Miles Atkins files for mayor

At-large Commissioner Miles Atkins has made official his bid for Mooresville mayor.


He filed earlier today at the Iredell County Board of Elections office in Statesville, according to a press statement released just moments ago by his campaign. 


The filing period for Mooresville's town and school boards opened today. Voters will decide on Mooresville's new mayor during a general election on Nov. 8. Atkins will leave vacant his at-large seat, which is up for election this year. Also up for grabs: The seat of Ward 1 commissioner, currently held by Mitch Abraham, and Ward 2 commissioner, held by Thurman Houston.


Seats on the Mooresville Graded School District Board of Education that are up for election this year include those currently occupied by Sue Wilson, Roger Hyatt and Larry Wilson.

Atkins with son, Liam, at the Iredell County Board of Elections
(Photo courtesy of Atkins' campaign)

Atkins, 48, was first elected as at-large commissioner in November 2007. He has considered a bid for mayor since last fall, and he publicly announced his intentions on March 29.

“In serving the Town of Mooresville as a commissioner for the past four years, it has become abundantly clear we need maturity, experience and commitment to lead Mooresville not just for one term but for several,” says Atkins. “As mayor, I will convert the abundant knowledge I have accumulated since 2007 and chart a specific course for the future of Mooresville, not just for a few years, but for decades to come.”

Here's the rest of today's press release:

With the overall theme of “Vision into Action,” Atkins outlines his three platform planks as follows:

Community: Combine the strengths of 28115 and 28117, guide responsible growth and thoughtful revitalization, promote forward-thinking ideas that enhance citizens’ quality of life and encourage community building through active participation and cooperation.

Economy: Attract diverse and emerging businesses that spur quality job creation, advocate for small business and entrepreneurship and collaborate with all levels of government to address issues and opportunities for new and existing Mooresville businesses.

Government: Push for transparency and accountability, connect citizens and their government, demand fiscal responsibility from town staff and increase effectiveness in town services.

“My wife and I have lived and paid taxes here for the past 14 years, have raised our children here and have made a family commitment to the future of Mooresville,” says Atkins.

Among those 14 years of community leadership, Atkins has led and/or served on the Mooresville Ethics Advisory Committee, Citizens Mass Transit Initiative, United Way of Central Carolinas/Mooresville, United Family Services, Mooresville Historic Preservation Commission and Mooresville Museum, and he graduated from the Mooresville Citizens Academy, Mooresville-South Iredell Chamber of Commerce Leadership Class and the Raleigh-based Institute of Political Leadership. He is an active member of the Rotary Club of Top of the Lake – Mooresville and serves as a senior warden of the vestry at St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church.

A graduate of Auburn University, Atkins is currently working toward his master’s degree in Strategic Leadership from Mountain State University. He and his wife, Kim, live in Mooresville with their daughter Rett, 11, and son Liam, 10. Visit www.milesatkins.com for more information.

Suspended deputy will reimburse county for phone use

Sheriff Phil Redmond allowed an indicted deputy to continue using his county cell phone even after he was suspended because the sheriff didn't anticipate the suspension would last long, according to Iredell County Commissioners.

The deputy, Tommy Adams, was suspended after a state grand jury indicted him in December 2010 for obstruction of justice.

"(Chief Deputy) Rick Dowdle has responded that when Adams was suspended he did not think the suspension would be for an extended period," Commissioner Steve Johnson said in an e-mail to the Report late last week. "Obviously that was not the case."

Commissioner Ken Robertson said it appears to him that the county-funded phone "was basically forgotten."

Meanwhile, over the course of four months, Adams spent thousands of minutes on the cell phone, including calls to his defense attorney and the sheriff's home.

One week after the Report exposed the suspended deputy's continued use of the phone, Iredell commissioners said the county finance department would seek reimbursement – $269.55 – from Adams.

Adams' original charges were much higher - $220.80 in February alone – but the costs were adjusted apparently because he was on the sheriff's shared-minutes plan.

In fact, Adams' charges, even while suspended, were consistently higher than any other deputy with a cell phone, according to the monthly bills.

Robertson said for the most part, the county is not responsible for the sheriff's office. "The sheriff's department operates as a stand alone department, and the sheriff is not under the direct control of the county manager, so there is a very real and significant degree of separation, although we provide their funding," he said. 

"When other elected official(s) are responsible for these departments, the financial accountability and responsibility is through them first," he said. "As a commissioner, I try to allow other office holders the opportunity to fulfill their duties without my routine interference. Anytime commissioners probe into the inner workings of the schools or the sheriff's departments, we walk a fine line between seeking proper accountability, interfering in the operation of departments, and assuming the legal responsibility of other officials who were elected by the voters to actually do the job.

"In the Army," Robertson said, "we would say that it is wise to 'stay in your lane'."

However, he said, "The question of whether it was proper for a suspended employee to continue to have use of a cell phone seems rather apparent, but like with many law enforcement situations, there may have been other factors pertaining to the issue about which I am unaware.

"In this case the cost of the phone service will likely be recovered, and I understand that is being pursued without direct county commissioner intervention," Robertson said.

Commissioner Frank Mitchell said the county will not, on the other hand, try to recuperate what it paid for a newspaper reporter's cell phone over the course of several years. "It appears the sheriff's department willingly let the reporter have use of a phone for emergency management reasons and will not be trying to recoup (the) cost for its use," he said.

Commissioners Marvin Norman and Renee Griffith did not respond to Report questions. 

Truth transcends government-friendly loopholes - every time.

It's been said that we learn something new everyday.

That indeed held true recently when I discovered that the N.C. Public Records Law has a little government-friendly “loophole” that some public employees can use - and are using - to their advantage.

N.C. General Statute Chapter 132 states that public records are, in part, documents “made or received ... in connection with the transaction of public business by any agency of North Carolina government or its subdivisions.”

But as it turns out, government employees' personal business – when conducted on public time and using public equipment – is, in fact, none of our business since it is not conducted “in connection with the transaction of public business.”

This literal interpretation of the law was taken for a spin most recently by the Iredell County Sheriff's Office, which allowed a deputy to mark out hundreds of phone numbers on four months of his county cell-phone bills, because the calls were supposedly “personal.” Adding insult to injury: The deputy, during all four months, was suspended from the sheriff's office after having been indicted by a state grand jury for obstruction of justice.

ICSO Capt. Marty Byers said the deputy, Tommy Adams, was allowed to review the bills, which spanned from December 2010 – the month he was indicted and suspended – to April 21, 2011 and mark through the numbers of personal calls.

Interestingly, about half the numbers on the bills were blacked out, indicating that half the calls were "personal." It would follow, then, that the other half were not personal. So what were they? Professional? While the deputy was suspended? While he awaits trial on obstruction-of-justice charges stemming from an incident that occurred at the sheriff's office?

And why didn't Adams mark out the calls he made to his wife's cell phone or to Sheriff Phil Redmond's personal residence or to Kim Taylor, the attorney representing him against the state's obstruction-of-justice charge?

The public may never see the full picture since government employees can essentially hide certain activities conducted on public time and equipment by suggesting those activities were “personal.”

This should come as a surprise to Mooresville residents, especially after January's troubling revelations that Mayor Chris Montgomery frequently used town e-mail to carry on inappropriate conversations with a woman who is not his wife. What began as a simple attempt to gain information about the town's cable system ended up becoming yet another south-Iredell scandal after a Freedom-of-Information request for the mayor's e-mails revealed dozens of the inappropriate exchanges.

But come to find out, the town could have withheld those particular records from public review since the e-mails were personal and not “made or received in connection with the transaction of public business.” After all, the mayor obviously wasn't conducting town business in the conversations about love and rose petals, even though he was clearly carrying out that personal business using public resources.

Some records, such as personnel records, attorney-client communications, economic incentives and some law-enforcement investigations, are allowed to be kept confidential, per the public records law. Information that could identify confidential police informants is also off-limits, for obvious reasons.

But just because a record contains confidential information does not necessarily mean that the government can withhold the entire record from public inspection. If confidential information is intermingled on a public document, the law states that the government can black out the confidential information while still turning the record over to the public.

Gregory Rodgers, attorney for Smith, Rodgers & Strickland PLLC – a 24-hour legal support line for law enforcement – recently sent a lengthy letter to the Report, justifying the many black marks on the suspended Iredell deputy's phone bill. Rodgers said the hundreds of calls were personal and therefore off-limits for public review. He did not, however, address the fact that all the calls were made while the deputy was suspended.

Frayda Bluestein, professor of public law and government for UNC Chapel Hill's School of Government, also ok'd the actions of the sheriff's office, saying, “records relating to personal, rather than public business, are not subject to access under the public records law.”

Bluestein said North Carolina has no case law to that effect; however, “cases from other states consistently hold that personal communication falls outside the scope of the public records law.”

North Carolina's attorney general has also issued an opinion “which concludes that personal phone calls/numbers can be redacted from a public agency's bill,” Bluestein said.

Similarly, “the state's records retention provisions for email and other records clearly make this distinction, saying that it is the content of the record, not its location or the email system it is made on, that determines whether it is a public record.”

And therein lies the rub, said Amanda Martin, general counsel to the N.C. Press Association: “Because we have always argued it is the content rather than location of a record, we argue that public business conducted on private computers or via private email accounts are public records,” she said. “The flip side of that, though, is this difficulty in getting information about the mis-use of public property, and we are running into that problem left and right lately.

“It has occurred to me that we might need to consider an amendment to the public records law to address this, though I certainly would not want to concede access to truly public business emails that reside on home computers, etc.,” Martin said.

So why did the Town of Mooresville, seemingly without flinching, turn over the mayor's “personal” emails in response to a public records request earlier this year?

Town Attorney Steve Gambill, who released the records, said the decision to do so was made in light of two factors: “First, the town board has made it clear that they are in favor of transparency of records (and certainly within the confines of the law),” Gambill said. “Second, it can be a burdensome task to review each and every e-mail.

“In most cases, I can only review such records to a reasonable point (I do all I can to screen for any matters that are specifically exempted from being made public, for example, personnel records or records pertaining to civil litigation); I then will not release a record that has a specific legal exception from the public records law,” Gambill said. “If it does not have an exception, it is subject to being released.”

Gambill has it right. In addition to granting public access to documents that belong to the public in the first place, the public records law exists to grant the people the power they should have to see how public officials are spending their time on the public's payroll – and how they're using equipment bought and paid for by the people.

Many controversial stories that brought about good, progressive change in Mooresville in the past decade were based first in public documents and could be largely attributed to the press' ability to gain full access to those records. I'm sure, had the government realized nearly a decade ago that it could withhold those documents and be legally justified in doing so, the press would have never been provided many of the records.

Perhaps we would have never been privy to how our former librarian, eventually convicted of embezzlement, used her town credit card to purchase hair color and Slim Fast diet shakes. Because, after all, that Slim Fast wasn't purchased or (I presume) consumed “in connection with the transaction of public business.”

We also may have never been privy to how an engineering firm was taking the town for a ride, having Mooresville taxpayers reimburse company engineers for their purchases of “cowboy cookies,” clothes hangers, chewing gum and expensive Starbucks coffees.

We may have also never been privy to the fact that Mooresville's town manager in 2004, who fired the new librarian supposedly for exceeding a per-diem dinner expense, had repeatedly violated the same town policy himself and had even purchased an alcoholic beverage on the taxpayers' dime.

But surely the public records law cannot be misinterpreted to suggest that public employees can black-out purchases on their town credit-card receipts and justify that by saying the purchases – bought and paid for by tax dollars – were “personal” expenses. Right?

Wrong.

As ridiculous as it sounds, Bluestein called it “an interesting question” and said that while employees may not be able to “successfully hide” those purchases from their public-agency bosses, “it's possible that they could be redacted from a public records request.”

Perhaps the most frightening part of such a scenario is this: Take, for example, the case of the sheriff's deputy. The public-agency boss is the sheriff himself – the same person who clearly allowed the deputy to keep the county-funded phone and use it to call the sheriff himself at his personal residence.

It's like the fox guarding the hen house.

Denying the public the opportunity to see how government officials are spending our money and using our equipment may be legal. But it violates the spirit of the public records law.

Yet, even using the law in such a way, the Iredell County Sheriff's Office walks away with the black eye.

After all, reviewing the phone numbers on Adams' bills may have satisfied a curious craving to see exactly who the deputy didn't want the public to know he was talking to. But the bigger, more interesting story is the fact that the suspended sheriff's deputy was allowed to keep and use his county cell phone in the first place.

This is the same deputy the sheriff hired despite a felony embezzlement charge by a previous employer that was eventually pleaded down to a misdemeanor and then later expunged from Adams' record during an investigation of the deputy's actions by the State Bureau of Investigation (If you enforce the law, are you above the law?).

This is the same deputy the sheriff promoted to detective-sergeant fresh out of rookie school, a practice that is unheard of in the law-enforcement community, according to many police chiefs across the state.

This is the same deputy the sheriff allowed to stay on the job for five years after he took home two weapons that were supposed to be submitted as evidence – the same deputy the sheriff didn't suspend until the eleventh hour when the state handed down its indictment.

This is the same deputy who kept his job at the sheriff's office despite being suspended there five times in four years.

And this is the same deputy the sheriff allowed to rack up hundreds of dollars in cell-phone usage, dumping that cost onto the backs of the many hardworking taxpayers of Iredell County, for four months after the deputy was indicted and suspended. And only after a local resident asked for copies of the deputy's most recent phone bills did the sheriff's office disconnect the phone.

That, indeed, is the bigger story. And there isn't a Sharpie marker big enough in this world to cover it up.

Town of Troutman's parade: as American as apple pie

Independence Day celebrations were plentiful in Iredell County this weekend.

But perhaps the most patriotic, home-grown celebration was in Troutman, where people young and old converged Saturday for the town's annual Independence Celebration Parade.

The flag-lined streets welcomed antique war vehicles, horses, tractors and patriotic floats carrying war veterans, pageant queens and a politician or two. Purple Heart recipients served as the parade's grand marshals.

Here are a few photos from the event:

Suspended? Who cares? Sheriff pays phone bill anyway.

Sheriff Phil Redmond allowed one of his deputies to maintain use of his county-issued cell phone for four months after the deputy was indicted and subsequently suspended from the Iredell County Sheriff's Office, public records reveal.

A state grand jury indicted Tommy Adams for obstruction of justice in December 2010 (Iredell County sheriff's deputy indicted). He was consequently suspended without pay from the sheriff's office. But Adams continued using his county cell phone until April 21, 2011, just three days after a county resident requested copies of the deputy's most recent public cell-phone records.

While suspended, Adams spent several thousand minutes on his county phone, but many of the numbers were blacked out on the bills provided to the Report. Marty Byers, captain of personnel for the sheriff's office, said that's because Adams, even while suspended, was asked to review the bills and mark out calls that were personal in nature.

But not all the calls were blacked out on the records, indicating, per Byers' response, that perhaps Adams was using the phone for “professional” calls as well. It is unclear why he would have been making such calls while being suspended from the sheriff's office.

It is also unclear why Adams did not mark out seemingly personal calls he placed to Kim Taylor, the attorney defending him against the State's obstruction-of-justice charge, or those he placed to his wife's cell phone or to Sheriff Phil Redmond's home.

Byers did not respond when asked if Adams, in addition to his cell phone, was allowed to keep his gun and badge. He also did not respond to why Adams was allowed to continue using his phone for four months after he was suspended and if that is in keeping with N.C. General Statutes and the sheriff's office Standard Operational Procedures.

Deputy County Manager Tracy Jackson said he has no knowledge of a county policy regarding the collection of public equipment from a suspended employee. However, he said, “I think it is logical for the supervisor of a suspended employee to obtain any county-issued property from that employee.” County property such as cell phones, he said, “should be turned in when an employee is suspended and re-issued as appropriate if said employee is re-instated.”

Iredell County's accounting procedure's manual states that “personal telephone calls are occasionally necessary, but they should be limited.” It also states that “department heads, division heads, and elected officials (are) responsible for reviewing and approving the monthly telephone bill … for their departments.”

Jackson said the sheriff's office is expected to abide by any and all policies approved by the Iredell County Board of Commissioners and/or N.C. Law. While the county does not have a formal policy in place, Jackson cited the N.C. Constitution, saying it “provides a definition of 'public purpose' which indicates that public funds be spent for the benefit of the public in general and not just for the benefit of certain individuals or special interests.”

This is the second time in recent months that the sheriff's judgment about county-issued cell phones has been called into question. In March, it was reported here that a long-time crime reporter with the Statesville Record & Landmark, apparently for several years, used a cell phone issued to her by the sheriff's office and paid for by county taxpayers.

Sheriff paid news reporter's cell phone for years

Long-time Statesville Record & Landmark police reporter, Donna Swicegood, apparently for several years used a cell phone issued to her by the Iredell County Sheriff's Office and paid for by county taxpayers.

In a March 5 editorial reacting to Report/Mooresville Weekly questions, R&L Publisher Tim Dearman acknowledged that Swicegood – whose “beat” for 25 years has included county emergencies – was “handed” the phone by a county official “several years ago” but she returned it “a few months ago” because having it “could have been perceived as a conflict of interest."

The phone was issued through the Iredell County Sheriff's Office (ICSO). But the sheriff's chief deputy, Rick Dowdle, did not respond to Report questions about who specifically provided the phone and how long the county paid for it.

Deputy County Manager Tracy Jackson said the county's finance office can't answer those questions because Swicegood's detailed phone records – which are public documents – are accessible only through the ICSO since “the Sheriff's Office maintains the call detail records for cellular phone use by their personnel.”

Iredell's finance department receives only a summary page of the sheriff's office monthly cell-phone bill, which does not include names or numbers associated with issued cell phones. “This protects the Sheriff's deputies and informants by restricting these records from public access,” Jackson said.

A police reporter carrying a cell phone issued by her beat – in this case, the sheriff's office – “represents a clear conflict of interest,” said Kevin Z. Smith, chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists' (SPJ) ethics committee. He said SPJ's code of ethics suggests that journalists should avoid conflicts “to maintain the credibility of the journalist's work and to assure that the public's interests are being met and not those of her sources and the people on her beat.”

Avoiding conflicts of interest, real or perceived, and serving as watchdogs of government are widely-shared values of journalists. Those values are also included in SPJ's code of ethics.

“If she will accept a phone, then what else has she accepted you don't know about and what ground rules have been put in place to accommodate her, or worse, the (sheriff's) department?” Smith asked. “Are they trading a cheap cell phone for coverage?”

Fred Brown, vice chairman for the the SPJ ethics committee, said he could understand a cell phone being issued to a reporter if the phone granted her “special access to sheriff's office communications” or “better inside information on stories.”

However, he said, “no matter what the circumstances, she or her employer should pay the bills for the phone. The free press shouldn't be accepting taxpayer subsidies in that way.”

Jackson said to his knowledge, neither the R&L nor its parent company, Media General, reimbursed the county for Swicegood's use of the phone.

In a Feb. 25 e-mail to the Report, Jackson – who said he had consulted with the ICSO's Dowdle and County Finance Director Susan Blumenstein – said Swicegood was issued a county cell phone because she “is the lead for Crimestoppers in our county and can get critical information to media outlets quickly when a major crime occurs.”

He said Swicegood also “serves as the County's Public Information Officer during disaster situations.”

Dearman, in his March 5 editorial, called that “a rumor” that is “absolutely false.”

He said, however, that Swicegood has served “for many years” on the Iredell-Statesville Crimestoppers board and is “a volunteer member of the Local Emergency Planning Committee as a media representative.”

“Most counties have these types of boards, and many include media representatives,” Dearman wrote. “The staff of this newspaper is very involved in this community because we live here, raise our families here, pay taxes here and vote here.”

But experts in journalism-ethics agree that a reporter representing the same entity she covers for a newspaper is risky business: “There is no parity or equality in the reporting of news to the press when one member of one media outlet is an active member (paid or not) of the police department and works in unison with the police to decide what gets reported, who gets it and when that happens,” said the SPJ's Smith.

Dr. Lois Boynton, associate professor of ethics and public relations at UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Journalism and Mass Communication, agrees: “The competing loyalties can create an ethical conflict - will (Swicegood) cover the sheriff's department objectively if she is considered part of that organization?”

“It's difficult to serve two entities (even when well intentioned) particularly when the news media are to serve as watchdog of government offices, including the sheriff's department,” she said.

Added Smith: “This isn't being a watchdog of government; it's being an obedient police dog. The fact that this doesn't resonate with the reporter or the newspaper is alarming.

“This is a case where, if the reporter can't see the problem and conflict, her editor or publisher needs to step up and say, this relationship with the police department is not in the best interest of our mission of being an independent voice for the public when the government is concerned.”

But neither Dearman nor R&L Editor Dave Ibach responded to two e-mailed questions on March 3 about Swicegood's use of the county-funded cell phone. Instead, two days later, Dearman – also past-president of the N.C. Press Association – defended Swicegood's actions in a R&L editorial titled “Our commitment to integrity” (click document to enlarge):




“Working with us is logical if you want to reach the most people,” he wrote. “The leadership of this newspaper is completely committed to journalistic integrity. We are also committed to Statesville and Iredell County and make no apology for calling Iredell our home.”

Dearman went on to chastise other newspapers, saying: “The easiest path to take is complete noninvolvement in the community – like members of some metro newspapers who sit behind desks a few years and move on to the next town.”

Even while accusing Iredell's deputy manager of perpetuating a rumor when he said Swicegood is the county's public-information officer during disasters, Dearman lauded county officials for believing “they should speak for themselves without the information being filtered through a professional public relations person.”

He went on to praise county commissioners, too: “Iredell Commissioners have never wasted your money to hire professional public relations officials. Instead, they talk directly to the press and save you that expense.”

Protecting sources at any cost is another cornerstone of journalism.

Dearman said the county cell phone was used by Swicegood “to quickly disseminate information from county and city officials – emergency personnel and law enforcement – to the R&L.”

While, according to five months of detailed call records, many of Swicegood's calls were made to or received from various law-enforcement agencies, the county's messaging system and court offices, many other cell numbers, not as easily identifiable, are also listed on the reporter's phone records.

Perhaps those calls were all emergency-related, as Dearman suggested. Or perhaps some of the reporter's sources are vulnerable because their phone numbers, and thus their identities, are displayed on county records open to inspection not only by the sheriff but the public.

Dearman, in his editorial, said despite Swicegood carrying a county-funded cell phone for several years, her “ethics have never been compromised on the job.” In fact, he said, “She has written numerous stories critical of law enforcement – including a few years ago when she exposed a botched drug sale between undercover members of the Iredell County Sheriff's Office and the Statesville Police Department.”

But perhaps just as important as what the R&L has covered is what it hasn't.

In April 2010, the sheriff's office destroyed personal property belonging to Statesville resident Robert Goforth, which the sheriff's office had recovered from several thefts from Goforth's property. The items were supposed to be returned to Goforth, but the sheriff's office instead destroyed the property without a court order (Evidence room error destroys property and raises questions).

Goforth said he approached Swicegood about the situation, but the R&L never published a story about the property being destroyed in violation of state law.

Goforth then approached the Report, where the incident was later documented. Less than 24 hours later, the ICSO hand-delivered Goforth a $3,715 reimbursement check from the county for the destroyed property (Victim receives check, tongue-lashing from sheriff's chief deputy).

But that isn't the only time issues with the sheriff's office evidence-room went largely unreported by the R&L.

In 2008, Swicegood reported on the “multiple layers of safeguards” in the evidence rooms of the sheriff’s office and the Statesville Police Department.

In the article, Sheriff Phil Redmond alluded to an incident involving a deputy who “didn't follow the right procedures in submitting … weapons to the evidence room,” but the article did not elaborate. It also did not report a date for the incident or the name of the deputy who, according to Redmond, had followed “improper procedures in (the) handling of surrendered weapons.”

Two years later – and almost five years after the original incident – the Report published details of what happened, including the deputy's name (If you enforce the law, are you above the law?). Two months after that, a grand jury indicted the deputy for obstructing justice (Iredell County sheriff's deputy indicted).

The deputy, Tommy Adams – who, according to county personnel records, has been suspended from the sheriff's office five times in less than four years – is still employed at the ICSO but has been on unpaid suspension since the December 2010 indictment. (Click on the document below to enlarge:)

A reporter other than Swicegood reported on the indictment for the Statesville Record & Landmark.

The county paid Swicegood's cell-phone bill – about $23 a month – through the Jan. 8, 2011 billing cycle. The last call made from the phone was on Jan. 3. The number has been disconnected.

“The sheriff's office indicated to me that it was Ms. Swicegood’s decision to obtain a new phone and to obtain expanded services such as email,” said Jackson, adding that he is not aware of the county paying for the new phone in part or in whole.

Are you cut out for public service?

Are you tired of sitting on the political sidelines, watching others make decisions about your community, your government and your tax dollar?

Perhaps you're cut out for public service.

An upcoming workshop by North Carolina's Institute of Political Leadership promises to answer your questions about public office and how to effectively campaign.

The workshop, planned for March 17 from 6-9 pm. at the Charles Mack Citizens Center, will focus on the skills needed to run for office, how to formulate and execute a campaign strategy, and how to be an effective public officeholder. Cost is $25 and includes training materials and a light dinner.

This year in Mooresville, the mayor's seat and three commissioners' seats are up for election.

Mayor Chris Montgomery says he will not seek re-election. Commissioner Miles Atkins has announced his plans to run for that seat, which means his at-large seat will be open with no incumbent vying for it.

Seats for wards 1 and 2 - currently occupied by Mitch Abraham and Thurman Houston, respectively - are also up for election this year.

The mayor serves a two-year term, while commissioners serve four years.

Meanwhile, three seats on the Mooresville Graded School District Board of Education - all four-year terms - are also up for re-election.

A primary, if needed, will be held Oct. 11, followed by the general election on Nov. 8.

Other county offices to be elected this year can be found by clicking here.

To reserve seats for the Institute of Political Leadership's March 17 workshop, call the Mooresville-South Iredell Chamber of Commerce at 704-664-3898.