In the race for Huntersville mayor, incumbent John Aneralla is being challenged by Rob Kidwell.
JOHN ANERALLA (incumbent)
Why are you running?
The NC Chamber recently rated Huntersville the third best place to live in North Carolina. I want to continue to build on the momentum created over the past four years.
What is the biggest quality-of-life issue facing residents of your town and how will you address it?
With the tremendous growth Huntersville and North Meck have experienced over the past two decades, the Lake Norman communities are playing catch up with our infrastructure. My goal is to accelerate our road, sidewalk, bike lane and greenway infrastructure to complement the over $550 million worth of road projects coming over the next several years.
How should your town deal with rising housing costs?
Maintaining a low property tax rate, allowing builders to offer a wide variety of housing options and attracting quality jobs will assist in making the area more affordable.
ROB KIDWELL
Why are you running?
As a multi-term, Huntersville Town Commissioner, doing the right thing for my community came first, above anything else. This was done through strong regionalism, vision, and collaboration with our neighboring towns, county and state. Under the current Mayor’s leadership, we have secluded ourselves from those entities and limited the conversations and collaboration that could help our town and region move forward. As the next Mayor I would work with the elected Commissioners, utilizing our strengths to rebuild many of those bridges and continue to collaborate with the leadership at all levels to strategically improve Huntersville and the region.
What is the biggest quality-of-life issue facing residents of your town and how will you address it?
Regionalism and the ability to collaborate with our neighboring towns, county and state is one that is particularly important to us going forward. While I was in office and out, I have maintained and grew those relationships to bring that back to our town. This has allowed us to start and continue the study into Ocular Melanoma, begin to police our own ETJ areas, and purchase and build quality of life projects like our new recreation center, Veterans Park, and Fire Station #4 in our town. As we continue, we need the leadership with the ability to be a voice for our town in a region for educational choice, land planning, continued infrastructure improvements, economic development, and completing promised projects.
Growth in in our town continues to explode, and we must address both the need and the impact that it has. The towns blueprint and plan for our growth was adopted in 2011. In 2016, it was suggested we begin updating it, yet pushed aside until this year. Huntersville is now just beginning to start the process of updating our 2030 plan. I have the vision to make sure that the new plan is updated at least every four years, and reviewed by staff and the community, so we address the needs of the community sooner rather than later. The past two years, the current Mayor has called the current plan a “suggestion” rather than a guide and in one meeting said “this would not be an issue if it was not for the 2030 plan”, ignoring the plans laid out by our community, and encouraging board members to do the same.
Transparency, respect, and communication is very important to our citizens.
How should your town deal with rising housing costs?
I have been looking at how other towns are addressing this same issue, and there is not a one size fits all answer. I would like to create a sub committee of the planning board to gather information and bring it to the board to make recommendations on how to provide affordable housing to current and future members of our community.
