Mayor of Mooresville: Chris Carney

On this episode of “Simplifying Life Through Technology,” Mark sits down with the new Mayor of Mooresville Chris Carney, Jamie Gatton of The Mooresville Scoop, and Brad Kalmikoff of Crazy Cool Collectibles.

"We found a church, a Harris Teeter, wine, and good school systems, and that's how we decided Mooresville was our place."

Typically on our podcast, we usually dive into all things technology, but today, we're taking a special detour to explore our local community of Mooresville. Join us as we shine a spotlight on local government, showcasing the impact and roles of key figures like the Mayor of Mooresville.

In this special episode, we're joined by our newly appointed Mayor Chris Carney, who shares his inspiring journey from an unexpected town board meeting to the helm of local government. Also joining us is Jamie Gatton of The Mooresville Scoop and Brad Kalmikoff Together, we discuss the nitty-gritty of town planning, strategic governance, and Carney's ambitious vision for the future of Mooresville, all while highlighting the power of engaged leadership and community values.

Whether you're a resident, a business owner, or simply curious about local government, this episode is a must-listen. Tune in to discover the unique story of Mayor Carney's path, his goals for Mooresville, and the exciting future he envisions for our vibrant community.

Topics Discussed:

• Mayor’s life and journey to office
• Roles of a local mayor
• Incidents where the mayor can and will help
• Why the mayor decided to get into politics
• Mayor’s goals for Mooresville
• The future of Mooresville

Join us as we explore the enduring spirit of Mooresville and the transformative power of engaged leadership.

Stay up to date in Mooresville:

https://www.mooresvillenc.gov/index.php

To learn more about Mayor Carney:

https://www.mooresvillenc.gov/government/town_board/mayor_bio.php

To learn more about Jamie Gatton and The Mooresville Scoop:

https://mooresvillescoop.com/

To learn more about Brad Kalmikoff and Crazy Cool Collectibles:

https://crazycoolcollectibles.com/

Check out our Instagram to see our recent projects:

https://www.instagram.com/soundvisionllc/

To learn more about SoundVision:

https://www.svavnc.com/

To listen to more “Simplifying Life Through Technology” podcasts:

https://open.spotify.com/show/7fIkJuLZ7lZ8xbafz62muQ

Contact Us Today:

(704) 696-2792 | Info@svavnc.com | soundvisionlkn.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

In the podcast studio today. We've got Moresville's new mayor, Chris Carney, me Mark from Sound Vision and Jamie Gatton from the Moresville scoop, and, God knows, we've got Brad Kalmikov. How is everybody doing?

Speaker 2: 0:17

Doing. Great Thanks for having us.

Speaker 1: 0:18

Oh man, this is exciting, jamie, yeah, doing good. We've done a number of podcasts, and the majority of them are about kind of our industry and technology and whatnot. We have had a number of guests in here too, but we've never had in fact, we've had a general in here, which is cool. We've actually two generals in here.

Speaker 3: 0:35

Military generals yes.

Speaker 1: 0:37

Yes, one was in charge of all the ground troops in, I think, in Afghanistan for a while, yeah, but we have not had any political figures. So here we go. This one's going to get a ton of ratings. Yeah, no pressure. So, chris, tell us about you. What are you doing here today? Just kind of give us the high level of being the mayor of Moorsville and your life.

Speaker 2: 1:00

Well, we're about two months in. Started December 4th, we just came off of having a really great retreat, so they did a retreat back in the fall. We've had a kind of turnover on the board. We had a couple of commissioners as well as the mayor. We felt it was good to get everybody back in the room talk about where we're going this year, the next 12 months, kind of set up a 12 month plan, a two year plan and then a four to five year plan, and make sure that whatever we committed to staff because I think that's the problem that people don't realize is that electives have these great ideas in their head and they've got to tell everybody about it and then they wonder why nobody did what they want them to do.

Speaker 1: 1:34

How did you even get involved in the politics or becoming the mayor, how that happened?

Speaker 2: 1:38

That's a great question. Back in early 2000s I moved to Moorsville in 97 with my wife Francie. We've been dating since high school and we got married Lyndon and Charlotte like everybody does for a couple of years and realize, you know, we weren't raising kids in this place. It's crazy. Then we looked up the interstates in both directions, at like Denver and Moorsville so funny I tell people we loved them both, school systems and different things we looked at.

Speaker 2: 1:59

But really with the deciding factors at the time, lincoln County was dry and my wife's like honey. I got to have a glass of wine sometimes I'm not going to be yeah, and she said so. We found a church, a Harris teeter and wine and good school system and that's how we decided at Moorsville is our place. So we moved to 97, you know 25, 26 year olds and I was happy, and still am happy, to live in Moorsville and one night I just decided to go to a town board meeting, for no other reason. I just felt like if you're going to live here, she at least knows what's going on. I wasn't.

Speaker 2: 2:26

Yeah, I wasn't unhappy. I thought, oh, let's just see what's going on. Showed up in, this sweet little elderly black woman had a piece of property that used to be able to be a like low impact commercial, like, yeah, doc's office, lawyer's office, stuff, like that dental office. And when they did some changes, somehow she lost that opportunity, and so she was just simply asking hey, can I go back to what I used to be? I'd like to go ahead and, I think, lease it to some dentist or something. And so the town board at the time said oh well, you know, let us look at it. We'll come back next month and let the playing department work on it. Came back the next month, let's find out what happened. I go back next month to see what happens.

Speaker 1: 3:00

So you literally are following the story?

Speaker 2: 3:02

Yeah, I was like oh, yeah, see how this is a sweet woman and it seems like what she's asked was very practical, right, and they weren't quite ready so they put her off another month. So now I'm really engaged, I gotta come back now. So now I'm been to three meetings and so I'm going to the third meeting and they stand up and basically the town board won't even give a motion and it fails for lack of a motion. And at the time Al Jones was the mayor, really nice man, and he kept saying you know, I need a motion or else this is going to fail. So on the way out I noticed the people who had been opposed to it because they were worried she might do a restaurant or something. I went to one of the former electeds and patted them on the knee on the way by and said thanks for all your help. So I'd realized she had gotten torpedoed from behind the scenes at the time and I went out and found my $5. It cost $5 a run, filed $5 and ran for office.

Speaker 1: 3:49

So I've got a funny story, because you were talking about how you got up here.

Speaker 1: 3:52

And when I first moved here in 93, I had very similar as a schools, but my boss at the time was a fraternity brother of the current mayor, bill Thunberg. Oh yeah, so I literally lived in Raleigh most of my life and I had never heard of Morseville. And the schools were brought us up here and my boss put us in touch and so the first person I ever met was Billy, went into Alexander Zachary, shout out Bill and met him and he was super nice, he was two time mayor.

Speaker 1: 4:19

right, he was a good man.

Speaker 2: 4:20

Yeah, so he and I went on the board at the same time. Oh cool, so he was my mayor. To this day, I still call him mayor when I see him. He's a great man, really smart, really steady. He's still very involved, especially transportation traffic in our area. Sits on lots of boards and committees. Yeah, he's a great man.

Speaker 1: 4:36

Very cool. So you kind of started talking about your experience of the town council and kind of how you got into it. But what does the mayor actually do? That's why we're here, and I'm not trying to make this political.

Speaker 3: 4:48

I honestly do not know. Please, please, don't.

Speaker 1: 4:50

Are there parties at the mayor level Like? Is there a Republican and Democratic like mayor? Or does that start at governor?

Speaker 2: 4:56

I honestly don't know that's a great question and it really depends on where you are. So essentially, there are partisan mayor elections and there's nonpartisan.

Speaker 2: 5:03

We happen to be a nonpartisan, but in this day and age you can't outrun parties, and so I am a Republican since I was 18. And the gentleman who ran against me is an unaffiliated been a long time Democrat but switched to unaffiliated. Our election actually was quite partisan in that way. Yeah, Because you can't hide from the public. They do a little bit of homework, and Sure. So I used to be our state senator, so of course that is a partisan race, and so you do a little bit of homework on me right out of the gate and you see Chris Carney, Republican state senator. So certainly Jamie can tell you this because she's been covering me since I was 33 years old as a new commissioner.

Speaker 2: 5:36

I am very much of we call it kind of a pragmatic Republican. I believe in fiscal responsibility and it's certainly smallest government you can get. I try to stay a little bit out of the social issues. I just don't think there's a lot of place in it. You don't particularly care about that. You want to make sure that I keep your taxes low and keep your community safe and you know some of that other stuff. You just want to go home and get that static away from you, that stuff you watch on CNN and Fox. I mean, you don't really worry about your mayor with that.

Speaker 3: 6:01

That's honestly what drew me in, because I don't do politics and I don't care and I don't think it matters. So I appreciated the fact that I went to go vote because Greg told me to better go vote.

Speaker 3: 6:10

And this guy standing over there with a bunch of people came at me and introduced himself and I was like, oh, you're the person I'm here to vote for and it was very genuine and I didn't feel like I was being sold and that's what I liked, but literally saw the listeners know. It's really the carny thing. It reminds me of carny of Sada and I love those tacos. And that's what sold me.

Speaker 2: 6:29

I want to let go of that because I think it was really powerful that if you went to the polls, it was interesting, no matter whether it was a Democrat school board member running or Republican school board member running. Whenever people walked up, it didn't matter whether it was the moms for liberty or it was this group. It was really touching that when people walk and say he should have voted for a mayor, everyone went. You need to vote for Chris Carny, which is probably why the numbers came out so well, which that says a lot for the fact of I think, no matter what walk of life you're in, you appreciate somebody who comes to work every day.

Speaker 2: 6:56

Really, sleeves up and tries to get stuff done for you. So to your point, I think the mayor's coming all shapes and sizes. Man, I am very much of kind of a political geek in the fact that I enjoy how government runs and I think that so many times town board members and mayors fall into the trap of saying, well, we have staff and we have a manager, let's let them do it, and I basically just sit up here and take votes. I very much think that you got to roll your sleeves up, get right in the middle of it. Our job, I always tell people, is the citizens vote for us and we're their mouthpiece within government. We have to go in and speak on their behalf, and sometimes we got to protect our own citizens from government. To be fair, josh's farm market was a prime example.

Speaker 1: 7:33

Yeah, we had that down here to talk about.

Speaker 2: 7:35

Yeah, that got way off the rails, and even people who were on the other side of the issue who thought maybe Josh had done something wrong. Once you explain to them when small business become the target of government, we should all be afraid of that, and I've had nobody come back to me and I'll go. I agree with you, and when government fights, it fights unfair because it has nobody to control it. It has unending pockets of money. We have lawyers for days. We have staff that can literally knit pick you to death.

Speaker 2: 8:01

You know we have code enforcement go by your place every day and that's just not the kind of town we are, and so, essentially, I think that that's really where I've been able to come in and bring a little bit of that more global way of looking at it. Even with the way we do roads and knowing how we go get money from Raleigh and stuff like that. We had, as you know, a project that had been kind of dead in the water the east-west connector and you know you can't take enough credit from the commissioners never stopped working on it, staff never stopped working on it, so we were able to go in and push that thing through and I think that empowering people to do their job, but also encouraging them to do their job, I think is something that's really important from the mayor's office.

Speaker 1: 8:39

So you mentioned goals and you were just talking about the east-west connector and you just said you're two months in. Is that correct?

Speaker 2: 8:45

Yep, december 4th, on my first day, December 4th.

Speaker 1: 8:47

So what are your goals Like? What are the things that you're hoping to accomplish in your term?

Speaker 2: 8:52

That's a great question. I think in the short term, the first 12 months, the first things that were really important was getting us out of that hamster wheel that was like a Josh's market and some of that stuff that we were just nonstop fighting amongst each other. The former town board members had been fighting for about a year and if you come to a meeting now I think Jamie said she was talking to somebody and they made the great point that it's refreshing to see how much everybody's getting along, because we're just working together and not getting on the same job.

Speaker 3: 9:17

Yeah, that's right, pushing in the same direction.

Speaker 2: 9:19

And we have such an issue with roads currently that having us have a plan for how we're going to move forward on our road systems, and forever. People always try to blame the state, and that's a disingenuous argument. The state doesn't put target on 150 and Walmart on 150. And you know curb cuts every 15, 20 feet. We do that, and so if you talk to the state engineers they'll tell you you don't put all those curb cuts. 150 works just fine. Right, it's when you start stopping traffic to turn in everywhere that if such a break. So essentially we have to take accountability for that.

Speaker 2: 9:50

We've taken some money out of our budget as well to work on some road improvements and I think it's going to make a big difference. So every year the goal will be to give you four or five projects and show you hey, this year we're going to fix these, next year we're going to fix these. And then that way, you see, you know, yeah, it's a painting, orange barrels, but you'll least you realize we've heard what you've said traffic's a problem. And then on top of that you'll have the you know two or three big projects of states working on Williamson Road, broad School Road, highway 150. So you know we're going to make a lot of progress that way and I'll tell you what probably the best thing is.

Speaker 2: 10:22

I took the list. There's a hundred items brought to the town board last year to look at, some of which they were never going to do, and we just had to have an honest dialogue of like, hey, if we're going to have 15, 20 items or 15 or 20 items, that we're going to get done. And that's what we just came out of our retreat and that list we walked away and we have it funded, ready to go, and staff knows when they go moving forward that if we didn't talk about it, we're not going to talk about it all this year. Right, quit wasting people's time on subject matters that we're never going to get done.

Speaker 3: 10:50

I'm different and I'd like to hear that. I'd like to hear that it's not like an HOA meeting, which it's blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Nothing happens and everyone hates each other. So, because that's what people assume, it's like the same thing. So that is good to hear. Josh's farmers market is a great example. That's all that's been talked about. That's why people wanted to vote for you, because you're for small business and in a blink of an eye now he gets to legally run his business. Imagine that. This is stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life, but because of you, and that's awesome.

Speaker 3: 11:18

It's a collective effort, yeah, but we appreciate it, I'm sure it was, but I'm going to say it's because you don't care what anyone says, so so, to be clear, anybody can go to town.

Speaker 1: 11:25

Meetings Open for anybody. There's no cost. But this list that you've developed, is there a place that folks can see what that list is? Is it prioritized, like one to 15, or how does that?

Speaker 2: 11:39

So you guys are actually getting the first glimpse. Tomorrow is our sit down with the press day and we're going to literally lay out the agenda for the year, so you are actually here first. Yeah, it's one of those media day. Media day. But, is.

Speaker 2: 11:51

TMZ going to be there. So I think that's going to be really the first step is actually having an honest dialogue with the public of here's what we've decided to do with your money so that you know what's coming Things from parking decks downtown to, you know, looking at redoing the baseball field so that we can go. We've had some great attention from outside baseball leagues that want to come here at even very high levels, and so, yeah, more is a hot place. We got a lot going on.

Speaker 3: 12:14

If you didn't know, you do have a retired MLB pitcher by the name of Frank Viola, who lives in Morseville.

Speaker 1: 12:21

Oh, wow, no, I didn't know. Play for the bets, right he?

Speaker 3: 12:22

played for him, that's, his son has become a good friend of mine. We actually played for the White Sox for a little bit, so he's actually the Hickory Crawl Dead's coach.

Speaker 1: 12:32

Oh nice. Yeah so they're played for the twins also from that was taken.

Speaker 3: 12:36

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:36

Because I think that's really important to say for folks that are listening that, at least for me. You know, it's easy to kind of judge, it's easy to kind of call out something and you don't know the facts, and it's also sometimes hard to understand the facts or to actually get facts. You think you know something or you hear something, but there is a place whether it's the town hall, meeting or I'm going to assume, there's a website and we can clearly, we can list this and that will give us accurate information of what's going on, what these projects are, what they cost, where the funding's come from, all that kind of stuff and how to get involved Right.

Speaker 2: 13:12

And how to get involved.

Speaker 3: 13:12

That's real important.

Speaker 2: 13:14

So I will tell you right now that's one of the things we're redoing is the website to have an absolute like where you can hit a particular link. It'll bring you right to all the road projects that are coming and that way, a, you know what's coming. B, if you don't want to drive that area, you won't Right.

Speaker 2: 13:28

You know we're not to go right and we're going to work out to our partners, like the Chamber and others, to go ahead and have that same link on their website. So we're not going to be a passive distributor of information anymore. We're going to try to get it out there to the public. And I think it's going to make a big difference.

Speaker 1: 13:42

Very cool. Okay, last thing before we get out of here, real quick Super Bowl halftime show last night. What do you think? Oh, that's right, brad, you don't know about sports Anybody watch the Super Bowl halftime show last night. Any opinions?

Speaker 3: 13:56

Taylor didn't play is what I know.

Speaker 2: 13:58

I think that it depends on if you love us or not. Am I wrong? What do you think? Are you an usher fan? Mayor, I will tell you that I thought the halftime show was a lot less than the game. I actually watched it for the game.

Speaker 1: 14:13

That game was incredible.

Speaker 2: 14:14

Usher didn't do a lot for me.

Speaker 1: 14:15

I actually asked people about a week ago here. I thought Usher was a rapper. I did not know that he was more R&B.

Speaker 3: 14:23

Yeah, I know, I never listen to him.

Speaker 1: 14:24

No, he's a rapper too. I thought it was very entertaining. I thought the skating thing was cool that was crazy.

Speaker 2: 14:32

I'm like I didn't know. He knew how to wear roller skates and dance.

Speaker 1: 14:36

What the choreography was out of this world.

Speaker 3: 14:39

I would have broke my neck. I am not even lying. That was entertaining. I was eating a three foot sub from Zander's B. Yes you were. I saw that post.

Speaker 1: 14:46

Well, look, this has been very educational. I appreciate all you guys being here. Shout out to Dale Gowling and his son, grant and mayor, thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 3: 14:56

I mean, let's schedule a six months from now a follow up. Chris is like how do I get out of this room?

Speaker 2: 15:01

No, no, that's fantastic.

Speaker 3: 15:04

I'd love to schedule a later follow up.

Speaker 2: 15:05

The sad part is, I think the public will realize that we could have done this for like three hours. We just got started. I mean, there's so many great things to talk about.

Speaker 1: 15:12

Well, we would have loved to have you back in when certain hot things come up. That'd be cool. So again, thank you all very much. We really appreciate it. Thank you, andrew, can you take us out?