H. Nathan Robinson wants better schools, housing, commercial taxes for Orange County
H. Nathan Robinson isn’t a Republican, but he’s running as one in the District 2 county commissioners race to represent Hillsborough and rural Orange County.
In 2022, Robinson unsuccessfully tried running as an unaffiliated candidate, but collecting signatures from 4% of the county’s voters to get on the ballot was “an impossible task,” he said. Last year, the Republican Party reached out to him, he said.
“I think over 40% of people are unaffiliated in North Carolina, and I wish that there were a way for unaffiliated people to hold office,” Robinson said. “I think that would give freedom to everybody.”
On Nov. 5, he will challenge District 2 Commissioner Phyllis Portie-Ascott, a real estate investor active in several civic organizations who was appointed in 2023 after Renee Price was elected to N.C. House District 50.
Robinson, a contractor and owner of Landmark Management Properties, pastor of Life Point Church, and member of the Orange County Board of Adjustment, said living in South Africa in the early 2000s shaped his values.
There, Robinson and his wife managed a three-year research program to reduce HIV among teenagers. Robinson, who worked with thousands of public school teachers, is now helping to build a South African preschool, while on the board of a Kenyan boarding school.
“We saw what happens when a country doesn’t have a social safety net, like welfare or Section 8 [housing vouchers],” Robinson said, but “you just can’t dump money on people.”
“There’s an inherent value that people find in doing good work, and if people are just getting paid to do nothing, it affects them as individuals and humans, and then they never want to excel, because there’s not a motivation to,” he said.
Here are excerpts from The News & Observer’s conversation with Robinson.
What is your top priority if elected?
One of the projects would create a network of roads that have a shoulder on one side. I know five or six people who have been hit by cars [while cycling], and I understand the bikers want to ride bikes, but it just doesn’t make sense to have big cars and bikes trying to use the same thing without any space or anywhere to go.
[N&O: The Hillsborough Christian Academy founder also wants to improve education, which he said can help with affordable housing.]
The only way you’re going to get affordable housing is ... either materials have to be cheaper, which we can’t really modify that very much, or the cost of labor has to be cheaper. I would implement a trades program to train up young people in the plumbing, electrical, HVAC trades. It would take more than one year, but it would increase the supply of people, which would directly decrease the price of housing (and) improve entrepreneurship.
Has the county done enough to support education?
I would define enough as being the top education system in the state. Are we there yet? No.
I believe that we should invest money in teachers [but] you don’t need $300 million (from a school construction bond) to have the best education system in North Carolina. I think it’s a waste of money to build these massive facilities when your education isn’t tops.
It’s fundamentally unfair that Chapel Hill-Carrboro has its own separate school district. ... If we really believe in equity, let’s combine all the best that [is] Chapel Hill-Carrboro and Orange County. Immediately, your administration costs are going to go down a lot.
What is the county’s role in affordable housing?
I know the costs of construction have escalated rapidly. You have to reduce the cost … unless you adopt a county-run program similar to Habitat for Humanity, where there’s a buyback program [that limits the cost to buy a home]. An affordable land trust-type solution is tough, because who administers that, and there are a lot of market reasons why developers and property owners don’t want that.
True affordable housing would [also]) include the ability for people to more easily build [accessory dwelling units] in the backyard. I know that there’s been changes on that, but you’re only allowed one, and I think for guys in the rural areas, if the minimum size of a house is an acre, you can usually put more than just one ADU if you are allowed to.
Is there a maximum property tax rate? Would you support a tax cut?
I think that money has to come from somewhere in order to be used for priorities. Orange County — with the best of intentions to not ... turn into a concrete jungle — has also lost [investment] like the Buc-ee’s. ... From a tax rate [perspective], the only way you’re going to be able to cover increasing cost is you have to have a bigger tax base.
On Interstate 85 and Interstate 40, I would do everything to develop those intersections, to increase the income from the commercial tax base. I don’t think that the tax rates should be any higher than they are now.
As people get older and on fixed incomes, there should be an exemption, where their tax rates actually are 50% of what the normal is as they reach Social Security age.
What would you say to voters?
[N&O: Robinson took issue with how Orange County commissioners are elected. District 1 voters (Chapel Hill-Carrboro) and District 2 voters (the rest of the county) vote in their individual primaries, but vote for candidates in both districts in the general election. Very few commissioners live in northern Orange County, which is more conservative.
I think that there’s an entire northern part of the county that is important. I have two nonprofits. I’ve started four different businesses … and I’ve been active in my church. I bring a perspective that is agnostic to what’s happened so far, but that says, let’s just make sure that where we’re doing is not just continuing the system and make sure there’s representation for the whole county.
This story was originally published October 22, 2024 at 8:27 AM with the headline "H. Nathan Robinson wants better schools, housing, commercial taxes for Orange County."
