Two N.C. county candidates offer plenty of experience

Two experienced politicians vying for an at-large seat on the Pasquotank County Board of Commissioners vow to tackle fiscal challenges in a county with several pending capital projects and a decreasing revenue stream.

Republican challenger Bill Lehmann, a former member of the City Council in Elizabeth City and the Pasquotank County Planning Board, said his 20 years of service in the Coast Guard, eight years in real estate appraisal and years in public office give him the edge over his opponent, incumbent Democrat Jeff Dixon.

"I am a proven leader when it comes to fiscal responsibility," Lehmann said. "We need someone who is going to do a better job of watching after that $38.7 million-a-year budget."

Lehmann, a retired Coast Guard aviator, said the county was forced to raise taxes last year because it bit off more than it could chew in funding a new jail, a new library, a new public safety building, a new building at College of The Albe marle and a new water system.

"You don't do them all in the same year with the economy going south and revenue going down," he said. "That was the result of poor planning. Our citizens deserve better planning than that."

Lehmann also said that if he is elected, he would fight the proposed location of a Navy outlying landing field in neighboring Camden County.

Pasquotank County's largest school complex, with a high school, elementary school and middle school, is about four miles from the end of the proposed runway, he said. If the OLF were located there, one of five sites in North Carolina and Virginia currently under study by the Navy, there could potentially be tons of air pollution pumped by up to 32,000 flight cycles per year of F/A-18 jets, he said.

"Our elected officials have not taken a leadership role in trying to defeat that," Lehmann said. "I will be an advocate for the people."

Lehmann said he would encourage more "smart growth," like the new aviation park, that provides jobs and pays for itself.

Another priority for Lehmann, he said, is to get meetings of the board televised.

"I don't see any reason for not doing that," he said. "Government should be open and transparent."

Dixon, who is seeking a second term on the board, said there are significant differences between city and county governance, referring to his opponent's experience on the City Council. He said his time on the board and his background in business gives him the necessary skills to serve, especially in such hard economic times.

"I'm a third-generation businessman, the president of a $30 million-a-year company," he said. "I have 55 to 60 employees, so I know what it takes.... I use that business experience on the board, mainly when it comes to budget time. As a businessman, I deal with budgets every day. It's applying common business sense."

Dixon said that in his first two years, he voted for tax decreases. In the third year, he agreed to a small increase but voted against a 5 percent increase in the last budget.

Plummeting transfer-tax collections have depleted the county's revenue stream, he said. Property taxes, he said, are less vulnerable to downturns in the economy.

"My feeling is our property tax should make up a bigger part of our budget," he said. "That's why we need a budget policy, because there's no clear strategy of what it should be."

For the time being, he said, any new spending and new capital projects that have not been started yet must be postponed.

Once the county's new 5 million-gallon-a-day reverse osmosis water system is online in about early 2010, there will be adequate water to supply the county - and sell to Perquimans County and Elizabeth City - for many years, Dixon said.

Dixon, the chairman of the water system committee, said operation and debt costs for the $19 million project will not be paid by taxpayers; it will be self-supporting.

It will prove to be a tremendous asset for the county, he said. "When you have commerce come into your area, and you can't provide water, they go down the road."

Dixon said the aviation park will provide about 500 jobs, many of which will probably pay annual salaries of about $40,000 to $45,000. The median salary in Pasquotank County now, he said, is about $34,000.

The additional jobs will help boost the tax base, he said, but there also has to be less spending.

"Anywhere we can cut costs, we need to do it."

Catherine Kozak, (252) 441-1711, cate.kozak@pilotonline.com