Six candidates are running for three positions on the Macon County Board of Commissioners. The Smoky Mountain News met with these candidates to discuss their platforms, backgrounds, and where they stand on some of the important issues facing their would-be constituents.
All five spots on the board are held by Republicans, and three Democrat challengers hope they can persuade voters to go blue in a county that swayed 68% in favor of President Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
These candidates spoke about their views on some hot-button, county-level issues such as data centers, redistricting, capital projects, Flock cameras, and the Fontana Regional Library system.
Lone incumbent, District 1 representative John Shearl declined to speak with SMN over the phone or in person for this article.
District 1:
Russ Lunn
Democrat Russ Lunn says he decided to run for the Macon County Board of Commissioners over what he sees as a disagreeable tone of the commissioner meetings lately rather than any single policy.
“I’m a deal maker instead of an arguer,” Lunn said, describing podium exchanges in which residents raised concerns and got argument rather than answers.
“I think the commissioners are working for the people, is what I thought, and not fighting with the people.” He added, “You have to have an answer for [constituents] instead of an argument.”
His campaign motto is “A New Voice for Macon County.”
Lunn grew up in Connecticut, was drafted out of college, and served in the Army in Vietnam. He then went to work as a reconnaissance pilot with the National Security Agency, a career he said spanned 26 years. After retiring, he opened a construction company in Sylva and has lived in a home he built in Macon County for 10 years.
When asked what he sees as the county’s biggest challenges over the next four years, Lunn pointed to seniors, families, and small businesses.
“Our seniors, families, and small businesses need a little more help,” he said, adding that senior services are not yet on the board’s agenda. He also casts himself as a fiscal conservative on the strength of his business record. “I never bankrupted a business. I made sure my people always had a paycheck,” he said.
Lunn is also an animal-welfare advocate who volunteers at free vaccination clinics and supports no-kill shelters.
On data centers, Lunn wants regulations as strict as state law allows, citing water quality, land use, and utility costs.
“I don’t want this land messed up,” he said. “Bigger (energy) demand means bigger bills, and people can’t afford that.”
He also supported defunding the county’s Flock cameras.
“You have to go with what the people want,” he said, though he would consider automated license plate readers again under tighter limits on data retention.
On the library system, he said Macon County Public Library leadership favors the split from the FRL, though he would review the finances before the decision is finalized.
Lunn also said he would improve transparency and criticized the board’s use of closed sessions.
“They have a lot of closed-door meetings at these commissioner meetings, and the people aren’t allowed to find out what was said at those meetings,” he said. He argued that the pattern shows up in the board’s voting record, which he said lands at 5-0 because the disagreement (if there was any) happened out of public view.
“I think that the people have the right to know,” he said. “We’re making decisions for the people.”
Lunn also opposes adding at-large seats. “Five commissioners is enough,” he said.
He also wants board appointments vetted on qualifications rather than friendships. “I want to put people in there that are qualified,” he said. If elected, he said, the commissioner seat would be his only work.
“If I become a commissioner, my job will be that and that only,” he said.
District 2:
Terry Bell
Terry Bell, a 50-year veteran of public education, is asking voters to send the first Democrat to the board of commissioners in four years.
Bell, who began teaching in Waynesville in 1973 before moving to his native Macon County in 1978, is running on a platform built around public education, public safety, and county budgeting. He taught at Macon Middle School and Franklin High School, served as Franklin High’s assistant principal from 1983 to 1988, and was principal at Union Elementary, East Franklin Elementary, and Macon Middle School before moving to the central office as director of auxiliary services and Title I director.
He retired in 2009, then went to work the next day for Macon County government, where he spent five years shepherding more than $50 million in school construction projects for the county manager. He retired for good in 2020.
“I think I’m qualified. I’m honest. I have plenty of experience working with people and with money,” Bell said. “And I love Macon County. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”
Bell said declining support for public education pulled him into the race. The school system’s budget request came in roughly $2.6 million short this cycle, a gap he attributes largely to state and federal reductions outside commissioners’ control. He pointed to teacher recruitment as the sharpest consequence. Macon County pays a 2% local supplement, he said, while neighboring Haywood County pays 9%. “It doesn’t take long to figure that one out,” he said.
Bell is urging voters to approve the quarter-cent sales tax on this year’s ballot, which he estimates would generate $2.2 to $2.4 million in new revenue, some of it available for schools. Macon County currently has one of the state’s lowest property tax rates at 27 cents.
On capital needs, Bell praised the nearly $136 million Franklin High School project now under construction and said his next priority is East Franklin Elementary, with an original structure dating to 1952 that has significant problems. He said a $34 million state grant pot expected to open this coming year is roughly the price of a new elementary school and could fund one without additional cost to taxpayers.
Bell also named an undersized county jail that forces Macon to pay Cherokee, Swain, and Clay counties to house inmates; aging courtrooms; a senior center in the old public library building that he called not ADA-friendly; and a regional shortage of mental health services as top issues.
He is firmly opposed to data centers, citing water, noise, and light impacts on a tourism-dependent economy, and he wants Macon to coordinate regulations with Swain, Jackson, and Cherokee counties rather than draft them alone.
Bell would vote to leave the FRL system, saying County Manager Warren Cabe convinced him Macon can run a standalone library for a negligible cost increase. He opposes moving to five single-member districts, arguing at-large voting keeps commissioners accountable countywide.
Kellie McConnel Burns
Republican Kellie McConnel Burns is a Macon County native with 29 years in banking. Her family roots in the county run back several generations, and she has dedicated much of her time to service initiatives. She heads up the Sweet Carolina Music Festival, benefiting the Smoky Mountain Pregnancy Care Center, co-leads the 828 Treasure Quest for the KidsPlace, and has organized benefits for neighbors with cancer.
She hopes Macon County voters see her decades-long banking career as the qualification that matters most in a race about money.
“I feel like the oversight of a $69 million budget requires financial discipline, careful analysis, and a commitment to accountability,” Burns said. “When it comes to finances, I feel like it’s important to have somebody who knows what they’re doing.”
On data centers, Burns is a strong opponent.
“I think Macon County is the last place that you would want to put a data center,” she said. “Our natural resources and the beauty of our landscapes — the last thing that we need in Macon County is a data center.”
She stopped short of endorsing sweeping zoning changes, preferring to go through the legal channels, and warned that “if we try legal precedents that’ll affect other business owners, we need to be super careful and look at the legal ramifications of that.”
When asked about the county’s decision to remove Flock cameras, Burns framed the issue as a balance.
“With so many legitimate concerns from our constituents about a potential Fourth Amendment violation, we have a responsibility to slow down,” she said, adding that any approved technology must “protect both public safety and the rights” of residents.
Burns wants a 10-year capital plan covering aging county buildings and looming projects.
“I think building costs keep increasing exponentially,” she said. “So, if we’re just saying we’re going to let it just rot to the ground and then rebuild it, that’s not a smart, common-sense approach. I think we need to be proactive and take care of our buildings.”
She supports the quarter-cent sales tax and wants to push long-term to shift the burden off homeowners.
“I really don’t feel like the government should have a right to tax your primary residence,” she said.
Burns also sees expanding homestead exemptions and creating an alliance with other Western North Carolina boards of commissioners to push through pro-WNC policy at the state and federal levels as top priorities.
On jobs, Burns pointed away from recruiting industry: “I think we have to start thinking outside the box and capitalize on a market that’s untapped here, which is the remote jobs.”
Dylan Castle
Dylan Castle is the youngest candidate on the ballot for Macon County Commissioner and is a pastor, first responder, chaplain, father, husband and former vice chairman of the Macon County Republican Party. The Republican said he felt God leading him when he made the decision to run for office
He grew up homeschooled in the county and traces his entry into politics to teaching history and government at a local Christian school, where students pressed him on the gap between the civics he described and the government they saw.
He began speaking at county and school board meetings around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and has attended them in the years since.
“That kind of gave me hope that, like at least at the local level, politics does in fact work,” he said.
If elected, Castle wants to improve transparency on the board of commissioners and better communicate issues to constituents.
On the county’s capital plans, Castle urged commissioners to space out major construction rather than stack it. He describes himself as a fiscal conservative who doesn’t advocate for increasing taxes or spending “extravagant” amounts of money, but that he thought conservatives needed to be more strategic about their spending.
“I think conservatives, often we make ourselves look like we’re just cheap, like we don’t want to spend money, we don’t want to tax, we don’t want to do this, and it’s kind of the cheap outcome,” Castle said. “I want to make sure that whatever we do, we’re at least getting our money’s worth. So, I’m not opposed to spending money if it’s best bang for your buck, but I don’t want to just throw money just because it’s bigger either.”
On the issue of data centers coming to Macon County, Castle is firmly opposed.
“I think geographically it just doesn’t make any sense here,” he said. “If somebody wants to do it, go find a different community.”
Castle was a vocal opponent of the county’s Flock cameras as well.
“My ultimate argument was the fact that the county commissioners and the sheriff take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, not to uphold and defend making their jobs easier, or preventing crime, or any of those things,” he said.
He would not revisit the technology.
“I would be very leery of bringing any type of system back, Axon or any of it,” he said.
When it comes to backing the plan for the county to exit the FRL system, Castle said finances would drive his vote on leaving the FRL system, not ideological squabbles.
On redistricting, he wants an authoritative ruling on constitutionality first.
“First of all, it’s not something that needs to be rushed into,” he said. “And I think our responsibility is to the voters and not potential candidates.”
When asked for his closing pitch, Castle pointed to his faith and his record as a pastor, business owner, first responder and chaplain.
“We have to get righteous people in in order to get righteous decisions,” he said.
Janet Jacobs Greene
Democrat Janet Greene grew up in her parents’ Main Street businesses in Franklin, watching her father (a town board member) ask what Macon County would need decades out. That question, she says, still interests her more than politics.
Greene, a retired United Methodist minister, long-time Democrat and former county commissioner, is running again for the Macon County Board of Commissioners. She wants voters to know she isn’t a politician. She’s a planner.
Her public service began on the county school board and carried her to the commission for a single term in the late 1990s and early 2000s, alongside Harold Corbin, father of Sen. Kevin Corbin, on a board split three Democrats to two Republicans. She credits that mix with building two schools and the local greenway inside four years.
She spent the following decades in ministry, retiring in 2023. Greene entered this race reluctantly, after two commissioners opted not to run and younger prospects she recruited told her the timing wasn’t right.
“Somebody needed to give Macon County citizens a choice,” she said.
Her pitch now is about the board itself, which she says has grown “kind of cohesive.”
“Nobody has all the right answers,” Greene said. “When you’ve got a diverse group, you come up with a better solution.”
On capital projects, Greene said a new East Franklin Elementary School, a justice center, more space for the board of elections and a new senior center all need to be addressed at some point, but debt service, much of it tied to the new Franklin High School, leaves little room to break ground soon. Instead, she would convene a group to sequence the projects, revive the economic development committee, and expand a thinned planning board.
“I’m not saying that I would be able to get those things built in four years,” she said, “but I think that they ought to be planned and ready to go.”
Affordable housing is where she sees the clearest opening for outside money: state and federal grants to help developers absorb upfront costs for roads, water, and sewer, so teachers, nurses, and deputies can find homes.
On data centers, Greene backs strong regulation, arguing the county’s tourism economy makes it the wrong place for them.
“They’re necessary in our society, but not for our area,” she said.
On Flock cameras, she favors strict limits on how surveillance data is used and penalties for misuse.
Greene mourns the dissolution of the FRL but says absorbing services may prove cheaper for the county.
On redistricting, she’d wait for 2030 census data and insists any new map strengthen the voices of Highlands and Nantahala.
Greene is campaigning without a website, using Facebook to explain ballot amendments and county business.
“I am an old-fashioned mountain values person,” she said. “I believe in faith, in service, in generosity.”