Early voting in Jackson County (and across the state) begins Oct. 15, and ahead of the election, The Smoky Mountain News has interviewed the five challengers in the Jackson County Board of Commissioners race.
The lone incumbent, John Smith, did not respond to SMN’s multiple requests for an interview.
Six candidates are running for three spots on the board, and regardless of who wins come election night, the new class of commissioners will face a host of challenges in their term, from public education to Flock cameras, to affordable housing, and more.
Across the pool of candidates, there was bipartisan support for keeping data centers out of Jackson County and defunding Flock Security cameras.
Here are where the candidates stand on the issues.
Board of Commissioners Chair Race
Marcia Almond
Democrat Marcia Almond is a retired nurse with more than 30 years of experience who came to the region as an operating room supervisor, then spent the rest of her career as a staff nurse in general surgery at Harris Hospital, retiring in 2008.
Almond has extensive public service experience: serving two years as council member and mayor for The Village of Forest Hills, a seat on the Southwestern Commission’s executive board, volunteer work at Good Samaritan Clinic and Circles of Hope, and administering COVID-19 vaccines.
She names affordable housing, childcare, and living-wage jobs as her top three priorities. She says housing and childcare are what pushed her to run.
As mayor of the Village of Forest Hills, she has experience dealing with housing initiatives and said she blocked a developer who wanted to build outside Forest Hills’ zoning ordinances.
“Jackson County is short 2500 homes, and that’s not just affordable homes,” she said. Almond points to workers who staff Jackson County jobs but live, shop, and pay taxes in Haywood County. Her approach would be to put county-owned land to use, use grants to extend infrastructure, and partner with developers so the county recoups its money when homes sell.
She also wants vacant buildings and deteriorating occupied homes rehabilitated and a housing commission with teeth.
“I want the housing commission to set up rules for landlords so that people aren’t being taken advantage of by slumlords,” she said.
That figure represents wages not earned, shifts not filled and spending that never reaches local businesses, and it compounds the same labor-market squeeze she describes in housing, where Jackson County employers already struggle to keep workers who can’t afford to live in the county.
On schools, Almond opposed the bond referendum and would instead ask voters in 2028 for a small sales tax increase so,”not just property owners, but everyone who buys anything in Jackson County, is helping contribute to our schools,” rather than “putting $105 million onto the backs of people that can barely pay their mortgages now.”
Until then, she says the county must work with what it’s got and try to make repairs, prioritizing Blue Ridge and Fairview.
“I’m not in favor of starting [Smoky Mountain Middle School] until our existing schools are in good repair,” she said, questioning the chosen site’s preparation costs, suggesting Fairview could be converted into the middle school, and indicating she would let the grant deadline lapse rather than take on the debt.
On employee pay, she wants a formal comparison of law enforcement salaries and turnover rates before setting raises, noting Macon and Jackson counties each blame the other for poaching officers. Almond would pay for raises by killing the county’s Flock camera contract.
“Why not take that money and give it to county employees, to the sheriff’s department, and other county employees?”
She also supports raising the teacher supplement.
Almond called Flock cameras a Fourth Amendment violation that the public has already rejected.
On data centers, she would keep the door closed unless Duke Power, not ratepayers, absorbs the energy costs and the river is protected, she said AI’s spread of propaganda worries her regardless. When the moratorium ends, she would build on the county’s crypto-mining ordinance “to make it just so unfavorable to them to come here that it wouldn’t be worth their time.”
When discussing the county’s withdrawal from the Fontana Regional Library System (FRL), Almond said, “I was not in favor of it, and if I had a chance, I would rejoin the FRL,” saying it isn’t right to leave Swain County holding the bag. She would put it near the top of her agenda and lift the new restrictions on community rooms. Her pitch final pitch to voters is: “I have a good plan of action for the county.”
David J. Rogers
David Rogers, the Republican candidate for Jackson County Commission chairman, says three decades in the automotive service business have given him the problem-solving instincts local government needs.
“The first thing you do when you got an issue in the car is you get under the hood,” he said. “I take a local government issue, and raise the hood and say, ‘Okay, this is the issue,’ and then I’m going to dig in and find out what’s causing that issue, so I can figure out how to fix it.”
Beyond his career, he coaches baseball and football at the high school level, ran a men’s group at his church for about four years, and counsels people recovering from addiction.
He named taxes, county employee and teacher pay, and school infrastructure as the county’s top three issues.
Rogers said he agreed 100% with commissioners’ decision to keep the school bond referendum off the ballot. “I’m all for building the middle school, but we need to do it with the grant we have and try to not spend any of the taxpayers’ monies if we don’t have to.” Rogers added the county should investigate why the project’s cost climbed from roughly $52 million to $110 million.
His sharpest criticism was reserved for long-range planning. Citing artificial turf installed a decade ago with no replacement plan, he said, “That’s not good planning. That’s not good leadership,” and pointed to Macon County’s high school as a model. “They plan 10 years in advance to do it,” he said.
He called the two-year planning delay at Blue Ridge School unacceptable, noting the school still has bathrooms that aren’t handicap accessible and a promised cafeteria that hasn’t been built, while its $15 million allocation loses purchasing power.
As to when he’d pay for capital needs without raising taxes, Rogers said, “our budget is so inflated, it’s crazy,” but declined to name specific cuts.
On pay, with the sheriff’s office down eight deputies, he said raises are “a need, not a want,” arguing a salary study “should have been done two years ago.” He also supports supplemental pay increases for teachers.
“That’s not even a question. That’s a no-brainer,” Rogers said of the pay increases, and floated performance-based budgeting to reward departments that save money.
He said he would also extend the county’s one-year data center moratorium.
Rogers also supports removing Flock cameras. “I think it infringes on the citizens’ rights right now.” He said, adding, “I am 100% behind our sheriff and our sheriff’s department.”
With his closing pitch, Rogers said, “I feel like I’m the best man for the job because I’m not there for Republicans, I’m not there for independents, I’m not there for Democrats. I’m there to make this county the best it can be, and I think our better days are ahead of us.”
District 1 Race
Steven J. Sutton
Republican candidate Steven Sutton, a lifelong Jackson County resident and retired law enforcement officer, is running for county commissioner on a platform built almost entirely around one issue: taxes.
Sutton graduated from Smoky Mountain High School in 1990 and enlisted in the Army at 17, serving four-and-a-half years in the infantry. He returned home to work for the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office before joining the Highway Patrol. He now works as hospital police. His community service includes eight to ten years on a youth sports board for football and basketball.
He said rising taxes convinced him to run.
“The biggest (issue) is always going to be taxes,” Sutton said.
While he acknowledged the recent property tax increase was driven by the state, he said the county controls its own spending.
“It’s up to your county to kind of keep everything else down as far as not building multi-million dollar buildings one right after the other,” he said.
On the school bond, Sutton said he could not say how he would have voted without seeing the ballot language.
“I don’t mind putting [the bond referendum] on the ballot as long as everybody understands your tax is going to go up,” he said.
When asked how he would handle deferred maintenance projects such as the school bus garage and renovations at Smoky Mountain High and Blue Ridge, Sutton said essential needs come first but that funding has limits. “If we can fund it, we can fund it. But if you can’t, you can’t,” he said. “I really believe people have been hit hard enough with tax for the last what three four years, and we just got to slow it down.”
He is skeptical the Smoky Mountain Middle School project can break ground before its state grant expires.
“I think we’re going to just have to start over on that,” he said.
Sutton, who once supported Flock cameras, has reversed course and would back defunding them without stronger safeguards.
“I’m not a big fan of mass surveillance by government,” he said. He also opposes data centers under current conditions: “I don’t believe in just giving 1,000 acres (to) somebody and letting them take all the water because they might give us a little money.”
On county employee pay, Sutton favors consistent annual step raises.
“I’d rather get a 1% raise every year than a $2,000 or $3,000 bonus because every year you don’t get that percentage, you lose it,” he said.
He supported the county’s exit from the FRL over content placement, saying, he wasn’t advocating for anybody burning books but believed the FRL should have been more amenable to Jackson County’s wishes on content moderation.
Sutton said he would restore community room access with updated guidelines but said he wasn’t sure what those guidelines would be yet. On housing, he said streamlining inspections is the county’s main lever.
“I think politics needs to be a little less political,” he said.
Casey Walawender
Democrat candidate Casey Walawender said the county’s departure from the FRL was the moment that pushed her into the race, and she is campaigning on transparency, long-term planning and broader representation on the board.
Walawender, a Western Carolina University graduate with a degree in philosophy and a minor in social work, recently finished her master’s in social work.
Over her career, she has managed a level three residential facility for teenage boys with severe trauma, managed cases for students moving from middle to high school in Texas, and, most recently, mental health work in Jackson County Public Schools at Cullowhee Valley, Smoky Mountain High, and Scott’s Creek Elementary School.
“You can’t work with kids without working with their families,” she said, describing years of coordination with local Department of Social Services, law enforcement, nonprofits and churches.
Walawender said the library vote crystallized her decision to run.
“Our county commissioners weren’t representing all of Jackson County,” she said, arguing that residents spoke drastic numbers in favor of remaining in the FRL and were subsequently ignored.
“I think it was all complete nonsense,” she said, adding that the move has cost the county “at least $300,000 that it didn’t need to cost us” and amounted to “attempts at censoring and its attempts at erasure of identities.”
Her first step if elected would be restoring public use of library community rooms.
“If a group is not causing harm, if it’s not a hate group, I don’t understand that we can’t allow people used to those spaces,” she said.
On the $105 million general obligation school bond, Walawender offered a split verdict.
“Do I think it’s reasonable to let voters in Jackson County decide where their money goes? 100%,” she said. “Do I think we needed $105 million bond? I don’t.”
She pointed to Commissioner Michael Jennings’ recent remark about revisiting the Blue Ridge plans as evidence that commissioners, the school board, and the district have not been working closely together.
When asked about county employee pay, she said raises will require candor about trade-offs.
“Where is there money to be found in the budget? Is there money to be cut in the budget?” She criticized commissioners who say employees deserve a raise and that the county must cut the budget 5% in the same breath without explaining how to do both.
Walawender supports the data center moratorium and stricter rules afterward, calling her position “a hard no” and saying she has “no desire to be responsible for the downfall of the Tuckasegee River.”
On Flock cameras, she said, “If I had to vote on this issue right now, I would vote to defund them.”
District 2 Race
Sean Bridgers
Democrat Bridgers is a Jackson County native and Western Carolina University graduate who works professionally as an actor. He is running for county office for the first time, saying the fight over the county’s library system pushed him off the sidelines.
“I’ve never held public office. I’ve never wanted to,” he said, noting he has coached high school football and worked with civic organizations in towns where his acting career took him.
The galvanizing moment came at a commissioners meeting on whether to remain in the FRL.
“I was very proud of the community for coming out in such overwhelming support of us remaining in the Fontana Regional Library System, and I was just really disappointed that it didn’t seem to matter,” he said. “It was very clear to me that the will of the people was not heard, and that was alarming.”
Bridgers names environmental protection as a top priority, tying it directly to the tourism economy.
“If we take care of things, these mountains and rivers are sustainable not just for the beauty of the place, but that becomes an economic driving force,” he said, adding that industry “comes and goes.”
On housing, he pointed to an estimated 1,500 county homes that sit empty or operate as short-term rentals. “I would be interested in looking into that and seeing what we can do to persuade people to maybe do long-term (rentals),” he said, while acknowledging the state legislature has barred commissioners from capping rents.
Bridgers linked the housing shortage to issues in school staffing, recounting a principal’s warning that recruiting teachers has grown difficult as the cost of living has skyrocketed. “Ten years ago, we had our pick of prospective teachers, and now it’s a tougher sell.”
He supports raising the teacher supplement and pay for county employees generally, citing deputies and educators leaving for better-paying jobs.
“I would be in support of raising, generating more salary or stipends for all public servants, fire department, law enforcement, teachers, EMT, everybody,” he said.
Bridgers called the library split a product of “a culture war” and said he would vote to restore public access to library community rooms.
“It’s called the community room, so the community should have access to it,” he said.
On the middle school and bond referendum, he declined to say how he would have voted but faulted the process.
“It should not have gotten to that point,” he said, calling for cost-conscious design: Blue Ridge School’s gym “doesn’t have to be the Taj Mahal,” and Fairview Elementary’s cafeteria “is not up to code, so that’s got to be done.” He said the county should be able to “give everybody what they need. Maybe not just everything they want, but everything that they need.”
Bridgers said he is wary of data centers and the people who insist on having them, and flatly opposes Flock cameras. “I’m not in favor of ongoing surveillance of American citizens,” he said, adding he would vote to defund them.
While he would be new to local government, Bridgers said he is running to better the lives of Jackson County residents.
“I’m a professional actor. This is all new to me,” he said. “I’m educating myself, but I do know that I have good judgment, and I know that this is my home, and I want everybody to have opportunities to have the best life they can have.”