During the debate, Holleman, who served as mayor of Holly Springs in 1983 for 17 years before resigning, said the town needs to slow its growth. A resident of Holly Springs since 1941 and “most of the time since then,” he said he would review the budget and give residents a tax reduction, find money to build more roads and acquire land for parks, and work on relieving overcrowded schools.
“The town is growing too fast,” Holleman said. “We need to slow down and take a deep breath.” Sears, in his eighth year in office as town mayor and a town resident since 1995, said he also did not want to see the town get too big.
“Ever since I’ve been mayor we’ve said I think we want to be a big small town, not a small big town,” Sears said.
Sears said he did not think Holly Springs is growing too quickly and said he did not see Holly Springs growing larger than 50,000 people because the town is landlocked between other towns. If the nuclear power plant adds reactors, the lake level will increase by 20 feet, he said. He said in 2015-2020 the town might have about 40,000 residents.
“We don’t have any place to go,” he said, noting that a moratorium on growth was illegal. Holleman said the town needs roads in place before development.
“We’ve got to get the road structure worked out,” he said, citing improvements needed on Avent Ferry and Piney-Grove Wilbon roads, on the nuclear evacuation route, and on speeding up traffic to Apex/US1.
Holleman said he would put pressure on people to get the roads built.
“As mayor of this town, you have a responsibility to meet the needs of this town as far as transportation, and the only way you’re going to do that is spend a lot of time working with people … and stay in their faces,” Holleman said.
Sears, currently a member of a multi-county transportation advisory committee, said the town does not have jurisdiction over state roads and said the state Department of Transportation was $2.5 billion in the red; getting the state to spend money improving local roads was not a matter of not trying, he said. “They don’t have the money,” Sears said. “If you want to keep up with DOT, walk backwards.”
Sears said slowing growth would not resolve traffic congestion and overcrowded schools. He said other towns surrounding Holly Springs send much of the traffic down town roads, and he said that those municipalities would continue to grow. He said 55 percent of students in Holly Springs schools come from town; 45 percent are bussed in.
“So the way I would handle the school problem is quit bussing our kids all over the county,” he said. Providing more commercial growth in Holly Springs also was touched on during the debate. Holleman said he wanted children and grandchildren to return to town to live after they were grown so that grandparents could see them more often.
“I want to see the people here enjoy what we worked hard to get started, and I don’t want to see it get too big,” Holleman said. “I want to see this town stay a little small because I like smaller towns.” Sears said attracting Novartis to Holly Springs was a “huge accomplishment.” He also said that residential growth drives commercial growth.
“Why do you think we have three shopping centers going on the 55 bypass?” Sears asked. “Could it possibly be rooftops? Oh yes, it is. … Without the growth that we’ve had, we wouldn’t have the kind of commercial development we have today.”
Holleman said he would reduce taxes and that he could cut $1-$2 million from the town’s $22.6 million budget.
Sears said, “If we lower the taxes right now today, then I would ask whoever says that, ‘Tell me which services you want to take out. Is it police? Is it fire?’ ... In order to lower something you’ve got to take something out.”
Holleman said the town gave employees salary increases the last two years while “we haven’t given the tax payers a nickel.” He said he would look at car allowances and the number of employees working for the town.
“Every dollar counts this day and time,” he said. “If all this community development is paying all these taxes, where’s our reduction?”
Sears said residential taxes are being used to build the town “from the inside out,” citing the new community center and road improvement projects already underway. Sears said a tax rebate was illegal, but the town is looking at reducing some fees.
Holleman said he was in favor of the new community center but believed “the financing could have been handled a little differently.” Holleman also said the town needs to acquire land for parks now. He said he served on the town’s parks advisory committee for a year but resigned because he “got so frustrated because nobody would buy land. … I left because we are way behind in supplying athletic fields.”
Sears said he thought overall the parks system was “pretty darn good. Do we have some work to do? Of course. … We’re working on it.”
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