Union County Weekly Questionnaire
Darlene Luther – Candidate for Indian Trail Town Council
Questionnaire from the Union County Weekly Newspaper
1. Why are you running for office?
I have lived in Indian Trail for almost 7 years and am the broker/owner of a real estate firm based in Indian Trail. In that capacity, I work regularly with homebuyers and sellers in town and have a great appreciation for what people’s impression is of our town (why they move in, why they move out) and what kind of impact town officials’ decisions (or lack of) have on all of our property values.
In my years of living and working in Indian Trail, I have seen many changes take place in our community. Some I have been excited about (Extreme Ice, Carolina Courts, Sun Valley Commons, Walmart and Lowes just to name a few) and some I have not been so excited about (just how many fast food restaurants and storage facilities should any one town have?) In contrast to the changes that have occurred, I have been disappointed in certain changes that have not occurred—fruition of the once planned downtown development project, active and purposeful recruitment of business and industry to bring in local jobs and generate commercial tax revenue taking the burden off homeowners, beautification and clean-up of our main thoroughfares including Indian Trail Road, a needed town-wide appreciation and active historical preservation of the few places left in town that would showcase the history of Indian Trail and the significance of its roots, and help to give us an identity—to name a few. Working to change Indian Trail’s reputation to one of being “business-friendly” and to one that says “what can we do to help our businesses to succeed” is very important. In addition, I am a fiscal conservative and always have been since old enough to vote, and I want to keep our taxes in check.
I have been a regular attendee of town council meetings for the past couple of years and am very well-informed as to the issues facing the town now and in the future. As a homeowner whose business is real estate, I am concerned about our property values as they compare with our surrounding communities, and what direction our town takes now and in the future. I have a vision for Indian Trail, and I believe that Indian Trail has an enormous amount of potential to be something great, a place to be remembered. Things need to change around here, and the cycle of endless planning with no action must end. We need to change the personality of the council to one of vision in action, not paralysis in planning. This is why I am running for Indian Trail Town Council.
2. How have you been involved in the community and what are your qualifications for office?
I am the broker/owner of a real estate firm here in Indian Trail and in that capacity I have had, for the last several years, the privilege and opportunity to listen first-hand to homeowners and potential homebuyers as they share their likes and/or concerns about Indian Trail, including their reasons for moving into or moving out of Indian Trail. This offers tremendous insight as to what issues are meaningful to many of our residents, as well as what issues are meaningful to buyers who might be considering a move to Indian Trail.
I have been a regular attendee of town council meetings for the past couple of years and am very well-informed as to the issues facing the town now and in the future—the Blythe building blunder, the failed downtown project, law enforcement discussions, business environment, etc. I am not just beginning to attend council meetings because I have chosen to run for council, but rather I have been attending regularly, purposefully keeping myself informed due to its importance to me as a homeowner, business-owner, and real estate broker working on behalf of other property owners in Indian Trail.
Believing in a voter’s right to choose, I worked purposefully and successfully with a small group of other Indian Trail residents to create the change necessary to bring a liquor-by-the-drink referendum to Indian Trail. I believe in less government, with less control, and believe in the voters having a right to choose, whether they be for or against. This undertaking was a long, hard road at the citizen, grass-roots level, but has come to fruition, and the voters have had (and will have) their say. If my involvement at the citizen level has helped to affect such a significant change, I look forward to making a difference at the government level.
I have a BS degree from University of Massachusetts Boston, graduating with highest honors Summa Cum Laude 3.96 GPA as well as graduate studies in the Nurse Practitioner program. I am very well able to grasp and sort through the complexities of the issues our town has at hand, and at stake.
3. What are the top 3 most important issues in your community and how would you address them if you’re elected? Please be specific.
Town Beautification and Historical Preservation/Appreciation – Town beautification is an area I am very passionate about. Indian Trail is in need of being cleaned up, spruced up, and revived. Just like the older home that someone takes the time to fix up and create a curb appeal, increasing its value, so must Indian Trail—as not doing so will have an impact our property values as to whether they can keep up with other surrounding communities that have. We need to improve our aesthetic reputation…period. A drive through Indian Trail should leave a visually pleasing, positive impression on both residents and visitors alike. There is no excuse for Indian Trail to look so “let go.”
As a beginning, I have a vision of establishing a core of citizen and professional volunteers for a recurring community clean-up day to clean up the streets and sidewalks of gravel, dust, and unsightly weeds; power-wash the clay residue built up on many exteriors of buildings; plant flowering trees along Indian Trail Road (and some other main thoroughfares); create areas of landscaped garden beds and place flower boxes, planters or hanging baskets alongside businesses; apply for a grant (pending the owner’s interest) that would provide the finances to restore the charm and character of the old train depot, as has been done successfully in Waxhaw putting it on the National Register of Historic Buildings, and to publicly thank those business owners who have taken the initiative to keep up or improve their curb appeal, etc. We can solicit corporate, small business, and personal donations for finances, products, and services necessary to make this a reality, without incurring significant expense for the tax payers.
I, for one, do not want Indian Trail to continue to be “left behind” when it comes to being a community with visual appeal. I want Indian Trail to be a place that people will endearingly remember; and a place that residents can be proud of. Certainly, this would be good for our property values, for our residents’ enjoyment and for commerce, as it may even encourage new and relocating businesses to consider a move to Indian Trail. Remember…many people tend to shop and do business in places where they enjoy the appeal of the environment around them. It is a simple concept, but a very true one.
Quality Economic Development and “Business Friendly” Attitude - Prospecting for and creating opportunities that will attract businesses to Indian Trail will serve to provide for a much needed stream of commercially generated tax revenue while relieving the tax burden from our homeowners. In order to do so, Indian Trail needs to establish a reputation of being “business-friendly,” to both current and new businesses, and then work to actively recruit businesses to our area, bringing local jobs along with a much needed commercial tax revenue. We have a highly educated and skilled population of people who live right here in the community; we are the suburb of a modern and growing city that is a popular choice for people relocating from all over this country. Taking a look at what incentives and benefits Indian Trail can offer to businesses to lure them here is a worthy project, there is no doubt. We are in a prime location for business and industry, and we should have been capitalizing on this long ago.
An Economic & Business Development professional would be a tremendous asset to our town in order to market the Town of Indian Trail and aggressively pursue business and industry. Hosting a business-owners forum consisting of our local businesses, town officials, and the planning board would go a long way to bring everyone together, identify needs, make improvements, and help all to understand each other’s perspectives so we can all achieve our goals, while keeping focus on enhancing our aesthetic appeal.
Town Park or Commons for Community Cohesiveness – A Town Park/Community Greens, I believe, is a fundamental necessity for a town of our size. Providing green space where our residents can come together will instill a community spirit that is vital to any town, while providing entertainment and respite for all of our citizens, of all ages. While I tend to veer somewhat from the word “park” (to me, it implies there is a focus on playground equipment), a thoughtfully designed “Indian Trail Commons” or “Indian Trail Park on the Greens” would serve as a community anchor and allow for regular community events, festivals, concerts on the green, and more. Landscaped garden beds, flowering trees, walking paths and a fountain would create a relaxing place for a picnic or a stroll. A grandstand or pavilion of some sort would be put to great use, I have no doubt. There are so many ways to be creative when envisioning a new park in town. It’s time to retire Indian Trail Elementary and the Town Hall plot of grass as our “exclusive” places for community events. With 25,000+ residents—it is time for a place we can enjoy our surroundings and look forward to our next event!
4. What does your current town council need to do differently to improve the community for residents?
The current council needs to devise a way to increase its communication with our residents (the new newsletter is a very nice start), but to also truly begin to facilitate community cohesiveness through well-done, community-sponsored events. We are a town made up of pocket subdivisions, and I would personally like to see our residents have as much opportunity as possible to step outside of these subdivisions and be engaged with each other more at the community level, such as they do in Matthews on a regular basis, for an example. Regular interaction among our residents from all parts of Indian Trail is a vital necessity if our council wants to foster the powerful asset of community spirit and cohesiveness. Council also has to focus on beautifying the community as it can have tremendous impact on how we feel about where we live and thus how we take care of our own places within it. And they MUST listen to our business-owners who are struggling in the current economic climate and help them to be successful.
5. Should the town have its own police department and, if so, how would you fund it?
I am a very strong advocate when it comes to public safety. Currently, we are contracting our public safety services through the Union County Sheriff’s Office. With 26,000 residents, it is important at this juncture for us to determine whether it is best for us to indefinitely continue to add more deputies as we grow, or to begin our own police department. We have recently had a look at a study conducted for free as a project by UNC-Charlotte graduate students requested, I believe, by our former town manager. Although this is no doubt a very useful study in many ways, there is also a lot of comparing apples to oranges, and a lot of gaps in comparison info; and because of this, I believe that a study must be done that is performed by an independent consultant with law enforcement experience and who is skilled in law enforcement analyses, who understands the intricacies between a police department and deputy contracts, and thus can develop a “tighter” apples-to-apples comparison. To rely solely on the UNCC study as a be-all/end-all to the topic, I believe is not holding ourselves accountable or responsible to our citizens when it comes to making the incredibly important decision of how our tax dollars are best spent on public safety. And to include the touted “additional services” we get from the sheriff’s department which we as Union County taxpayers are entitled to receive anyway because these services are paid through our Union County tax dollars, is purely misleading and misrepresented in order to support a bias toward the UCSO contract. Biases need to be put aside in fairness to our citizens when looking at this issue. And the notion that if one is not 100% convinced the UCSO contract is the best way to go, then that person must be 100% FOR a police department and will “double your taxes,” is just a ludicrous scare tactic.
With that being said, I will not make a determination on either side, because quite frankly, I have not seen conclusive information to objectively support either. I am 100% on board with delving further into this topic to come to an objective conclusion. This town has proven itself to be short-sighted in many ways, and public safety is a topic worthy of considerable investigation. Without a true cost comparison, there is no way to tell how closely the budget would fall between either of the two options; therefore, I cannot determine if starting a department is “worth” doing or how much cost difference there would be in order to consider “how to pay for it.” I will, however, note that the UNCC study being referred to is not comprehensive and compares the budget for the 13 deputies at the time to having a police department of around 60 officers.
6. The current council has spent a lot of official time censoring the mayor and restricting his access to town hall and staff. Do you agree with this action? Why or why not? How do you propose to eliminate this kind of issue to focus on town business?
My answer to this question will mirror what I say to most everyone that asks me. I tell them each person in Indian Trail has a choice—they can read the “story” of the mayor/council tensions in the paper, or they can sit in for the regularly scheduled 3-4 hour council meetings twice per month like a handful of us residents do. As you can imagine, being present and watching objectively the “story” unfold is very different than reading 3 paragraphs in the newspaper.
With that being said, let’s keep in mind the role of the mayor in Indian Trail. The mayor cannot vote. The mayor’s role in part is to help to facilitate the meetings and support the council in their efforts to extract and process information in order to make judgments and determinations on any particular issues. Anyone who attends the council meetings knows that the meetings tend to become chaotic and stressed, and certainly not facilitated. A lot has gone on behind the scenes that I am not privy to. But one must keep in mind that two of the current councilmembers, Dan Schallenkamp and Shirley Howe, had a large part in recruiting, grooming, and supporting John Quinn’s run for mayor two years ago. Now, these same two councilmembers are the most vocal against him. In fact, the majority of the council apparently has determined, from the information they are privy to, that dealing with the mayor in the way that they have done was necessary.
Additionally, a current town council candidate, who also was “close” to the mayor until very recently, stood up at a public comments session, and she lambasted him by name telling him to “pull up his big-boy britches and start acting like a mayor.” I have two comments to make from this: 1) If you are not at the meetings, you must ask yourself if it is all of “them,” or if it is the mayor, that is the root of such council angst. I will leave my statement at that and refrain from further; and 2) when you vote for either of the two open council seats in the upcoming election, ask yourself if you want to feed this frenzy with more personal disdain on the council. I would hope not. I don’t have a problem with the mayor personally. We can talk Red Sox all day long. That is a separate issue from my judgment of his behavior and how it relates to the present council’s actions.
7. Should the next town council focus on creating a downtown or community center?
Yes. Indian Trail is in need of an identity, not just to set a notable impression for those outside of our community, but for the people who live here. Indian Trail seems to have had an overall piece-meal approach up to this point, and no one is really sure where “downtown” Indian Trail is—because there isn’t one!
Unfortunately, our downtown development project was slated to be finished somewhere around this October 2009, on the 40+ acres that sits across from our town hall property. Due to the climate of the council at the time—as has been typical for years in Indian Trail—this project was delayed and delayed, requiring traffic study after traffic study, with no end ever in sight. A research MD (who had graduated from Sun Valley High School years ago and wanted to do something great within his hometown) had planned to open his Research & Development facility in our new downtown area, to begin production of his new medical invention. He planned to bring dozens of high-paying, white collar jobs to Indian Trail; and complementarily following him into our new downtown was a local community college nursing school, as well as other similarly-themed business. Talk about the beginning of economic development!
But alas, the green-light on breaking ground was delayed again and again with no end in sight, until finally, the doctor had no choice but to go elsewhere, saying he could wait no longer due to Indian Trail’s lack of commitment to the project. Paralysis by analysis, and not putting a vision into action and making things happen, seems to be the trend. Now we are once again left with an unsightly, barren field of weeds that sits untouched and robbed of its eminent possibilities—and no downtown. Now that very same land is up for sale…and who knows who will buy it and what will be built upon it? Maybe another storage facility and a Burger King, or maybe a lackluster strip mall full of nail salons? What a shame…
With that being said, yes, we do need a downtown as a place for the residents in this community to congregate and be proud of; a place that is done right, top-notch. I believe that a new town park/community greens adjacent to our downtown is a vital part of our future as well. Providing a place where our residents can come out of their subdivisions and mingle together will instill a community spirit that is vital to any town, while providing entertainment and respite for all of our citizens, of all ages. A thoughtfully designed “Indian Trail Park on the Greens” with a nearby downtown would serve as a community anchor and allow for regular community events, festivals, concerts on the green, and more!
It’s time to retire Indian Trail Elementary and the Town Hall plot of grass as our “exclusive” places for community events. With 25,000+ residents—it is time!
8. If taxes are escalating in your community, what, if anything, should be done about them?
Here in Indian Trail, we currently enjoy one of the lowest tax rates around. I am a fiscal conservative and believe in less waste, small government, and being business friendly, and in seeking ways to generate other sources of revenue other than relying disproportionately on taxing our homeowners. If we are not business-friendly and do not seek to actively recruit new business (not to mention to stop turning first-rate businesses away, as has happened when our downtown project fizzled), then this town is choosing to place the burden on our residents through payment of their property taxes. I have a big problem with such an attitude, especially in the name of conservatism and growth-control. For a town our size, Indian Trail has one of the lowest tax rates around. We are currently at 14.5 cents.
9. How do you plan to attract more commercial/retail business to your community?
First of all, we need to consider our present businesses that are here in Indian Trail and find out from them what we can do to help them to be successful. If our present business owners do not feel that we are business-friendly, how on earth do we suppose we can convince new business to come to Indian Trail? In addition, we must let businesses know that we would love for them to come to our town—that they are welcome here. We have already driven off some incredible businesses that were set to open in our new downtown on Indian Trail Road (which has since fizzled), and we cannot let that happen again. We have a highly educated workforce here in Indian Trail that needs to be promoted, as well as a perfect suburban location just minutes from a thriving and energetic uptown. We need to determine what incentives Indian Trail can offer to businesses, and we need to have a professional person committed to commercial business generation promote our town…but of course, we’ve got some work ahead of us to get our town up to where it needs to be in that regard. Changing the personality of the council to one of a “vision in action” is what this is going to take, and to remove the attitude of paralysis by analysis is imperative. I believe strongly that we must create a position for an Economic Development professional to focus aggressively on recruiting business & industry (thus commercial tax generation and job creation) and who can share their expertise and insight with our council and planning board/department to best achieve the goal of fostering such a business-attracting climate.
10. What action(s) need to be taken to resolve the county’s current lack of adequate water and sewer capacity?
Being that this is mostly an issue to be addressed at the county level, we need to work to get creative, innovative, problem-solving commissioners onto the board of commissioners. As far as a lack of sewer in Indian Trail specifically, we may consider placing timelines on projects that have been awarded sewer capacity but have shown no signs of intended ground-breaking, freeing up permits for projects that are ready to go. Additionally, we might look into private enterprise for sewer such as is being done more and more around the country, and which is anticipated on being done in a community in Weddington. If a subdivision can take care of their own privatized sewer treatment on premise, then why can’t commercial development get some sort of tax credit if they were willing, if it was economically feasible for them to do the same? It is something to look into anyway.
11. Please provide some background about you, including where you live and how long you’ve lived in your community, what you do for a living, your education, information about your family and community involvement, and how you like to spend your spare time.
I am 41 years old and a working mother of three (ages 18, 16, and 11). I relocated from Boston, Massachusetts almost 7 years ago and have been living in Indian Trail since that time. My background is in the medical field, graduating with a B.S. degree from the University of Massachusetts Boston with high honors, summa cum laude, and followed up with graduate studies in physiology, pharmacology, etc. Prior to moving to Indian Trail, I worked in medical sales helping neurologists, neurosurgeons, and pain clinics with medical device therapies for their patients. In addition, I was the healthcare educator in Boston’s Chinatown where I developed and presented healthcare seminars to healthcare staff and the local community.
After moving to Indian Trail, I decided to make the change from the medical field to real estate sales, given the real estate market was an exciting venture at the time. I worked for two large companies here in the Charlotte area, doing much of my business in Indian Trail. I have since opened my own real estate brokerage firm, Charlotte Market Real Estate LLC, based in here in Indian Trail.
I like to spend my spare time helping to make a difference in my community. I have been a regular attendee at town council meetings for almost two years now and enjoy being immersed in the life-blood of the issues that face our town. As a homeowner, business owner, and real estate agent for other homeowners in Indian Trail, keeping abreast of what is going on in town at the government level is vital. I hear on a regular basis the reasons why people move into Indian Trail, as well as why they move out. Property values are largely in part determined by the character and reputation of a town, and I feel that Indian Trail is not keeping up the way many of our surrounding communities are, and that many of our business owners have been at a disadvantage on a number of levels. I worked closely with a small group of Indian Trail residents at the grass-roots citizen level to create the change necessary to bring beer/wine/mixed drinks referendums to Indian Trail, because I believe in the voters’ right to choose. In addition, our businesses need to be able to compete with others that are located just over the town lines in Matthews and Monroe, etc.
Activities I enjoy are drawing, painting and sculpting. I love art museums, the theater, and the symphony. Learning about people and seeing the differences and similarities as they relate to where we have come from and what brought us all to Indian Trail is exciting. Being from Boston, I have a great appreciation for the preservation of historical buildings and sites, great food, and cultural opportunities. I would love to work with others in town to highlight and preserve what little is left standing in Indian Trail.