Moore County commissioner slams neighboring Lee County
Tom Adams has a job not many others want. He’s in his first term as a Moore county commissioner and appears to be trying really hard to push someone into taking that job from him.
Adams has made some incredibly uninformed public pronouncements about county water and other policy areas. So far, the other commissioners on the board have sat him in a corner and isolated him while they handle the serious stuff.
Despite being in the corner, Adams does manage to occasionally stick his head up and say something memorable. At a recent commissioners meeting about farmland development, Adams got quoted in the media uttering this particular gem:
“We want to avoid looking like Lee County.”
Oh? Does he mean THE Lee County that just got awarded a BILLION-dollar investment from Caterpillar?
Apparently, Tom’s out-of-the-loop status in Carthage has given him plenty of time to work on other more trivial projects.
Adams and his sidekick state Rep. Maze O’Neal Jackson have teamed up on quite a bit of political mischief. They worked together to extend Larry Caddell‘s reign on the Sandhills Community College board.
The dynamic duo also teamed up to recruit the mayor of Robbins to run for an open county commissioner seat. They sold their candidate to their cocktail friends in Southern Pines & Pinehurst as some kind of financial master.
Adams & Jackson did a pretty good job of keeping the financial troubles in Robbins under the radar until after the election. Robbins’s finances are in a mess, and the town has been reprimanded by the state. Their man presided over the whole thing.
But Adams & Jackson got their man promoted to the big leagues in Carthage. So, at the end of the year, Adams will have someone else to sit in the corner with him.
Lonely, no more.
I read this Daily Haymaker article concerning Commissioner Tom Adams, Rep. Neal Jackson, and Larry Caddell’s continued service on the Sandhills Community College Board of Trustees.
I want to add some firsthand context concerning Larry Caddell’s reappointment, because I personally opposed it.
My opposition was not based on personalities or political alliances. Caddell had already served on the Sandhills board for decades. Public records in 2024 described him as having served on the board for approximately 36 years.
During that long tenure, the Sandhills Board of Trustees was also involved in serious controversies concerning transparency and compliance with North Carolina’s Open Meetings Law.
In 2023, public questions were raised about meetings being held at Forest Creek Country Club, a gated community; alleged board business and voting being conducted through email; meeting notices and minutes; and the practice of destroying recordings after minutes were prepared.
These were not simply rumors. The issues were discussed publicly before the Moore County Board of Education and reported by local media.
There was another reason I opposed his reappointment.
I was told directly that one justification for keeping Caddell on the Sandhills board was that he could help bring in funding needed for the Innovative High School located at Sandhills.
That explanation bothered me then, and it still does.
Appointments to a public governing board should be based on qualifications, accountability, judgment, and the best interests of the institution – not on the belief that a particular political connection might help obtain government funding.
After decades of service and after significant controversy involving the governance and transparency of that board, I believed it was time for new representation.
So when the Haymaker says Tom Adams and Neal Jackson “worked together to extend Larry Caddell’s reign,” there is another side to that story.
Some of us opposed that reappointment for substantive reasons.
I did.
And I would make the same decision again.
Commissioner Adams won’t impress anyone by casting aspersions at his neighboring county. Here in the Sandhills and Southern edge of the Triangle, each of the counties has benefitted (and suffered) from varying kinds of development over the years. Because of its closer proximity to the Raleigh metro area, Lee County has been targeted as a bedroom community for the Triangle workforce. Unfortunately, a lack of foresight by the City of Sanford, coupled with dim-witted legislators who allowed the City to perform predatory annexation, produced non-contiguous residential developments that have diminished the once-rural nature of Lee County. Perhaps that was what Mr. Adams was trying to say in cautioning Moore County about over-development.
To their credit, Lee County’s (Republican) County Commissioners and the local economic alliance have intelligently engineered a top-notch suite of industrial parks and zones, and they have attracted enormous industrial development projects that are greatly improving the tax base of the county. No other small county in the state has enjoyed the degree and quality of industrial growth that Lee County has enjoyed since 2013. Moreover, that growth has been in highly lucrative business channels- namely BioTech, Healthcare, and Advanced Manufacturing. Moore County leaders would be heralded if they could match that kind of non-residential growth.
For retirees and golfers, there is no match to the rural ambiance and course quality available in Moore County. But for working families, Lee County offers a MUCH more desirable and hospitable arrangement for living, working and playing, plus a much shorter commute to even higher paying jobs in the Triangle. Either way, there is suitable place to reside for virtually every family in this region. Moore County doesn’t have to “look” like Lee County, and it should be wary of high-density housing that developers love to exploit. Similarly, Lee County need not seek to look or act like Moore County, given its unique proximity to the Triangle and its need to grow an industrial-heavy tax base.