Nags Head mayor touts leadership in downturn

NAGS HEAD, N.C.

In a year that has spared the Outer Banks from destructive hurricanes, Nags Head Mayor Renee Cahoon said she is focusing instead on reversing the havoc created from this year's economic storms.

Cahoon, 54, is seeking another term as mayor, a post she first won in 1991, relinquished in 2000 to serve a term on the Dare County Board of Commissioners, and won again in 2005.

"My impetus? I love the town of Nags Head," Cahoon said while sitting on her lattice-screened porch at her home near Whalebone Junction. "And I care very much about the people that live here. I care about the future of our community."

A full-time Nags Head resident since 1970 - and part time since 1962 - Cahoon said she is determined to restore the town's economic vitality, weakened by millions in tax revenue lost in the nationwide economic crisis.

"I'm happy in Nags Head that we recognized that the downturn was coming," she said. "We got our capital projects completed. We have been able to live within our budgets. We instituted a hiring freeze."

Some positions remain vacant, she said, but town services have been maintained. Now Cahoon, an owner of her family's cottage court and grocery store in Nags Head, said the loss of property, sales and occupancy taxes has to be countered. One of her goals is to find ways to retain small businesses and to revitalize the Beach Road.

"I think Nags Head has a lot of unique features compared with some other communities," she said. "We have a historic district. We've tried to incorporate that into our architectural standards. We don't encourage really dense development."

One of the town's most critical issues, she said, is getting a beach nourishment project funded to address severe shoreline erosion in South Nags Head. The town is pursuing permits for a 10-mile project but has not nailed down a way to pay for it.

The beach is the town's biggest tourist attraction, and Cahoon sees sand replenishment as a way to protect the community's future economic base. For that reason, she said, her goal is to find consensus among property owners and other stakeholders to obtain funding, and to reach out to groups such as the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy to support the project.

The town's Board of Commissioners passed a resolution in November asking the General Assembly to conduct terminal-groin pilot projects, an action that Cahoon said she supported. The short jetties, she said, could help to trap sand at South Nags Head and prevent it from going into Oregon Inlet.

Cahoon's membership since 2002 on the state Coastal Resources Commission, the body that regulates projects in the 20 coastal counties, continues to be an asset for Nags Head, she said.

"It's enabled the town to form relationships with a lot of other coastal communities in the state to work together on issues such as terminal groins," she said.

Cahoon said she believes the proposed convention center on the large sound-front parcel in Nags Head owned by the town and the Dare County Tourism Board - site of the now-closed Windmill Point restaurant - has the potential to make the Outer Banks more of a year-round community.

"It may or may not ever happen," she said. "But it's a vision, not a reality now. You have to have some vision of the future to reach that future. Visions will constantly evolve. The idea of today may not be the idea of tomorrow."

With her term on the Tourism Board about to end in December, Cahoon will be leaving after a tumultuous year. Former Outer Banks Visitors Bureau managing director Carolyn McCormick - a friend of Cahoon's - resigned after months of allegations focused on her travel and salary records. An independent investigator found no criminal intent, but the board took steps to improve its record-keeping.

"I think that people who know me know my commitment to do a good job," she said. "I think that people that only hear rumors and incomplete stories probably have a different opinion. But if they ask the question, they'll get an answer."

Cahoon said she has found it is difficult to overcome the perception that a person can't be impartial if there are connections.

"In every small community, no matter what board you serve on, whether it's elected, nonprofit or appointed, everybody knows everybody," she said. "But the bottom line has to be to represent the board that you're on without regard to friendships that you may have within the organization or board."

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