The race for Alamance County’s board of commissioners has two slates of candidates that, at first blush, seem as starkly different as the two primary colors that have become a convenient shorthand for the major political parties.
On the side of the “red team” are three white Republicans – all in their ‘70s — who currently hold seats on the county’s governing board. The “blue team,” meanwhile, is fielding a distinctly younger slate of Democratic challengers that includes two black candidates and no one with any prior experience in a partisan race.
Yet, in spite of their surface-level differences, the distinctions between the two camps become less clearly delineated when the candidates share their positions on the various issues that have preoccupied Alamance County’s voters as well as their leaders.
In order to coax out the views of the six office seekers, The Alamance News has sent each candidate a questionnaire about the challenges and controversies facing the county. This survey is similar to one that the newspaper circulated ahead of the party primaries in March, although it has been updated to include some subsequent developments, like a newly-imposed moratorium on data center development and a recent dustup over appointments to the county’s library committee.
The six candidates who received these questionnaires are technically competing in two separate races that will appear on the ballot this fall for the board of commissioners.
At stake in the first contest are two seats that will be available for the standard term of four years. These positions currently belong to Republicans Kelly Allen and Steve Carter who respectively serve as the chairman and vice chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners. A retired banker, Carter is the more senior of the pair, with nearly eight years under his belt since he first joined the board in 2018. Allen, a retired nurse and former mayor of Haw River, is a relative newcomer by comparison, having been appointed by the local GOP to a vacant seat on the board in 2024.
Ranged against these two incumbents are Democrats Ramona Allen and Sean C. Ewing. The former, who’s making her first bid for elected office, is a property manager by day for subsidized housing. The latter is an Air Force veteran and engineer by profession who is currently serving his second term as a member of Mebane’s theoretically nonpartisan city council.
The second race on the ballot this year concerns a truncated two-year term to complete the unexpired tenure of the late county commissioner John Paisley, Jr. Shortly after Paisley passed away in February, the local Republican Party assigned his seat to Samuel C. Powell, a Burington businessman who had previously served on the board of commissioners and Burlington’s city council.
The party has since tapped Powell as its nominee for the special term that’s up for grabs in November. The Democrats, meanwhile, designated their champion in this race as Kourtney J. Royster, a school therapist with Durham Public Schools, who had yet to cut his teeth in a political campaign.
The positions that these six contenders espouse are sometimes those that the casual observer would guess based on relative experience, personal backgrounds, and partisan affiliation. But there are also plenty of surprises from this crop of office seekers – as evident from their responses to this newspaper’s candidate survey.
Taxes and spending
One place where things get a little bit muddy is the treacherous realm of taxation.
According to their responses, most of the candidates, whether incumbents or challengers, are content with the county’s current tax rate of 49.4 cents for every $100 of property value. A notable exception is Ramona Allen, who deems this rate “too high” and suggested 42.4 cents as an alternative. Royster didn’t express any preference.
The three Democrats all show a distinct preference for a revenue neutral rate after the county’s next revaluation. Among the Republicans, Powell is, likewise, inclined to go revenue neutral, “if possible,” adding that he wouldn’t want to exceed the current rate in any event.
Neither Kelly Allen nor Carter would make a similar pledge to maintain revenue neutrality. The current chairman of Alamance County’s commissioners insisted that the post-reval rate will depend “on what the next property revaluation shows, in regards to property values.” Carter was even more perplexed by future uncertainties, such as state-level limits on property tax hikes or legislative rollbacks of sales tax receipts to fund Food Stamps.
The candidates also have different perspectives on a special countywide tax district that the Alamance County Rescue Unit has proposed to help bankroll its operations. The Democrats all say they would support such a district, which could add a 1/4-cent surcharge to the county’s current property tax rate.
“We must make sure we have first responders available when we need them,” Ramona Allen declares in support of the district’s creation. “This could mean life or death of an individual.”
Among the Republicans, Kelly Allen is also partial to a new tax district in older to shore up an organization that “ran over 63 swift water rescues on the night of Chantal.” Carter, however, wouldn’t commit himself one way or the other, while Powell acknowledged his opposition to the new district.
“We need to continue to support the Rescue Squad,” he insisted, “and I would prefer to do it as a budget line item based on their need.”
Regardless of their stances on property taxes, the candidates are all willing to entertain a referendum on a ¼-cent hike in the local option sales tax. Despite the failure of this measure in four previous public votes, both Democrats and Republicans would like to see it reappear on the ballot.
“Sales tax is the only fair tax, period.” Kelly Allen contends in what appears to be the prevailing mood of the field. “Let the voters decide.”
Political hot buttons
Most of the candidates tend to stay within their respective political camps in addressing the largely symbolic controversies that raise questions about group identity and inclusiveness.
When asked about the county’s recognition of various federal holidays, none of the Republicans is willing to alter the calendar. As for the Democrats, both Ramona Allen and Ewing are ready to give county staff members a day off on Juneteenth, while Royster would also throw Columbus Day and Washington’s Birthday into the mix.
“They are federal holidays,” he explains, “and we should observe them as such.”
Royster and Ewing are also on board with a local ordinance to prohibit discrimination against the LGBTQ population. Ramona Allen is against such an ordinance, however – as are all three of the Republicans.
Another, strictly local political hot potato has been the growing wont of the commissioners to override municipal recommendations for appointments to the county’s library committee. Although the cities represented on the committee all have a role in funding the library system’s facilities, each of the three Republicans believes that the county’s governing board should retain its veto authority over the committee’s municipal representatives.
Royster and Ramona Allen insist that the commissioners should honor municipal recommendations. Ewing, who as a member of Mebane’s city council, has publicly bristled at the rejection of his own nominees, has a more nuanced position as a prospective county commissioner.
“The [committee’s] bylaws give commissioners final approval but require municipal recommendations for six seats,” he explains. “I’ll honor those recommendations unless egregious concerns are documented and publicly explained.”
Growth and development
Another area where the six candidates have contrasting opinions is the county’s response to growth and development.
One particularly thorny issue within this sphere has been the question of zoning, which is presently absent beyond the jurisdictions of the county’s cities and towns. Despite increased pressure from some quarters neither Kelly Allen nor Carter want to introduce this form of land regulation to unincorporated parts of the county.
“I constantly get feedback from rural citizens,” the board’s current vice chairman says, “who don’t want to lose control over their land to the government.”
The three Democrats, meanwhile, are uniformly in favor of countywide zoning.
“It is time for a change,” Ewing asserts. “The only thing worse than zoning is no zoning. Alamance County has reached a point where we need smart growth.”
The desire for change is also appealing to Powell, the only Republican to have declared his support for countywide zoning.
“Property owners outside urban areas also need protection from undesirable development,” he insists. “That can only be provided by zoning, as the system is currently set up by the state.”
When it comes to the regulation of data centers, however, Powell reverts to a more traditionally Republican preference for minimal restrictions.
All three of the Republicans insist that a one-year moratorium which the board’s current membership recently imposed on data centers gives the county adequate time to decide how to regulate these behemoth facilities. All three of the Democrats insist that more time is needed with Ewing and Ramona Allen proposing a two-year moratorium as an alternative.
Ewing takes no position on whether data centers ought to be banned once the moratorium expires. Royster and Ramona Allen insist that they should, while Powell and Carter demur. This, then, leaves Kelly Allen, who breaks ranks with her fellow Republicans to acknowledge her support for a ban on data centers in unincorporated parts of the county.
“It is my opinion that they need to be where water and sewer are available,” she goes on to explain, “not well water [which is more prevalent in rural parts of the county].”
Law enforcement
For the past two decades, the policies of Alamance County’s Republican sheriff Terry Johnson have been a frequent point of contention among office seekers of different partisan affiliations.
This year’s contest is no different, with the GOP’s nominees generally concurring with Johnson on things like his erstwhile detention agreement with the U.S. Bureau of Immigration & Customs Enforcement.
Johnson recently scuttled this once-fertile partnership due to changes in state law that have increased the demands on the county’s jail space. Yet, all three of the Republicans count themselves willing to resurrect this arrangement if the county is able to expand or renovate its facilities to accommodate more inmates.
“The ICE housing contract [was] very lucrative for Alamance County,” Powell contends, “The income [was] far greater than the cost, and it helps reduce the number of illegal aliens in the system.”
None of the three Democrats are very eager to dust off the sheriff’s contract with ICE or to assist the federal agency in its activities.
Ramona Allen views collaboration with ICE as an “invasion” of Hispanic families, and she insists the sheriff’s office should steer clear of immigration enforcement until “we have the right personnel that are not targeting our Latino community.”
Sean Ewing, likewise, sees no local benefit to a robust relationship with federal immigration enforcement.
“I oppose ICE partnerships that divert local resources,” he assets, “and make immigrant neighbors less willing to report crimes or seek help.”
Another divisive issue in law enforcement has been the use of AI-enabled Flock cameras to record license plates and use them to identify stolen vehicles, fugitives, or people who’ve been reported as missing.
At the moment, the sheriff’s office isn’t employing this particular technology, which has been embraced by the police departments in Burlington and Graham. Royster and Ewing acknowledge that they’d rather not see the sheriff plug into these same systems.
“Routine license plate tracking and broad data sharing risk residents’ Constitutional privacy,” Ewing notes to explain his own reluctance.
Ramona Allen insists that Flock cameras should only be made available to the sheriff’s office when “those who are in authority” can be trusted not to use the cameras “as another way of intimidation.”
Carter admits that, at this point, he doesn’t know enough about these devices to say if they should be installed in unincorporated parts of the county.
“I would like to learn more about [them],” he adds, “and what if anything, the sheriff thinks, we might need to do.”
Kelly Allen is willing to give the technology a whirl “if the cameras are used only for the purpose that they were intended to be used for, and the officers have to state why they are using the data.”
Of all the candidates, Powell stands out as the most amenable to the introduction of Flock cameras in rural parts of the county.
“Since I am not involved in drug smuggling and human trafficking,” he asserts, “I have no problem with allowing the sheriff to have increased surveillance capability.”
Public education
The one area where the candidates split more or less along party lines is the county’s support of the Alamance-Burlington school system.
In strictly financial terms, the three Republicans are unanimous that the county’s annual allocation to the schools is “about right,” while the Democrats are equally united in their belief that the county spends “too little” on public education. Of all the candidates, only Ramona Allen acknowledges that she’d be willing to increase taxes to generate more funds for the schools.
The Burlington Democrat goes on to contend that the county may find that it doesn’t need any more charter schools if it adequately funds its public school system.
“If we do what we need to – that is ‘invest’ in our public schools – I feel we will see school growth and acceleration in education.”
Meanwhile, Kelly Allen puts much of her faith in the school system’s administrators to improve the quality of public education without massive increases in revenue.
“I think under Dr. [Aaron] Fleming’s guidance, we are seeing an improvement in the schools’ scores,” she adds. “The problems he inherited will take a while to correct.”
Carter insists that the school system will have to work with the commissioners to “determine a level of funding our county can afford” – particularly when it comes to the capacity of schools.
“When you look at the stated need,” he adds, “it’s primarily in the elementary and middle school area, [and] when I looked into it, there is an issue with [the state] not supporting the use of mobile classroom space.”
Powell, for his part, points to facilities needs such as paving, security systems, and HVACs that may eventually force the county to float a new bond referendum.
Ewing, however, implicates the county’s financial priorities for many of the shortcomings that afflict Alamance County’s schools.
“Alamance-Burlington school system funding was, and remains, [my] greatest area of disagreement,” he notes. “[It’s] so much [of a problem] that the school system has sued the county commissioners twice.”
The newspaper’s questions, along with full responses for each candidate, can be found HERE. Candidate bios appear here: https://alamancenews.com/meet-the-candidates-for-alamance-county-commissioner/
