Two men are changing up the Wake Forest political scene. Commissioner Jim Thompson, with one term under his belt, has announced he will challenge Mayor Vivian Jones as she tries for a fifth term. And Thad Juszczak, a planning board member who has attended almost every meeting of the town board in the last three years, issued an announcement this week about his candidacy for the town board.
Both men emphasize they represent the face, the majority of Wake Forest residents, being younger and/or newer in town.
Thompson’s seat will be open because he cannot run for that and mayor. Commissioner Margaret Stinnett, whose term ends this year, has not said if she will run for a fourth four-year term, perhaps leaving the door open for other candidates
Wake Forest has staggered town board terms. There are no designated seats or districts and the town board candidates with the most votes are elected, whether it is for two seats or three. This year the mayor’s seat and two commissioner seats are on the ballot; in 2019 the seats of three commissioners will be up for a vote. Elections are nonpartisan without party designation and the Gazette never publishes the candidates affiliation.
Thompson had told the Gazette earlier this year he was considering a second term on the town board, but he said this week he changed his mind after observing how town staff reacted when Kip Padgett was chosen as new town manager and moved into his town hall office in the spring of 2015.
“What struck me when [Town Manager] Mark Williams retired, I could see how the town employees responded to Kip” who had new ideas. “It was very exciting, seeing a person with a new perspective. I think that’s what it needs to be with the [office of the] mayor. Change is not saying the past is bad. I could bring a different perspective to the Town of Wake Forest,” Thompson said in an interview Tuesday. After talking about how an organization with the same leadership for a long time can grow stale, keep doing the same thing, he said, “It’s just time for a new perspective. The town could use it. The town staff could appreciate it.”
Also, “I represent the average demographic of what Wake Forest is today, not what it was ten years ago.”
Thompson, 45, and his family have lived in town, the Shearon Farms subdivision, since 2005. He works in Raleigh; his wife, Hollyn, is an art specialist at Jones Dairy Elementary School; and they have two children, a 14-year-old son who is a student at Heritage Middle School and a 10-year-old daughter who attends Sanford Creek Elementary. They, like many other families, can have up to seven or eight devices streaming at once with computers, Netflix, phones, tablets. “When I travel I use Uberall the time because its so much easier.”
“We’ve got to do things differently,” Thompson said. The way things were done in town government were “maybe not as intentional as they could be. We’ve got to own our future more than we’ve done in the past.”
When asked about HB 436 in the General Assembly which would take away the ability of towns and cities to use impact fees levied on new development as a way to pay for growth, Thompson called it over-reaching and said, “I have never been more frustrated at the things my party is doing to towns.” The bill, which has a good chance of passing, would turn more of the burden of growth back on the municipality, Thompson said. “Now it would take away our funding mechanism for the fire department and recreation.”
Thompson, a 1994 graduate of UNC-Greensboro, has been in association management since 1999 and is currently vice chairman of Capital Hill Management Services, which goes by CHMS. The company manages small associations who do not want to or cannot afford to have their own staff or offices. He manages about 18 associations and is the executive director for two. One is the national association of 4-H agents which work out of county extension offices.
In his announcement this week, Juszczak emphasized the growth and the changes in the town. “The Town of Wake Forest is not the same Town it was ten years ago. In those ten years, the Town’s population has doubled. This means that, including turnover, about 75 percent of the Town’s population today did not live here ten years ago. The folks who lived here all those years have made Wake Forest the unique town that it is today – but times are changing. The current Town Commission is made up of people who have lived here at least ten years, and we have all benefitted from their knowledge and hard work. However, we need some ‘resident diversity,’ on the Town Commission, including some Commissioners who haven’t lived here ten or more years, who resemble the clear majority of our Town’s residents. Like so many of you, a few years ago my wife and I chose to make Wake Forest our home, and I know I can represent you well.”
Juszczak spent 34 years as a federal employee specializing in budgeting and strategy at the departments of Defense, Treasury, Health & Human Services as well as the Environmental Protection Agency. He and his wife, Yvonne, live in the Registry at Bennett Park subdivision and have three married children and five grandchildren.
“I’ve spent my entire life in government. I understand how it works and I know it’s essential to producing a society where people can raise their families and grow their businesses.” Juszczak went on to way he has the time to devote to a commissioner’s duties and listed eight key issues facing the town. They are:
- managing our residential growth to protect the community for those who already live here,
- encouraging economic development to bring needed business and light industry to the Town,
- ensuring an adequate infrastructure to support both the Town we are and the Town we are becoming,
- protecting and preserving the Town’s heritage, a key to what makes Wake Forest unique,
- following the will of the majority while respecting the rights of the minority on each issue,
- collaborating with Wake County to ensure quality schools,
- coordinating with the State to manage roads and traffic, and
- being prepared for decisions that we might not even know about today.
Juszczak ended by saying he wants to honor our heritage and forge our future.
