THE WO M EN’S IS S U E
Karen Howard the commissioner
T
he top two stories on the top of Karen Howard’s recent Facebook timeline do not, at first glance, have much in common. The first you might expect from a Chatham County commissioner: a report on an ongoing dispute in Siler City between residents of a trailer park and a major chicken processor that wants to build a new factory on the site. The second post could be a travel ad: a tropical beach surrounded by white cliffs, palm trees and turquoise ocean. The story links to an online petition from the Bahamas, where local activists want to prevent a resort development on an historic, pristine stretch of coastline on the island of Eleuthera. For Karen, who grew up in the Bahamas through middle school (her father’s family is from Eleuthera), the dispute in Siler City and the petition from the island strike the same chord. The parallels, she says, helped her connect with long-time Chatham residents over the past two years as the Board of Commissioners developed the county’s new Comprehensive Plan, which will guide county planners for the next 25 years. Before adopting the plan in November, the board held 18 months of town hall and community meetings to hear from residents. “When you sit down and you’re talking to people, I can say I came from a place where everybody knew everybody,” Karen says. “We face the same challenges. The Bahamas [less than 200 miles from Miami] is right off the coast of this giant that’s gradually creeping in. How do we preserve our cultural identity?” Some of the most productive listening sessions, she says, came in rural pockets of the county like Bonlee and Bear Creek, where residents want to preserve Chatham’s rural identity. “For a lot of these people, their goal is not to commute to Wake County and make a lot more money,” she says. “For a lot of them, it’s quality of life and it’s Chathamspecific. What are we doing that’s making the Moncures survive and thrive, the Goldstons survive and thrive?” Karen came to Chatham in 2006 from New Jersey, where she practiced law for more than a decade. “We kept looking around Chapel Hill, and I kept coming back to Chatham,” she says. A mother of six, she spent most of her time looking at schools. As she waited for a tour of North Chatham Elementary – the only school she visited where the principal gave her a tour – she watched a school secretary call out to kids by name, and ask them about their home life. “She’d say, ‘How’s your puppy?’” Karen remembers. Just as she would describe the Bahamas, the moment made her realize that Chatham was “a place where everybody knows everybody.” - MW
42
Chatham Magazine
April/May 2018