Incumbent Tracy Norman and challenger Randy Gordon are on the Republican primary ballot for the District 5 seat for the Oglethorpe County Board of Commissioners. They also ran against each other for this position in the 2018 general primary.
Norman, who has held the seat since January 2019, is the director of capital sourcing for a global procurement company in Athens. Gordon is retired and serves as a pastor at Lighthouse Church in Athens.
The Oglethorpe Echo spoke with Norman and Gordon about their campaigns and plans, if elected.
Comments have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What inspired you to run for this position?
Norman: I think a lot of it is just things that are not completed that have come from the prior term. We’re looking at opportunities to bring businesses in, things that could help the homeowners with their taxes and other things that we’ve got underway, changes in zoning and things that will protect the rural lifestyle we have. There’s still a lot of work to be done.
Gordon: I just feel like we need some new blood up there. Things are not going right. One thing is Almond Drive (where Gordon lives). We’ve been going to the county every Monday for two years to get something done to our road, and nothing has been done at all. I think it’s time to change somebody down there.
Q: What would be your top priority if elected?
Norman: I think a lot of that goes around economic development for the county. There are things going on in the Statehouse that are changing how homesteads are taxed. By bringing in more industry, more business, that picks up that burden and allows us to decrease the tax burden on the homeowners.
Gordon: Find out what’s going on with them down there and why they’re not doing the job that they were elected to do. There’s too much beating around the bush. What started all this was the post office. The post office sent a letter back in May two years ago, telling us that the roads were unsafe for the carrier. Instead of talking to the county, they told us to take our mailboxes out and put them back up on the paved road. We went to the county and tried to get them to do something, and they’ve done nothing.
Q: How will your previous experience help you serve as commissioner if elected?
Norman: I think a lot of it is what you learn. When you’re first elected, you go in and you think, “I’ve been in these meetings; I know how things go.” The first thing that happens is you go to a 40-hour class, and you suddenly find out you can do this, this and this, but you can’t do all of this, and it’s eye-opening. You spend really the first 1-2 years in office just figuring out what you can do. But once you get over that hump, it gets much easier. You learn to rely on your staff, and they really have the knowledge that you need once you're in office.
Gordon: I’ve got about 25 or more years in public government. I’ve been over planning and zoning, permitting, issuing, inspection and code enforcement. I worked when Oglethorpe County brought in the permitting process. They hired me, and I went to work there during the permitting time for building new homes and doing work that needed to be inspected. I stayed here for two years. I ended up going back over to Statham, and I was over there for 17 years doing what I did.
Q: What are your thoughts on how Board of Commissioners meetings are run, including their location?
Norman: I think they run very well. The location we have is rather small sometimes. We’ve tried using the courtroom, and I think we can, but we’ve learned that we’ve gotta make some improvements in the sound quality there. We’re going to have to get better microphones and speakers to really make that work because when we did that in March, we quickly learned no one could hear what was going on. I think there’s opportunities to do that or potentially another location in the county, perhaps one of the schools or something. We’re still looking into that. I think, as far as the way the meetings flow, they tend to flow very well.
Gordon: I don’t know if the people don’t show up simply because they don’t have enough room or if they just don’t want to show up. When they went to the courthouse and they had plenty of room up there, they had a better turnout. But, they moved it back down to the commissioners office simply because they said it didn’t have enough sound. They need to put a PA system in the courthouse so that people can be heard.
Q: What are your thoughts on economic development within the county?
Norman: I think we’ve reached a point where it’s somewhat imperative. We’ve got companies that have grown in this area, we’ve got companies that have moved into this area, but we need a lot more. The state has passed regulation that is pushing counties to rely more on that economic development for revenue to meet the budget instead of the homeowners. It’s a good idea. Anything we can do to improve and lower the taxes on homeowners is a great thing. We have to be open to ideas and industries that want to come into our county. I don’t think we’re going to get a Walmart, but we may get more Dollar Generals, we may get warehouses. There are industries that are out there that we can bring into our county.
Gordon: I think we need to be careful about it because this is an agricultural county and I lean toward agriculture. I think we need to be careful about what we bring in and how we bring it in, although I’d love to see some more industry come into the county. But, I don’t want to see anything come in that’s going to hurt our agricultural base.
Q: What do you think are the main challenges that District 5 and the county as a whole will face in the next few years?
Norman: I think the biggest thing is residential growth. We’re already seeing that some in District 5, but even more in Districts 3 and 4. We’ve heard from the citizens that say they need to keep the rural atmosphere that we have. So, we have made changes in the zoning that will lead to more neighborhoods that tend to be smaller and also neighborhoods that are conservation. The conservation neighborhood tends to have more homes toward the middle with more green space around them. We’ve written the zoning to encourage that or encourage many farms where you’ve got acreage that are 10 or 20 acres to a lot. That has worked very well in a lot of places within Georgia. I think that is really where the citizens have told us that they want to go.
Gordon: I think the problem we’ve got is there’s not any communication in District 5 right now, and the people need to know what’s going on. I think a town hall-type meeting every so often would give us some ideas as to what they would like to see, and I think that’s the way I’d like to go, with what the people want to do.