Editor’s Note: Yesterday, we ran part one of the community forum column by Surry County Board of Commissioners Chairman Craig Hunter. In that part, he addressed one of the reasons he and the other board members ran for public office — because they care about the community and its resident, and they feel they each have something to bring to the table in terms of advancing the community’s future.

Today, he addresses mores specifically what the board is doing for the county.

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Okay so you care-what are you doing? The short answer is absolutely every decision the county commissioners have made and every financial allocation we have made and every project we have tackled has been to help Surry County families survive and have hope and help dreams come true.

When the commissioners aggressively started working to improve our circumstances, we identified four to five critical areas that would need to be improved to give us even a chance at recruiting and luring new industries (and retain our existing ones) and jobs to Surry County. Those four to five areas have been the underlying theme of the commissioners efforts the past seven years.

Those are:

1) Facilitate adequate training and re-education opportunities for our adult workforce to prove to prospective industries and businesses that Surry County would be a good place to open up a new business and that finding good employees will not be a problem.

Our county was tagged as being uneducated due to a glaring but true statistic — 33 percent of our adult population (that is our worker base) did not even have a high school diploma. To address this, the commissioners had to put in place measures to re-train our displaced and unemployed workforce, and hence the Workforce Development Center in Mount Airy was created.

The Commissioners also needed to continue support for our three K-12 school systems and bring their facilities and technology capacities up to the 21st Century. Over the past seven years the Commissioners have spent and/or allocated close to $50 million in new school construction initiatives to help directly address improving the educational attainment of our citizens.

2) Keep the local tax burdens on businesses and residents as low as possible but at the same time provide those public services expected to be in place and adequately staffed and equipped to do the very best job possible.

In 2002 the local property tax rate was 63 cents per $100 of assessed value. Today it is 58 cents per $100. The Commissioners believe a lower local tax burden balanced with excellent public services is crucial to bringing in new and retaining existing jobs.

3) Help our cities and towns expand their water and sewer services to areas surrounding their corporate limits. The results being two-fold: More water and sewer customers, and public utilities being available in more areas of the county for businesses and industries.

The commissioners have worked very hard to expand and extend public utilities across several communities. This will continue for many years and should reap rewards as these utilities come on line.

4) More support for marketing efforts and staffing of the Surry County Economic Development Partnership, the lead marketing agency for recruitment efforts in Surry County. In addition, better communications and flow of information when working with a business prospect, was needed.

The commissioners increased funding for the partnerships and also engaged a new assistant county manager for economic development and tourism to help the entire industrial and business recruitment process.

5) County commissioners felt it was important to work transparently and work to gain Surry County citizen’s confidence in county government and work to maintain credibility within county government as we moved into tough times and would need to make tough decisions.

The commissioners felt more communications and a better flow of information to the masses would and could help re-gain and retain credibility. The commissioners published a multi-page annual report to the citizens and published it in all the local news outlets. Our county Web site is constantly updated and is a great resource for our citizens and taxpayers.

In summary, our county citizens deserve the best and most compassionate leadership possible. I believe our citizens are the most responsible and hardest working folks in the state. I was elected to lead and leadership can be lonely and most of the time, unpopular. Still, we serve because we care and our belief in our communities and belief that our citizens may bend but they will not break, keeps us leaders focused on how to help. In times of stress and when challenges are abundant, a person’s true character shines through. I have never been more proud of the Surry County spirit and drive to succeed.

Craig Hunter is the chairman of the Surry County Board of Commissioners, and represents the Mount Airy District on the board.