Questionnaire Responses – David Luther

1. Please share your overall professional and personal background and explain why you are running for seat on the Watauga County Board of Commissioners.

I’m a Deep Gap volunteer firefighter and EMT, Army veteran, member of nonprofit and town boards, and new father. Professionally, I’m a marketing director for a financial technology company, where I manage complex projects, multimillion-dollar budgets, and cross-functional teams where accountability is measured in outcomes, not intentions.

Being a progressive has always meant wanting to build a county that works for everyone, not just the people with the most influence or deepest pockets. Being a father just makes it more urgent. My focus is simple: Use the tools the county already has, set measurable goals, and deliver results instead of vague promises and studies that go nowhere.

I’m running because Watauga has real problems we keep studying instead of fixing: housing stability, childcare capacity, workforce retention, and income inequality. People can’t afford to live here, and small businesses rely on low wages subsidized by student loans. We’re at risk of turning into a community full of second homes, students living in poverty, and uncontrollable traffic from workers commuting from beyond the county.

A one-bedroom “affordable housing” unit is $1,500 a month, while the pre-tax median wage from 25 to 65 years old is between $50,000 and $55,000 a year. The county’s own childcare study documents a 579-seat shortage for children from birth to five and 1,672 additional after-school seats needed — and it costs about $10,800 a year. Our school superintendent said teacher retention and declining classroom enrollment are their key challenges, directly related to the affordability challenges facing public servants and families. The number one issue for members of the Chamber of Commerce is worker retention and recruitment.

The county commission has authority to act on these issues. Authority it hasn’t used.

Here’s the political reality: Whoever wins this primary will face a Republican majority on the board. Democrats need a commissioner who can get things done from the minority — building coalitions, finding common ground on workforce issues, and making the case publicly when the majority won’t act. But first, we need a candidate who can win the general election. I can do both. I’m not running to be in opposition; I’m running to solve problems. That’s a message that resonates beyond party lines.

Priorities I’ll push immediately:

• Minimum Housing Code. Place a county minimum housing ordinance on the agenda and move it to a recorded vote, with clear standards, enforcement capacity, and due process, to protect tenants from unsafe living conditions.
• Childcare as infrastructure. Fund a seats+workforce+facilities package tied to the documented gaps, with quarterly public reporting so progress of the children served, status of the workforce, and increase in facilities is measurable.
• Retention supplements and school improvements. Treat teacher and first responder supplements as a retention strategy with targets and public reporting.

2. Candidates for County Commissioner seats this year are running to represent specific voter districts. How do you plan to bring a different and important perspective to the County Commission for your district?

District 2 includes most of Boone and parts of Deep Gap. I live here, I serve here, and I know what growth looks like when it hits roads, response times, and housing costs. I’ll bring an operator’s mindset: I’ve managed cross-functional teams and significant budgets, and I’m used to setting goals, publishing them, and being judged on outcomes.

I also help manage the books and operations of my father’s small business raising chickens, and my MBA work has sharpened how I think about finance, operations, and organizational decision-making. The private sector doesn’t always map onto local government, but “accountability” shouldn’t be a slogan for either — it’s whether the work got done and whether it moved the numbers.

I serve on the Hospitality House board of directors. That means I don’t just see reports about housing affordability — I see the human cost when housing becomes an investment rather than a human necessity. I see how quickly a family can fall from “stable” to “stuck,” and how hard it is to climb back out when rents rise faster than wages.

Most importantly, I bring lived experience. I know economic insecurity: parents worried about bills growing up, joining the military because college was otherwise unaffordable, working hourly jobs with injuries because I couldn’t afford treatment or miss the hours. I’ve had landlords raise my rent dramatically and sell my rental out from under me.

I grew up experiencing most of the challenges people in our county face today. When commissioners discuss housing costs or workforce retention, I’m not reading about abstractions. I’ve lived them.

Deliverables I’ll bring to the job:

• A public “scoreboard” approach. A set of quarterly updates showing measurable targets: housing habitability enforcement, childcare seats stabilized and added, response-time impacts from growth.
• A culture shift from “we discussed it” to “we voted on it,” so residents know where every commissioner stands, with plain language agendas published before meetings and outcomes published after.

3. If you could eliminate or substantially reduce one line item in Watauga County’s budget, what would it be and why?

I would reduce the recurring $100,000/year capital improvement set-aside — $100,000 a year for six years — for “Law Enforcement Center Future Expansion” by $50,000 and allocate existing and future funds to a Watauga County Sheriff’s Office (WCSO) needs assessment. I’d redirect that $50,000 to crisis intervention programs that reduce arrests.

I refuse to accept that the only solution to more arrests is “more jail.” There are hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars set aside for an unplanned and unjustified project, while small investments in crisis intervention today can produce outsized improvements in public safety tomorrow.

Our Sheriff shares that view. I toured the WCSO building and detention center with Sheriff Hagaman to understand their needs. He told me his priorities are interventions addressing substance use and mental health that drive recidivism, along with maintaining and improving the existing facility. My proposal aligns with what the Sheriff is actually asking for: partnering with local agencies, organizations, and treatment providers to keep crises from becoming arrests or ER visits, while also making modest, practical upgrades to the current facility.

I would redirect that $50,000 into measurable mental health and substance use crisis response programs that reduce repeat calls and let deputies focus on crime and public safety — not functioning as the default mental health system. The LEC should only be expanded as needed, earned with a defined scope, cost estimate, operating-cost impact, and an alternatives analysis that includes prevention and diversion. That’s fiscal responsibility: spending taxpayer dollars where they have the greatest impact, matching the right responder to the right incident, and investing in stability and follow-up that reduces repeat 911 calls.

4. If elected, you will serve as part of the minority party on the Board. Please identify two decisions in which you would have voted differently from the current all Republican Board and explain why.

1. The November 2025 “Ordinance to Regulate Solicitation.” The current Board adopted this ordinance, and I would have voted “no” as written. Not because the public safety element isn’t real, but because government must be careful when it regulates speech in public spaces.

If the goal is safety, the policy should be narrowly tailored to actions that threaten safety, like harassment, intimidation, blocking access, following, and aggression. And it should be paired with a clear, humane response strategy for people in crisis — not a broad approach that risks being more punitive than effective.

1. The FY 2025–26 budget priorities. There’s too little housing stability capacity for the scale of the problem. The Board adopted a budget in June 2025 with a net total of $136.9 million. Meanwhile, the Capital Improvement Program shows Workforce Housing funded at $50,000, the same level as Commerce Park improvements.

I’m not arguing against economic development. I’m arguing that we’re undercapitalizing the basics that make the economy work: stable housing, safe rentals, and the capacity to enforce minimum standards. This is where “we care about working families” either becomes a budget choice or stays a talking point.

Deliverables:

• On solicitation: A revised ordinance drafted around objective safety behaviors (time/place/manner, conduct-focused), with clear enforcement standards and due process. A parallel plan so deputies and outreach partners can route people to help when the issue is a personal crisis, not crime. A published one-page public guide: what’s prohibited, what isn’t, and how to report concerns.
• On housing: A budget amendment that scales housing stability capacity. Not a token line item, but enforcement capacity plus a real investment strategy. Measurable targets in the budget narrative (complaint response time, cases resolved, units brought into compliance). Annual public reporting so housing investment isn’t “trust us”— it’s “here’s what changed.”

5. If elected in November, please identify two or more issues you will commit to placing on the Board’s agenda within the first few months of taking office and for which you will commit to motion for a full vote of the Board.

 Because childcare and the tax distribution review are addressed elsewhere in my responses, here are two other objectives.

1. Adopt a county Minimum Housing Code to keep renters safe. Within 90 days, I will place a county minimum housing code on the agenda and push it to a recorded vote. North Carolina law explicitly authorizes local governments to adopt minimum housing codes to address dwellings unfit for human habitation, with a defined enforcement structure in the general statutes.

This is an ordinance, not a zoning policy, designed to guarantee basic dignity and protect tenants from predatory landlords. By requiring improvements before condemnation, an MHC keeps housing units in the market and mitigates price increases. This is a “do the job we were elected to do” issue. When a home is dangerous, residents need a local enforcement path that’s clear, consistent, and fair while keeping those housing units from spiraling into disrepair.

1. A retention-and-readiness package for the workforce that keeps Watauga running. My second commitment focuses on the people we can’t afford to lose: teachers, EMS, and first responders who are being priced out of the county, and sometimes into Tennessee.

The county can’t claim to support families while ignoring the staffing and retention realities that determine response times and classroom stability. This is practical progressivism, using local tools to solve local problems in a way that benefits the whole community.

Deliverables:

• Minimum Housing Code: Draft ordinance with clear minimum standards and due process steps. Implementation plan: designate the required enforcement role, set up complaint intake, inspection workflow (staff or contract), and an appeals process. A public-facing dashboard showing cases opened and closed, average time to resolution, outcomes, and repeat-offender tracking.
• Retention package: A supplement strategy with clear targets: vacancy rate goals, turnover goals, and a transparent method for reviewing supplements annually. A “growth stress test” report showing what growth is doing to EMS/fire response capacity and what investments keep pace. Quarterly public reporting so voters can see whether retention and readiness are improving, not just whether budgets were approved.

6. High impact County housing developments like the Cottages of Boone and, more recently, The Retreat at Boone are choosing to dig wells and on-site septic systems to provide water and sewer for their developments instead of annexing and connecting to Boone’s water and sewer infrastructure. What action, if any, do you believe the Board of Commissioners should consider to regulate similar high impact housing development strategies in the County?

Developments like the Cottages of Boone and The Retreat choosing wells and on-site septic over municipal connection represents a strategy to avoid annexation requirements and the accountability that comes with them. These development strategies also allow developers to capture profits while externalizing costs. Municipal water and sewer connections include impact fees that help fund infrastructure. By avoiding these connections, developments benefit from proximity to Boone’s amenities without contributing to the systems that make the area desirable.

High-density septic systems in our geology have significant failure risks, and when these fail, who bears the cost? Often it falls to future homeowners, the county, or creates environmental hazards affecting neighboring properties. The Cottages has spilled wastewater five times, demonstrating exactly what happens when high-density developments operate without adequate oversight. Commissioners have not responded with any policy to this, and now we’re dealing with it again. Also, these developments often target the student rental and second-home markets rather than workforce housing needs. They extract value from the community without addressing — and often worsening — the housing affordability crisis facing year-round residents.

Septic permitting and oversight in Watauga runs through AppHealthCare’s Environmental Health program under state public health law. The county’s role isn’t to rewrite state rules, it’s to use the tools we do control like development conditions where legally available, coordination with AppHealthCare, monitoring expectations, and financial assurances so the public isn’t left holding the bag.

Deliverables:

• Where county development approvals make it possible, require enforceable long-term maintenance plans, third-party engineering review, and financial assurance that’s proportional to density.
• Formalize coordination between county planning/inspections and AppHealthCare Environmental Health for high-density on-site wastewater proposals.
• Push for transparency, like public reporting and notification protocols when spills occur and when corrective actions are completed.

7. Do you support or oppose the County’s distribution of sales tax revenue to the County municipalities based on an “ad valorem” versus “per capita” formula?  Please explain. If you support changing the distribution to the “per capita” formula, do you commit to putting a motion in front of the Board of Commissioners to change it?

Yes. I support revisiting sales tax distribution with a serious, public analysis and putting a motion before the board for a vote.

We generate most of the sales tax in Districts 1 and 2, but a disproportionate amount of that revenue goes to sparsely populated areas with expensive homes and costly views.

Some historical context: The move from per capita to ad valorem distribution was instituted by a Republican board in 2013 seeking to curry favor with rural residents at the expense of municipalities where most sales occur. Previous Democratic boards had opportunities to address this inequity but didn’t. That failure shouldn’t continue.

This impacts how we fund services equitably by contribution and need, rather than tipping the balance towards areas with the most expensive homes and the fewest residents. Changing the distribution method from per capita (number of residents) to ad valorem (property tax value) was challenged in the courts. But the policy questions remain, and the decision is in the hands of commissioners. Does the current formula serve residents fairly?

A per capita approach better aligns revenue with people served; ad valorem ties it to tax base. Public safety is a clear example. Fire and EMS protection shouldn’t be weighted by property values alone, but by the number of people and calls those services protect and respond to. This is especially important when we consider that most sales taxes are generated in Boone, where roughly a third of the property is owned by App State and thus exempt from property taxes.

But if we change the formula, we should do it responsibly, complete with phased implementation, service-impact analysis for each municipality, and a clear goal of equity and transparency rather than political winners and losers.

Deliverables:

• Publish a plain-language analysis of the impacts of ad valorem vs. per capita, including service demand, not just tax base.
• Consider transition options (including phased implementation) and hold a recorded vote.

8. Would you support or oppose a comprehensive land-use plan to guide County development, even without zoning, to include recommended locations for workforce housing, environmental protections, and/or public facilities? Please explain.

Yes. Watauga needs a comprehensive land-use plan, even if the county doesn’t adopt full zoning, to protect our community’s people and property values from external extraction. It’s our last line of defense against outside interests who will do anything to the land we cherish in order to turn a profit at the community’s expense.

This is about protecting residents from outside developers running amok in the county, and it’s been done here before. Watauga County already has the “Citizens’ Plan for Watauga,” and the county has corridor and gateway planning examples, including a Deep Gap gateway strategy. The issue isn’t whether planning is possible, it’s whether we keep it current and tie it to actual decisions.

We’re not discussing creating an HOA for the county or telling people where they can park their project cars and tractors. We’re seeking predictability: Where workforce housing makes sense, which areas have environmental sensitivity, where infrastructure can support growth. The current case-by-case approach frustrates residents and invites inconsistent decisions.

State law explicitly authorizes comprehensive land-use plans and describes their purpose: Guiding the present and future physical, social, and economic development of the jurisdiction. If we want growth to be orderly and fair — and we want infrastructure like schools, EMS coverage, roads, and water quality to keep up — we need a plan that’s practical, mapped, and connected to capital strategy.

Deliverables:

• Update and operationalize the county’s land-use planning: maps, priority areas, constraints (slope/watersheds), and a clear “what goes where and why.”
• Tie the plan to budgeting. Capital priorities should match the plan’s growth assumptions, not lag five years behind.
• Make it usable. A plan residents can actually read and that staff can apply consistently, not a shelf document.

9. According to a recent study, Watauga County is approximately 1600 slots short of available childcare openings in local childcare centers. Would you support or oppose a county-funded childcare program and/or creating a county-funded subsidy program? Please explain.

Yes. Childcare is economic infrastructure and a key component of quality of life, and I strongly support county investment.

The county childcare study documents the scale of the gap: 579 additional licensed childcare seats needed (birth to 5) and 1,672 after-school seats. It also shows the affordability pressure on families — median monthly cost around $900 — and the workforce fragility on the provider side, with average childcare worker pay around $30,600.

Consider the math facing working mothers here. Median earnings for women with a bachelor’s degree in Watauga County are $37,900 before taxes. At $900 per month ($10,800 per year), childcare costs nearly 30% of that income before taxes, transportation, or hidden costs. For many families, the question isn’t whether they can afford to stay home — it’s whether they can afford to work at all.

Additionally, we should focus on expanding afterschool care, or “wraparound care,” that closes the gap between when schools let out and when the workday ends. The school day was crafted around an assumption that mothers wouldn’t work, and a county program should be built like infrastructure: targeted, measurable, and designed to expand capacity while stabilizing the diverse workforce that provides it.

Deliverables:

• A three-part package:
  • Targeted family assistance to make existing slots affordable
  • Provider stabilization through wage and retention supports tied to staffing
  • Facility/expansion grants to add seats.
• Quarterly public reporting that outlines seats added, providers stabilized, families served. We need to measure it to manage it, so this doesn’t disappear into a line item.

10. What ideas do you propose to bring to the table to commit the County’s support for sustainability and conservation protection of Watauga’s waterways in undeveloped areas of the County?

Protecting waterways is protecting drinking water, property values, and the outdoor economy that draws people to Watauga County.

This isn’t just environmental values — it’s basic risk management. High-density wastewater issues can and do affect water quality; we’ve seen repeated wastewater spill reporting connected to The Cottages of Boone, underscoring why oversight and accountability matter.

State law allows and expects local governments to plan for growth, including coordinating development patterns with environmental constraints. The county has existing planning foundations (like the Citizens’ Plan) it can build from.

Deliverables:

• Prioritize watershed-protective planning — buffers, steep slope considerations, runoff impacts — in the county’s land-use planning and capital strategy.
• Fund monitoring and early-warning work with partners so problems are caught early, more economic than cleanup.
• For high-density on-site wastewater proposals, require strong coordination with AppHealthCare Environmental Health and push enforceable monitoring and maintenance expectations where legally available in county approvals.