4 candidates to square off in county race

While almost every man, woman and child in Orange County is well aware of the upcoming presidential and senatorial elections, some might have forgotten that 2004 is also an important year for the Orange County Board of Commissioners.

Come Tuesday, voters will be charged with picking a pair of candidates to fill the two open seats on the board, which is in charge of countywide services.

Incumbent candidate Moses Carey Jr. is running on the Democratic ticket and said that one of his primary concerns, should he be re-elected, will be equalizing the funding disparity between the county's two school districts.

"When you talk about public education, you're really talking about the future of our nation," Carey said.

It was Carey who, in early 2003, proposed the idea of merging Chapel Hill-Carrboro and Orange County schools as a means of dealing with the disparities.

But his pro-merger stance has proven to be unpopular with a number of county residents, including two of the candidates running against him.

Jamie Daniel, a Hillsborough resident and county public school parent, is running on the Republican ticket with a firm anti-merger agenda.

"School merger is a bad idea," Daniel said, adding that the move is not necessarily in Orange County Schools' best interest because discrepancies in standardized test scores between black and white students are higher in city schools.

Daniel said merger also would mean a "backdoor tax." Chapel Hill and Carrboro residents now pay a property tax of 20.2 cents per $100 in assessed value to fund city schools, a type of fee not levied by the county school district.

Daniel is not the only candidate running with the intention of stomping out the idea of merger.

Valerie Foushee, a member of the city school board since 1997, recently received the endorsement of NoMerger.org, a group of more than 240 parents opposed to the idea.

Foushee said she does not believe combining the districts would fix disparities because such a move would remove community control over schools. She said, however, that the merger was not the issue that compelled her to run.

"I want to improve the decision-making process. Lack of process leads citizens to discontent," Foushee said.

The fourth candidate is Artie Franklin, a Chapel Hill resident running on the Libertarian ticket. Franklin said he believes that although merger might be necessary down the road, he does not see it as necessary now.

"The other candidates are either rock-solid for it, or they're just as strongly against it," Franklin said.

He also said residents, not commissioners, should vote on the issue through a referendum, pointing out that a majority of the commissioners "is just three people."

Daniel, Foushee and Franklin all said much of their campaigning has been reliant on meeting with constituents.

"One of the things I've enjoyed the most (about the campaign) is going out and meeting people," Daniel said.

Carey said that, as an incumbent, a large part of his campaign relies on his track record as a county commissioner.

Carey has served in his position since 1984. "We have a lot of new voters in this county, and I want them to understand what my record has been," he said.

The candidates all expressed similar sentiments about why the commissioners race is so important.

Carey said voters should pay attention to the race because the group directly affects the quality of life of county residents.

"We're closer to home for people in this county than most other elected positions," Carey said.

Franklin said he also thinks local government has the greatest impact on residents' daily lives. "These are people that folks who live in this community can contact," he said.

"The county commissioners is the highest office in the county," Daniel said. "They control merger, taxes. ... People need to start paying attention to their own community."

Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.