Bill Sharp eyes controlled development, growth
In the May 24 Republican primary contest for the chairmanship of the Putnam County Board of Commissioners, District 3 Commissioner Bill Sharp believes the county government’s priorities and policies should lean toward “controlled development.”
“If you want to say anything about me, you can say I am pro-development,” Sharp said in a telephone interview. “But I like an organized development, a controlled development.”
He believes such investments in time, energy and funding would provide the best pathway, not only to more jobs and stable property taxes, but also to a larger tax digest and the sales taxes that fund the bulk of the services the county provides.
“We need to expand,” he said.
Noting the 300 new water customers last year in the unincorporated part of the county, he said, “I am not against the city, but the potential (for expansion) is for the county.”
This vision can be seen flowing out of his interests and life experiences.
Sharp grew up on a family farm in south central Kentucky about five miles from the Tennessee line, milking a couple of cows and seated on a tractor by age nine. His mother churned butter, and her churn sits here today in an Old School History Museum exhibit.
The farm lay near Pleasant View, Kentucky, to be exact, and eventually in the path of the new Interstate 75, where land purchases provided the capital to expand the farm into a 300-head beef cattle operation.
Sharp went to Cumberland College and then on to the University of Tennessee, initially aiming toward becoming a doctor. However, his bent for chemistry, math and physics also pulled him toward engineering, and his early career included stops with DuPont, Fisher Scientific (Spartanburg, S.C.), and Wyandotte Chemical (Michigan) before shifting more toward management and sales.
His last stop before an early retirement put the Sharps at Lake Oconee in 1996 came as international business development officer for the Henkel Corp., with offices in Atlanta (and with a lot of flights, mainly to Mexico and Central and South America, but also to many other parts of the world.)
“I moved here to practice retirement,” he comments drily, but it did not last long. He first got “fired up” for local service opportunities through the chamber of commerce’s Leadership Putnam program.
“I just wanted to help and learn, and I’ve been a community activist more and more,” Sharp said.
He served as an election manager and then chaired the Putnam Development Authority for the better part of a decade, where he notes working with five or six new companies at the former Horton Homes properties, keeping the Interfor mill in Putnam and the move of Alto Scientific from California to the Rock Eagle Technology Park.
“The No. 1 responsibility of the commission is managing the income,” he said. “I am very conservative with the way I work with the people’s money, and I have worked to keep them informed,” he said.
His second responsibility for the commission is maintaining the roads, noting this month’s contract for the $2 million, eight-mile, resurfacing of Pea Ridge Road from TSPLOST funds, with Harmony and Old Phoenix roads next on the list.