ideologically diverse as any group of card-carrying Republicans. Some of them are even willing to break with the party’s conventional wisdom in their support of staff-level pay raises and, in one case, a higher property tax rate.
This overall take on the candidates is borne out by the responses of the five office-seekers to a questionnaire that The Alamance News has distributed in advance of the primary on March 3. This issues-based survey asked each candidate to address bread-and-butter matters such as taxation, growth, and economic development. It also delved into some of the controversies that have recently confronted the county’s elected leaders as well as the political hot buttons that seem to light up whenever there’s an election for the county’s governing board.
Foremost among the newspaper’s inquiries are the questions of taxing and spending that will ultimately hit home for just about every voter in Alamance County. In explicating these issues, the GOP’s five candidates showed themselves to be of different minds on such political litmus tests as the county’s property tax rate.
Property taxes
Perhaps not unexpectedly, the county’s current rate of 49.4 cents for every $100 of property value was deemed “about right” by two-term incumbent Steve Carter, who currently serves as the vice chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners, and by the board’s chairman Kelly Allen, who was appointed to a vacant seat on the board in 2024.
This same levy felt “too high” for challengers Henry Vines and Peter Boykin. Meanwhile, Jeff Throneburg, a homebuilder from Mebane, took a somewhat counterintuitive stance in describing the current tax rate as “too low.”
“Growth cannot be sustained without additional revenue,” he goes on to explain. “We are the 13th fasted growing county with the 26th lowest tax rate. The math doesn’t work if we are to ensure our infrastructure keeps up and we are properly funding our emergency services as well as our schools.”
These same figures on Alamance County’s growth level and tax rate were also offered up by Steve Carter, who added that, “if nothing else,” the county’s relatively low levy on property “reflects the historically conservative” approach of the county’s governing board. Carter was reluctant, however, to swear off any future tax increases.
“It is a real problem trying to keep up with growth,” he elaborated, “while working to keep our tax rate as low as possible. We’ve experienced the same cost increases as everyone has.”
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Carter added that the commissioners should make it their goal to set a “revenue neutral,” or break even, property tax rate, after the county’s forthcoming mass revaluation in 2027. Throneburg, for his part, declared that the county is “currently not in a position” to go revenue neutral, while Allen echoed Carter’s noncommittal stance on this question.
Boykin, meanwhile, “pledge[d] to uphold a revenue-neutral rate” in the wake of the next reval. Vines, likewise, promised he’d stick to this target if elected to the board of commissioners.
“I stand by a revenue neutral approach,” he declared, “and will demonstrate it by clearly stating my position and voting accordingly.”
Allen, while unwilling to make a similar promise to go revenue neutral, was less hesitant to stake out a position on a possible tax increase in the budget that the commissioners adopt later this year.
“While I believe tax increases are sometimes necessary, raising taxes should always be the last option,” she said. “I do not believe our taxpayers should be burdened with a tax increase two years in a row.”
Sales taxes
As an alternative to higher property taxes, both Allen and Carter expressed their support for a 1/4-cent hike in the county’s sales tax rate – an option that requires a voter referendum in order to proceed. The two incumbents added they’d be willing to put this issue before the county’s voters, although they declined to press forward with a referendum this fall when the county manager recently put the matter before the commissioners.
“Sales tax is the only fair tax, period,” Allen asserted. “Let the voters decide.”
Like the incumbent commissioners, Throneburg embraced the idea of a voter referendum, adding that a higher sales tax would “capture revenue from people passing through our county [and] remove some of the burden from citizens.”
Vines, meanwhile, wanted no truck with a sales tax referendum, while Boykin recalled the public’s unambiguous response when previous boards of commissioners have floated the same 1/4-cent increase.
“Voters have already rejected this proposal multiple times,” he stressed. “Repeatedly placing the same tax increase on the ballot disregards voter intent.”
Budgetary Priorities
The GOP’s candidates for the board of commissioners have also identified different priorities for the revenues that the county already receives from its various taxes and fees.
Two items that have proven quite popular with most of the field are the construction of a new EMS base in Mebane and the conversion of a former industrial building in Burlington to serve as the county’s new 9-1-1 center. When asked to itemize their top three budgetary priorities, all of the contenders save Throneburg mentioned the 9-1-1 center, while Vines alone of the group left the EMS base off of his list.
Higher, or at least competitive, pay for county staff members was front and center for all three of the challengers. Throneburg, however, was the only candidate to extend the same consideration to the local school system’s teachers, who receive an annual salary supplement at the county’s expense.
Vines went on to undercut his support for “competitive” pay by decrying the county’s reliance on private consultants to adjust employee salaries. He also took the sheriff’s office to task for its seemingly modest returns from a series of compensatory increases that the commissioners have greenlit.
“The county has supported the sheriff fully,” he argued, “but [the] results are lacking. The sheriff must find new ways to recruit and retain staff.”
Carter, for his part, was much more impressed with the results of these pay raises, which he insisted should be maintained by future boards of commissioners.
“We’ve provided a competitive wage and benefits plan for the ACSO,” he asserted. “We don’t want to go back to being a training ground for others.”
Carter didn’t hazard a response when asked about a $37 million courthouse expansion that he voted to pursue with a majority of his fellow commissioners. Allen, who joined the board after this vote, called for a reduction in this project’s overall price tag as did Boykin and Vines. Throneburg, meanwhile, declared himself entirely opposed to the project.
“It was giving the go-ahead not knowing the footprint,” he said before writing it off as a textbook example of “poor fiscal responsibility.”
Growth and it’s byproducts
Despite his fiscal conservativism, Henry Vines departed from the GOP’s anti-regulatory stance on the political powder keg of countywide zoning.
“I support this because our county is the fastest growing county in the state,” he said in regard to this possibility, “and planned growth will protect all citizens’ rights.”
Vines also expressed his desire to “complete” a proposed set of rules that the board of commissioners has contemplated for outdoor gun ranges. In the meantime, he took issue with the generally favorable stance that many local Republicans have on corporate incentives.
“I do not support providing incentives to individual companies,” he asserted. “By maintaining a low property tax rate, we can encourage businesses to relocate and invest in our county.”
Allen was equally adamant in her opposition to corporate incentives, while Boykin opined they “should be rare, transparent, and performance-based.” Throneburg said he’d only support corporate incentives if “there’s a commitment to use local businesses when possible” and if the corporate suiter adds more to the taxbase than it gets back in taxpayer-funded subsidies. He also argued that the county would do better to invest in the services that he said will make the community more attractive to business and industry.
“The two staples of strong economic growth are public safety services and a strong school system,” he said. “Focus on them and the businesses will come.”
Throneburg said that his own position on zoning “depends” on the specifics, although he freely acknowledged his support for the regulation of gun ranges.
“Bullets found in a resident’s home constitute a huge safety issue. Regulations need to be implemented not only to protect one’s rights but their safety.”
Both Allen and Carter characterized the regulation of gun ranges as a dead issue, while Boykin balked at the imposition such rules would impose on residents outside the county’s cities and towns.
“Existing state laws are sufficient,” he declared, “and rural property owners should not face new restrictions on lawful firearm use.”
Neither Boykin nor the two incumbent commissioners were inclined to pursue countywide zoning.
“Most of our citizens don’t want it,” Carter said of this particular approach to land regulation.
“I am a strong advocate for private property rights,” Allen added, for her part.
“I oppose county-wide zoning,” Boykin concurred, “because it reduces local control, burdens property owners, and imposes one-size-fits-all rules that do not reflect diverse community needs.”
The five Republican candidates’ responses can be found HERE, and can also be compared to the Democratic candidates’ responses on the same pages.
Full Alamance County Republican Sample Ballot:
