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Creating Opportunities for Advancement

My wife & I worked for 3-yrs in South Africa to address the HIV/AIDS situation by working with the KwaZulu Natal Department of Education to train 1000s of teachers in the public school system. We developed a program to equip local community groups to weekly partner with teachers in their classrooms to improve their outcomes. That assignment opened doors for us to develop many community empowering projects, and subsequently be invited onto the Board of a large school in Kenya.  After arriving in NC at the end of 2006, we started a 501(c)3 organization to perform similar initiatives.  These experiences have developed a core value in me that sees public-private partnerships as being a route that is most effective and best serves people in community.

 

I support public-private partnerships toward creating opportunities for communities to advance.  Orange County citizens in the rural areas must have high-functioning internet.  The entire County must have access to transportation so that they can both find affordable places to live AND be able to get to work.

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Bike lanes are necessary to serve citizens who enjoy the NC climate.  Multiple friends of mine have been hit by cars on these roads. The rural parts of Orange County constantly experience large flocks of bikers on narrow curving country roads that have no shoulders.  To simply say "share the road" is a platitude that ignores the problem. 4000+lb vehicles going 50mph and 200lb people going 20mph don't have the same infrastructure needs.  Roads were built for fast-moving cars.

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The Tension:  Bikers solve for themselves by riding in the middle of the road insisting on their "right to share".  But this elevates road rage in downstream car drivers who must suddenly brake to speeds much slower than the speed limit, then often try to speed past bikers around blind corners.

My Solution:  Create a rural bike route along defined rural roads with bike shoulders constructed which will keep bikers safe, and allow drivers to utilize the roadways as designed.

Education in Orange County should be the best in the Southeast.  We have the finances, local universities, and modern tech at our fingertips to make it happen.

The public education system in Orange County should be the best in the southeast.  Instead parents actively pull their children out to send them to charter and private schools.  A root cause analysis of why student outcomes are not excellent is not difficult. Insisting on a vision of excellent student outcomes should THE TOP priority for Orange County.  Why?  First because our next generation will benefit from our investments; second because basic fiduciary accountability demands it since ~50% of ALL TAXES go toward education. 

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What do I know about education?  My wife and I worked directly with the South African Department of Education for 3 years - we trained thousands of teachers, taught in the classrooms, trained education teams.  I was one of the founders of Hillsborough Christian Academy that successfully become an independent non-profit with it's own board.  I've taught high school economics in a private school.  I currently am helping to fund development, design, and construction of a preschool in Ntuzuma, South Africa.   I am a Board member of "Heroes of the Nation" a grade 3 - grade 12 boarding school for orphans. in Nyahururu, Kenya.
 

An engaging education transforms a person's destiny.  The role of schools is to partner with parents to equip children with a heart for truth, a love for learning, for artistic beauty, for diligence, and the courage to live rightly.  Strong public school provide a pathway to opportunities that people born into poverty would otherwise not have.

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Previous generations experienced real things, and the wisdom gained through their experiences must be imparted to our children.  We must concurrently equip students with training in modern tech.  Schools are not a lab for social experimentations. MLK said: "The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically.  Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education."

The needs and relative financial burden on rural citizens of Orange County are vastly different than those who live in urban areas like Chapel Hill. 
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EVERY voter in the County can vote for ALL the Commissioner candidates for every District listed on the ballot...regardless of which district you live in.  Practically this means that rural people in the majority of the County have people in the populated areas of Chapel Hill choosing their representatives.  If each district can't elect it's own Commissioner representatives, then what's the point of separate districts?  More than 80% of Orange County is rural.  Why would it be helpful to the entire County for people from each district to be actually represented?  Answer: Because the eclectic mix of people in Orange County is cool, but the actual lifestyle needs and relative financial burden on rural citizens is vastly different than what's needed in the incorporated towns. Representative voices carry these other perspectives.
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Rural people don't have bus systems available to them.  Yet the buses are paid for by taxes.  Trash pickup?  Internet accessibility?  In 3/4 of the County "rural disconnected" is an appropriate description, yet Chapel Hill and Carrboro have +1GB download speeds.
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There is a $300,000,000 bond proposal on this November 2024 ballot.  I encourage you to read the proposal through the eyes of the rural neighbors. Higher taxes are a regressive and real burden to lower income people who compose the geographic majority of the County.  Someone who makes $200,000 is annoyed by an additional $700/year on his tax bill.  Someone making $40,000 experiences financial distress because that's equivalent to a week of work.  What improvements in this $300 million will directly benefit the rural areas? Orange County has a long history of vocally insisting on social justice. To maintain this intentional voting system is intentionally dismissive of our neighbors in the beautiful rural portion of Orange County. 
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Additionally, new land use regulations are being pushed now in Orange County as part of the 2030 plan.  Of course, these regulations include restrictions on development and are only applicable to the "unincorporated" areas of Orange County.  This means that the high value incorporated areas of Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and Hillsborough aren't affected.  Who's impacted?  The rural people in the undeveloped areas, those in the "rural buffer" zones.  These rural restrictions sound pleasant, and allow us to drive along the beautiful Old 86 Scenic Roadway.  But they functionally make develop-able land artificially scare by preventing rural people from developing their land like has been done at great profit in the incorporated areas.  There has been some level of outreach attempts for the 2030 plan, but the ones who will be MOST IMPACTED are working either on their farms or in blue-collar jobs, and aren't engaged in the conversations about likely imminent restrictions on their land.
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Solution:  Allow actual districts in Orange County to vote for people from within ONLY their districts so that geographical representation can occur.
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Economic development that fits the influx of new people to the region, without cost impacting restrictions.
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The RDU region is one of the top 10 geographic destinations to which people across the country are relocating. I have started 4 companies and two non-profit organizations. My current company is a construction and development company constructing interior office renovations and custom houses. I observe the influx of people moving into the Orange County region is significant and not slowing down.
 
Restrictive development approaches are historic and unfairly preferential. These create tax burdens for residential owners, and access discrepancies between ordinary people and large corporations who aren't held back because they have access to capital to fight through restrictions. I support healthy and fair economic development that minimizes hurdles to allow entrance for wider prosperity.
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Hillsborough, NC  27278

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