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As the senior member, mayor pro-tem and the longest-serving woman ever on the Davidson Town Board, Margo Williams is
seeking her eighth term. Besides her 14 years on the board, she brings a long history of community and public service, at her church, with arts groups and with Davidson Housing Coalition, where she’s the president.
She said each term since 1995 she has asked herself if she still has the time and commitment to continue serving. “I still have the passion for the work, which is what it requires. Even this year, there are so many things that we have in front of us, that might not have been on our horizon 10 years ago,” she said.
“I also feel like our board needs a person with some institutional memory and history. There’s nothing that substitutes for having had a seat at the table for 14 years,” Ms. Williams said.
In recent years, she has led the town’s efforts to make affordable housing a requirement for developers of new residential projects. To date, few other towns in North Carolina have passed such requirements.
During the most recent term, she chaired a two-town committee, with representatives from Mooresville, that attempted to hammer out an agreement to control boating and environmental damage on Lake Davidson. With growth continuing around the small lake, she led a series of meetings that resulted in a draft agreement. Davidson’s Town Board has endorsed the agreement. Mooresville has yet to bring it up for a vote.
She helped lead efforts to create a Davidson Public Art Commission, and now is the board’s representative to the group.
She is the only incumbent Town Board member running who voted for the town’s purchase with Mooresville of the local cable system. “When we bought it,” she said, “nobody was able to predict what was going to happen with the economy.”
The town must watch the finances carefully so it doesn’t become a liability, Ms. Williams said. But she said the arguments for ownership have not changed in the past two years: Owning the system gives the town a powerful tool to recruit and keep businesses, she said.
“This gives us such a leap forward in attracting industry and businesses to our community, which will then help our residential tax base not have to support all of our services,” she said.
If she’s re-elected she sees roads, affordable housing, connectivity, developing a multi-modal transportation system, and preserving trees and other natural assets all as important issues in the coming term. And she’d like to add one more issue to the local agenda: health. She’d like to see Davidson become a “laboratory” for a new health study that could help better understand how planning affects health.
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