Spotlight On: David Ellis, County Manager, Wake County

Spotlight On: David Ellis, County Manager, Wake County

2022-12-21T12:58:42-05:00December 21st, 2022|Economy, Raleigh-Durham, Spotlight On|

2 min read December 2022 David Ellis, county manager of Wake County, spoke with Invest: and shared his thoughts on the future of the county and its current challenges. He discussed transportation, job development and his hopes for the area. “I believe the future is bright, but I also believe we have work to do,” he said.

What is the state of growth in Wake County?

Growth has not slowed in Wake County. On average, about 62 people are moving to Wake every day. In just the past year, we’ve had 117 new economic development projects, more than 1,500 high-quality jobs created and $126 million in investment. We’ve added Apple, Amgen, Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies and Blue Force Technologies, just to name some of the companies who have chosen to locate here recently. While the global corporations tend to make headlines, 83.5% of businesses here in Wake County are small businesses. Many of these businesses have been open for a while and are doing well. We saw more than 3,000 new small business filings last year, which further illustrates that Wake County offers a climate where businesses of all sizes can achieve success. 

From a budgetary standpoint, COVID-19 exposed some of the disparities in the county. Housing affordability and keeping the tax burden low are two of our biggest concerns at the moment. With the cost of housing continuing to go up, we added new inspector positions to our organization to increase efficiency and move the development process along more quickly. We continue to invest in housing affordability and have taken double-digit vacancy down to about 4%. We’ve also added close to 3,000 affordable units to our stock in the past few years and just launched an affordable housing preservation initiative with several national banks that will use more than $61 million to preserve an estimated 3,170 affordable housing units over the next 15 years. We’ve had a high vacancy rate with our EMS positions, and we’ve raised the salaries for those positions to attract the talent we need to serve our growing community.

What challenges is the market facing?

Housing affordability and transportation access are key challenges that we’re facing; those two go hand in hand. The third challenge is behavioral health. With housing, costs have risen tremendously here in Wake County, so some people are really struggling to save up enough money to purchase a home. As interest rates increase, it’s becoming even more challenging. We’re looking at implementing some homebuyer programs to help assist families in purchasing their first homes.

From a transportation standpoint, when you have so much growth so quickly, your quality of life can be impacted if you can’t get to and from work. To help, we’re working with the transit agencies to increase the number of buses on the roads, launch bus rapid transit routes early next year and develop the first phases of a commuter rail. If we can figure out how to create affordable housing in and around some of these potential train stops, we can help those who may not be able to afford a car get from place to place more easily. 

Regarding behavioral health, we are unfortunately seeing a rise in the number of youth suicides. We’re funding behavioral health urgent care and more psychologists and nurses in our schools, so parents and children have access to appropriate behavioral health services.

Where are you focusing your budget?

We continue to be committed to housing affordability, which I think we’ve done a great job in addressing over the past four or five years since creating a department that’s focused on that important issue. We are also looking at how we recruit and retain employees. We want to make sure our pay is competitive and will help attract the best talent. We’re also constantly improving our benefits program and looking for new ways to support employee wellness, so we can retain the outstanding team working for Wake County. 

How do you see the community changing in the future?

You never want a community that’s stagnant; you want a community that continues to evolve. When you look at the three areas where people are moving to Wake County from, they are Fairfax County, Virginia; Santa Clara, California; and Palm Beach, Florida. One of the things we’ve talked about is when we have hard-to-fill jobs, we should reach out to and recruit from those areas. I think the business community recognizes that there’s a lot of talent here, and they are continuing to come here. 
Wake County is evolving from what I would consider a rural bedroom community to a major metropolitan area. You have to be looking forward, you need to have a vision to manage that change. Our board has started talking about a vision for what we want the county to look like in the next 20 to 30 years. 

What are the benefits of Wake County’s location?

We have a lot of talent here. We have a world-class public school system, and when students graduate, they can choose from a wide array of options such as Shaw University, St. Augustine’s University, William Peace University, NC State University and Wake Tech, which is a tremendous two-year community college. Our education system is what helps us grow talent and attract companies with good-paying jobs. 

You can also get around the county in 15 to 20 minutes. Depending on what you want to do, you can come to Downtown Raleigh and enjoy its more urban feel, or you can go to Knightdale or Wendell where there is more of a rural feel.
Holly Springs, as an example, has added many large life sciences companies lately – all by design. The town had this large swath of land, they knew what kind of businesses they were trying to attract, and they worked hard to actively recruit them to build manufacturing facilities in this life sciences business park. Some of our municipalities are just starting to figure out what type of businesses they want to attract and then what we need from an infrastructure standpoint to attract those types of businesses. I think you’ll start to see more over time as these communities grow, develop and determine what type of community they’d like to be.

What are your goals for the county in the near term?

I believe the future is bright, but I also believe we have work to do. As more and more people come here, we need to make sure that we have ways to move people, not just in and out of the county but around the county. Our county is 827 square miles – it’s very large – so we must plan how to get people from Morrisville to Downtown Raleigh, for example. You can’t put everyone on a commuter rail or on buses. We need a multimodal transportation system that will help get people where they need to go efficiently. I believe we’re in a good position, and we just need to continue to move the plan forward.

For more information, visit: 

https://www.wakegov.com/ 

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