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Murphy – Nine people were named to an advisory committee that aims to identify and solve challenges in Cherokee County.
The Board of Commissioners rejected a proposal by District 4 Commissioner Dan Eichenbaum to increase the number of members on the board and target specific areas of expertise. His proposal lost on a 2-3 vote.
Then, on a 3-2 vote, the board on Feb. 20 approved nine people identified by District 5 Commissioner Jan Griggs in a motion to the board. “I want to get it moving,” District 3 Commissioner Ben Adams said.
The Needs & Solutions Advisory (NASA) Committee appointees are:
- Margaret Ackiss, a Murphy resident who works for AT&T in business development and IoT.
- Kevin Carter, a Murphy resident and Cherokee County fire marshal.
- Phoebe Donahue, a Murphy resident who owns and manages license plate offices in Murphy and Franklin.
- Mark Kephart, a Cherokee County resident and military retiree.
- Chastity Ledford, an Andrews resident who is a professional hair stylist and member of the Andrews ABC Board of Directors.
- Sue Lynn Ledford, a Murphy resident and executive director of Four Square Community Action.
- Philip St. John, a Murphy resident and founder and CEO of Genuity Group, LLC.
- Mark Stiles, a Murphy resident who is self-employed in the car wash business.
- Ben Wilson, a Murphy resident who is director at Mercer.
Eichenbaum sought to increase the number of committee seats and specify areas of expertise, including education, medicine, farming, real estate, outdoor recreation, chamber of commerce and others. He said appointing too many people with the same skillsets would lead to skewed results.
Board Chair Cal Stiles favored sticking with nine members, following an earlier public comment by Jack Simons of Brasstown, who said the productivity of a group is inversely proportionate to the number of people in the group.
“Nine is tough enough,” he said.
Eichenbaum said the county should specify areas of expertise, look at the available applicants and advertise for more applications to ensure all areas of expertise be filled.
“What’s the rush?” he said.
Stiles said previous committees had good applicants who gave good advice. Griggs added that the applications the county received for the NASA Committee represented a diverse cross section of applicants.