Chatham commissioners unanimously appointed former Chatham County Schools Superintendent Robert Logan in a 3-0 vote on Monday night to fill the Dist. 4 vacancy left by Jim Crawford following his Dec. 31 resignation.
Logan will be sworn in as commissioner at the board’s Feb. 21 meeting.
“I would like to welcome the new commissioner,” Vice Chairperson Franklin Gomez Flores said during his commissioner report. Gomez Flores, the first Latino Chatham commissioner, graduated from Jordan-Matthews High School in 2012.
“He was actually a former superintendent of mine, which is pretty interesting,” Gomez Flores said with a laugh.
The Chatham County Democratic Party’s executive committee “overwhelmingly selected” Logan, CCS Superintendent from 2008-2013, as the party’s recommended replacement at a Jan. 27 meeting out of three candidates, according to executive committee member Randy Voller.
Chatham County Democratic Party Chair Liz Guinan presented Logan as the party’s choice at Monday’s meeting; Chairperson Karen Howard was not present.
Logan serves as senior director for the nonprofit Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) Center’s Eastern Region. In addition to his tenure at CCS, he also formerly served as superintendent at Lee and Asheville City Schools, and as an associate superintendent for N.C. State University’s School of Innovation and Transformation and a trustee for Central Carolina Community College. Logan has served on the board of directors for the Chatham County United Way and the Chatham County Economic Development Corporation.
“My fellow commissioners and I are thrilled to welcome Robert to the Board, and we are grateful that he stepped forward to serve in this important role as Chatham County continues to grow and evolve,” Howard said in county release on Tuesday. “We look forward to working with Robert as he brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, and passion which will serve our Board and community well.”
Crawford recommended Logan at his last board meeting on Dec. 20, and according to Voller, was supported by Chairperson Karen Howard, Pittsboro Mayor-Pro Tem Pamela Baldwin, Pittsboro Commissioner John Bonitz and CCS board member Del Turner by the time of the Jan. 27 party meeting.
Crawford, who confirmed his intended resignation to the News + Record on Dec. 3, stepped away from the Dist. 4 seat he had held since 2014 due to health reasons.
“I felt one of my responsibilities was to find someone to fill the gap that’d I’d be leaving,” Crawford said at the Dec. 20 meeting.
“I feel I can share that person’s name right now just as a general offer to show that we have responsible people willing to serve, and it is Robert Logan, the former superintendent of Chatham County Public Schools,” he told the board. “You don’t necessarily have to follow that, but it seems somebody is there, so hopefully it won’t take you 60 days for you to settle on him. ... He can hit the ground running and is somebody familiar with the gears of the county, having had to work with them for many years, and is known to the public and vice versa.”
Under state law, the board must appoint a new commissioner to fill out the remaining term, and can take or reject the recommendation of the Chatham County Democratic Party. The person must be a registered voter in the same party as the resigning commissioner, and must reside in Dist. 4. Logan meets both requirements; following his swearing in on Feb. 21, he will fill the role until the winning candidate from the 2022 election takes office.
Commissioners previously expressed the desire to appoint a replacement without plans to run for the 2022 seat. Three new Democratic candidates filed for the Dist. 4 before a court order halted the filing period and delayed the primary until May 17.
The board couldn’t fill the vacancy until it actually occurred — so after Dec. 31 — and had 60 days to do so after that point, which was March 2. If the board had not appointed someone in that time period, state law moves appointment authority to the clerk of court, who would have 10 days to fill the vacancy.
After Crawford made his Dec. 20 recommendation of Logan, Commissioners Diana Hales and Karen Howard both thanked Crawford for the recommendation but said they’d like to also consider the candidates suggested by the Chatham Democratic party. Though Howard said she knew Logan well and would be happy if the board landed on him as a replacement, she said she didn’t “want to subvert this process.”
“We have an opportunity for a commissioner to just simply name his replacement,” Dasher said of Logan at the time. “It’s somebody we all know, that we all know that’s more than skilled and capable, and it’s for a period of 10 months in an election year we already know several candidates have filed for.”
Reporter Hannah McClellan can be reached at hannah@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @HannerMcClellan.