Dee Dee Perkins: The Well-Connected, Well-Financed Outsider Candidate for Brevard Mayor
Perkins is a prominent business owner, a former City Council member and a fixture on community boards who doesn't like what she sees in current city leadership.
BREVARD — Dee Dee Perkins has all the makings of an establishment political candidate.
She’s a serial joiner of community boards, an owner of landmark downtown businesses, a 37-year city resident and former Brevard City Council member whose many connections have allowed her to raise far more money than any other candidate — $31,663, according to the most recent finance report.
Yet she’s the one throwing rocks.
The four-way, nonpartisan race to replace longtime Mayor Jimmy Harris already features one high-powered progressive candidate, one advocate of affordable housing and smart growth, City Council member Maureen Copelof.
Does it really need another, especially considering the threat of dividing the large but limited pool of Democratic voters?
Yes, Perkins said, because “I think Maureen believes the city administration is doing a fine job.”
Perkins, on the other hand, criticized Brevard’s leadership for misplaced spending priorities, a failure to create a vision for the future and a lack of transparency.
“I think there is room for change,” she said, sitting at an upstairs table overlooking airy displays of camping gear and clothing at her D.D. Bullwinkel’s Outdoors store. “I’m running on new ideas and new leadership.”
Plans for Planning
Perkins is a big believer in planning, she said, because the city — with her help — has a history of crafting blueprints for long-term improvements and creating the means to see them through.
Perkins, as a member of the city’s Downtown Master Plan Committee, pushed for the recent rewrite of that document, and earlier, as Council member, helped establish the 1.5 cent property tax that will help pay for some features in the plan.
But her background in planning dates back even further, to the late 1990s, when she started working on the Focus 2020 visioning document.
She credits its guidance on affordable housing for helping the city attract the last four federally subsidized low-income developments built here — all while Perkins’ served on Council from 2004 to 2012.
Another goal in Focus: creating a multi-use path to connect Pisgah National Forest with city neighborhoods, parks and schools.
The two longest sections of what is now called the Estatoe Trail, she said, were also completed during her term on Council, while progress since then has been sluggish.
She blames current leadership for diverting resources from established goals to, for example, the Depot Railroad Avenue Park, which, along with the accompanying short section of the Estatoe and a pedestrian bridge, cost about $1-million.
“The Depot was a new idea and not part of a strategic plan,” she said.
Aaron Baker, running as the “shake it up” candidate for Council, shares this view. Mayor Pro Tem Mac Morrow, running for re-election to Council, and Copelof, both dispute it. Morrow pointed to a 2016 city/Transylvania County recreation study that called for such parks, and Copelof said it satisfies a long-term aim of building amenities in the city’s previously “underserved” neighborhoods.
But Perkins said a lack of planning has also played a role in the city’s failure to address the shortage of workforce and affordable housing, which has emerged as the campaign’s top issue due to the surge in rental and home prices during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We’ve always had a housing challenge here and now we have a housing crisis,” she said.
Land-use policy is an essential for taking this on, she said, and might include tools such as “inclusionary zoning,” which would require set percentages of lower-priced units in dense developments in designated parts of the city.
One reason the city hasn’t considered such measures, she said, is because it hasn’t updated its land-use ordinance since 2002.
“How can we plan for the next 20 years using a 19 year-old plan?” she asked rhetorically in a recent public statement.
The process to rewrite that document is already underway, according to an update on the agenda for Monday’s Council meeting, and members will be asked next month to hire a consultant to help merge that plan with the city’s more conceptual Comprehensive Plan.
Perkins said that is not enough support for a Planning Department overwhelmed by a crush of recent development proposals and the need to create a vision for the future.
The Unified Development Ordinance (UDO), completed in 2006, is also long overdue for a rewrite, she said, and a later effort to create a form-based code, intended to guide design of new construction, fizzled before completion.
The city’s planners are capable, she said, “but it is clear the planning office is spread too thin and understaffed.”
The Need for Openness
This isn’t the only staffing change she has advocated, and her other suggestions on this subject are wrapped up in her criticism of the obscurity that she said has shrouded many city decisions.
Jim Fatland held onto his previous job as finance director long after his promotion to city manager in 2015.
“When the city manager wants to have a meeting with the finance director there is only one person in the room,” she said. “I think that calls into question transparency and accountability.”
Or did. Also planned for Monday’s meeting is the swearing in of a new finance director, Dean Luebbe, and a new police chief, Tom Jordan, who was previously deputy chief.
These moves are part a significant staff reorganization, according to an email sent to Council members last week and shared with NewsBeat by Council member Geraldine Dinkins. This restructuring also places outgoing police chief Phil Harris in a new role, public safety director, and assigns him some of the public communications functions that have long, but informally, been handled by Fatland.
Perkins has been a big advocate of designating another staffer to take on these duties, saying Fatland is either too busy or too disinterested to make sure the city does them them well.
For, example, she said, when the finding of explosives forced the closure of several downtown streets in March, she and other business owners learned the reason second hand, not through direct communication from the city.
More recently, Transylvania County Tourism’s board has repeatedly asked Fatland to tell it about options for funding the regional Ecusta Trail, but “we’ve been turned down for a meeting with him or told it is not necessary,” said Perkins, a TCT board member.
Fatland’s personnel moves seemed designed to answer criticisms she’s been making for months, she said. “I believe that this campaign has brought those issues to the surface and that is why they are being addressed.”
She also said that in the past, such a significant staff reorganization, especially one that could impact the budget, would have brought up before council for public discussion.
NewsBeat left telephone message at Fatland’s office on Thursday seeking his response to Perkins’ statements and, at his request, emailed him a list of questions on Friday morning.
“I will be able to answer this weekend when I come into (the) office,” he wrote.
As of Monday morning, he had not done so.
Pros and Cons of Business Ownership
Perkins’ perception of such policies comes not only from her public work, but from her position as the owner of Bullwinkel’s and Rocky’s Grill and Soda Shop, which she says is one of her campaign’s greatest assets.
But it’s also a liability.
Out-of-reach housing costs are created not only by high rents and home prices, but low by pay in the service and retail sector. And the starting wage for a sales associate at Bullwinkel’s ranged between $9 and $10 per hour last month, according to a September advertisement on Indeed.com.
The lowest-paid opening at any of her businesses now starts at $13 per hour, according to Indeed.com posts, and Perkins said such jobs are often filled by students and part-time workers. They also come with opportunities to earn bonuses and advancement to higher paying jobs, including a manager’s position at Rocky’s advertised as paying between $35,000 and $45,000 annually.
Besides, she said, knowing her employees has made her aware that even well-paid workers struggle to find housing. It gives her a ground-level view of the need to replace crumbling sidewalks and enliven streetscapes.
Bullwinkel’s has also provided her with first-hand knowledge of how the public and private sector can work together to “develop an entrepreneurial ecosystem” that boosts job creation, she said.
She received a federal grant to help turn a dilapidated historical building into a new home for her business, which opened in 2017 and, she said, helped spur the ongoing boom in downtown redevelopment.
Finally, her commitment to enterprise gives her broad appeal as a candidate, she said. As is proper in a local, nonpartisan election, she said, she won’t just be competing with Copelof for liberal voters, but recruiting backers from across the political spectrum.
A business group she recently addressed, for example, no doubt included many members who don’t agree with her on national issues, she said. “But I’m pretty sure they all left as Dee Dee supporters.”
The Candidate:
Dee Dee Perkins, 62
Website: deedee4mayor.com
Education: bachelor’s degree in business communications marketing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Career: Owner of D.D. Bullwinkel’s Outdoors, Moose Tracks, Rocky’s Grill and Soda Shop.
Public Service: member of the city’s Downtown Master Plan Committee and Transylvania County Tourism’s board of directors. Past board member: Heart of Brevard, Transylvania Economic Alliance and Blue Ridge Community College; former member Brevard City Council and the city Planning Board
Personal: Married, two adult children
Brevard Connection: Resident for 37 years
The Job:
The City of Brevard mayor serves a four-year terms and receives an annual salary of $10,500. Early voting continues through Oct. 30.
Did this Dee Dee Dum (supported by
Twiddle Dee) ever understand what she is proposing. I guess not. What a moron. Types like Dee Dee and her family have a place to go - it is called ASSVILLE.
A woman and candidate with a "We Believe" sign in her yard that states that she is in favor of open borders and BLM - "Black Lives Matter" - which to me is just a get of jail "free" movement or don't be arrested at all movement. How dare this privileged shill - even close to being the Mayor of Brevard. She is a wretched being.