Connie Wessner ElectConnie.com Residence: McConnell neighborhood Age: 46 Family: husband Dave Wessner, one child Career: Curriculum coordinator, service learning programs at Community School of Davidson; owner The Davidson Group Inc., a technology and communications firm in Davidson, 1999-2002; managing partner Them Creative People Inc., a communications firm in Washington, D.C. (1995-99); also held previous positions in communications and public policy research in Washington, Boston and elsewhere. Education: Franklin & Marshall University graduate 1985; M.A. Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers University, 1986; coursework toward PhD in public policy, UNC-Charlotte, 2006-7. Lived in Davidson: 11 years Civic involvement: Davidson Planning Board and Board of Adjustment (2008-9); vice president/board member, Davidson Elementary School PTA (2007-8); board member(1998-present) and vice president (2001-4), Davidson Housing Coalition; Davidson Walks & Rolls committee member; former Davidson Lands Conservancy board member; beyond Davidson, previously involved in organizations working on health care, United Way, infant mortality, substance abuse and other issues.

When Connie Wessner and her husband Dave, a biology professor at Davidson College, moved to Davidson 11 years ago, she wondered how to get involved in the town.

“I came from big cities, and I was a little bit afraid to move here in the first place,” she said. But as someone who had been involved in nonprofit work and public policy elsewhere, she dove in. Almost immediately she had a small business up and running and joined the board of the Davidson Housing Coalition.

Other service followed on the Davidson Lands Conservancy board, on the Davidson Elementary School PTA, and other efforts. Then last year, she joined the Planning Board, and has been helping, along with a collection of citizen study groups, to develop a new Comprehensive Plan, a vision for the town.

The Comprehensive Plan is the town’s first big-picture look in more than a decade at where it wants to go. And Ms. Wessner has a thoughtful approach both to developing the plan, and to what she hopes to accomplish on the board.

The key issue is how to manage with inevitable growth, and Ms. Wessner doesn’t see it in merely terms of bricks and mortar. She likes to look at less tangible issues.

“We’ve spent a good deal of time and made a good effort at addressing growth from the standpoint of the physical environment, and the natural environment, and that’s not to say there’s not more there. But I do believe we need to focus more deliberately … on the social environment, and how we relate to one another as neighbors,” she said.

Ms. Wessner brings a practical point of view as well. Speaking like someone with a background in policy and analysis, she said she sees four main issues ahead for the Town Board:

• Rebalancing the tax base to reduce the reliance on residential property taxes.
• The cable system. “That’s not to rethink the decision to own the cable system,” she said. Now that we own it,“We need to make sure it’s managed as well as it can and performs as well as it can.”
• Roads and traffic, particularly looking at pedestrian and bicycle safety, and pushing for new public transit options, “so we’re not dealing with just more individual cars on the road.”
• The Comprehensive Plan, which she said is “meant to provide some guidance and guidelines for the Town Board, in making future decisions about growth. … It addresses a wide variety of aspects of growth, including the environment, sustainability, community character, community development.” She hopes the plan leads to a “significant conversation” about those issues and what the town will become.

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