The Franklin County Board of Supervisors will have only one new face after residents reelected incumbents Mike Carter and Nick Mitchell for the two contested seats.
For the third supervisor seat on the ballot, in the Boone District, J. Mike Meredith ran unopposed for his first term.
Carter led challenger Billy Ferguson by about 3 percentage points in the Rocky Mount District as of Tuesday night.
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Unofficial results from the Virginia Department of Elections show Carter receiving 51.14%, or 1,282 votes, and Ferguson receiving 48%, or 1,203 votes.
These results are incomplete — the count includes early votes, Election Day votes and some mail-in absentee ballots, but not mail-in ballots that have yet to be processed or provisional ballots such as those from people who registered and voted on Tuesday.
Mitchell will continue to serve as the Snow Creek District supervisor after defeating Shawn Davis with about 60% of the vote.
Carter, who was first elected to the board in 2017, ran this year seeking his third term. His tenure on the board began by ousting longtime supervisor Charles Wagner and continued when he was reelected in an uncontested race in 2021.
Ferguson, a retired public safety employee, ran a close race against him.
Carter, who owned a small business in Franklin County for over 30 years, has said that he wants to prevent increases in the tax rates for county residents.
“If I’m reelected, I will promise the constituents I will work the hardest to hold that tax level now,” he said during a podcast debate with Ferguson earlier this year.
He also supports a plan to renovate a vacant industrial park property in Rocky Mount into a campus housing the school district’s new career and technical education center, a 911 call center and an emergency training center.
Carter said this plan is cheaper than new construction for the CTE center, and that it will not create any tax increases for residents.
Ferguson opposed this plan, saying that he had safety concerns about placing a school facility in an industrial park with other nonschool employees. He also questioned the sense of locating emergency services in the same building as a school facility.
The Snow Creek District seat was the other contested race for the county board.
This will be Nick Mitchell’s first full term after winning a six-candidate special election in 2022 to fill the seat of Leland Mitchell, who died during his fifth term on the board.
Nick Mitchell is a full-time farmer and rancher who had a previous career in the private sector. Davis, his challenger, works as a disaster restoration coordinator and said he’s always been interested in local government.
Mitchell said he’s learned the importance of collaboration since he’s been on the board. He was new to politics when he won his seat three years ago.
He said he’s worked with others during his term on several projects in his district, like converting the Snow Creek emergency management services from a volunteer organization into an operation with paid employees.
The community raised $80,000 for that project, Mitchell said in an interview earlier this year.
“And through diplomacy and working together with other supervisors, I was able to get them $100,000 of county funds,” he said.
Economic development was a major talking point for each of the candidates.
Mitchell said that economic development in the Snow Creek district should be focused on becoming a destination for outdoor enthusiasts, rather than on finding new sites for business or industry.
“In our district, we really appreciate our open space, our rural character and really opening everybody’s eyes that there’s more to development than just filling up a business park,” he said.
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