PITTSBORO — In the five weeks since he was elected to Pittsboro’s board of commissioners, James Vose says he’s been tackling the learning curve that comes with being a newly minted public official.
That means meeting with Town Manager Chris Kennedy and current and former board members, reading about topics like zoning and water quality, poring over board documents, learning more about the town’s budget, and getting an earful of suggestions from Pittsboro residents.
Seeking the office — getting his name in front of voters in advance of November’s election, and talking to as many people as possible — was “one very real set of challenges,” he said.
“And now I want to be ready to deliver the goods,” Vose said. “Reading is just no substitute for having done the job for the last however many years. I just want to be as ready as I possibly can be.”
He’ll be officially sworn in, along with new (and also former) Mayor Cindy Perry, at the board’s meeting Monday. It starts at 7 p.m. and will be held via Zoom.
Vose won the seat by finishing a close second in the three-person race with incumbents Pamela Baldwin and Michael Fiocco. Baldwin led the balloting with 562 votes; Vose received 560. Fiocco got 400, knocking him off the board after 12 years.
“I can’t promise miracles,” Vose said, “but I’ll appreciate being a part of the conversations.”
Some will certainly involve water. He described Pittsboro’s ongoing water woes — related to “forever chemical” pollutants like PFAS in the Haw River and the recent slug of 1,4-Dioxane released upstream from Greensboro — as “discouraging, alarming.”
He grows animated when talking about the 1,4-Dioxane issue, suggesting Greensboro election officials and leaders should be called out by name for the multiple releases of the toxic chemical (and likely carcinogen) into the Haw, which occurred on their watch. He wants the city of Greensboro and the offending polluters — as yet not identified — to be held accountable, and says Greensboro should foot the bill for solutions Pittsboro is having to create.
Vose once led hydroengineering students into the African bush while working with a nonprofit organization and has helped pull wells and done water sampling.
“So I’m interested in water,” he said. “I’m interested in the environment. I’m interested in all of these things. Am I in any way a subject matter expert? Absolutely not. Is it [insisting on clean water] a sword I’m willing to fall on? It is.”
Vose said he doesn’t have “a lot of patience,” given what’s happened upstream, suggesting Pittsboro should “force the issue” — saying his elected counterparts in Greensboro should be asked to pledge to do what they can to help safeguard Pittsboro’s drinking water supply.
While he’s entertained the notion of “standing out on a bridge over the Haw, calling out the names of Greensboro commissioners one at a time” to get their attention over the 1,4-Dioxane issue, and using social media to pressure them, Vose also favors a more logical, measured approach. One he’s contemplated regarding the water crisis is to confront Greensboro with the financial realities of the fixes required in Pittsboro, and — to avoid costly potential litigation — asking Greensboro to go ahead and pony up without having to admit culpability.
“It’s better optics,” he said of the idea of Greensboro helping to foot the bill. “It’s the right thing to do … We can probably get a whole lot further, a lot faster, than waiting for the EPA to save us or trying to litigate around this.”
But he tempers his thoughts about the water issues with the fact that he’s still “the guy who just got hired.”
“And it’s his first week on the job,” he said, “and somebody says, ‘What questions do you have?’ And my honest answer is, ‘I don’t know enough to have a question.’ … Until I really get my feet underneath me, I don’t even know what I should say. I just know it’s going to be a challenge and I’m ready for it. I’ve got the time to work hard at this.”
And Vose promises to come to meetings ready to talk about issues on the agenda — a trait he recognized in Fiocco.
“I think Commissioner Fiocco really showed up prepared,” he said. “I think he took that job very, very seriously for a long time. And he set the bar pretty high.”
Vose wants to as well, but adds: he’s not much of a “hot-air blower.”
“So I don’t want to tell you all the great things that I’m going to do before I recognize what the hurdles are,” he said. “But I want to talk to people. And I want to explain to people if we can’t do things, I want to not vote — I want to not not vote on things because they’re difficult issues. And I want to not just take a pass on it, because it’s maybe a divisive issue. You know, like masking, right? You know, the board didn’t vote on (it); the mayor made a unilateral decision. Yeah, the board should have voted on that.”
The commission board race was non-partisan. Vose is a registered Independent, but says he changed his affiliation prior to the election from Republican because his beliefs “don’t align with today’s Republican Party.”
“January 6, the Big Lie ...” he said, referring to the Capitol insurrection by supporters of then-President Donald Trump and claims by Trump that the November election was stolen from him. “Re-affiliating as an independent was something I thought long and hard about. I’m happy with my decision.”
He owns Vose Natural Stone, which provides granite, marble and engineered stone for kitchen countertops and other home interior and exterior uses. He says his work schedule will allow him to set regular times to meet with Pittsboro residents about issues they care about.
“I hope to have at least biweekly office hours Zoom meetings for anybody that wants to talk,” he said. “I think people need an easy way to access us, and I hope I can do a really good job and keep the doors open.”
In next week’s edition: Outgoing Pittsboro Commissioner Michael Fiocco shares thoughts about his legacy as a board member.