Join me as I chat with Princeton native Mike Rose, our newest County Commissioner. How does a lifelong resident balance growth with keeping home’s heart intact? From transforming local infrastructure during torrential rains to navigating a 70% jump in property evaluations, Mike shares his candid, hands-on approach to serving Johnston County. Curious about his journey from teacher and town board leader to county policymaker? Dive in and explore the pulse of our community.

All the things that he loves about Princeton and some of the things he did on the Princeton Town Board for 11 years and why he decided to put in and get appointed Johnston County Commissioner. I think you'll find it fascinating and interesting about what his vision is for the county. So listen in.

Jonathan Breeden: Hello and welcome to another edition of The Best of Johnston County Podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Breeden, and on today's episode we have a brand new Johnston County Commissioner. Just appointed back in December. Mike Rose and he's here to talk to us a little bit about why he wanted to become a county commissioner.

His time on the Princeton Town Board and his business that does screen printing for t-shirts and stuff like that. I think you're gonna find this Information fascinating. I've enjoyed talking to him before we started recording this and y'all need to get to know him because he now represents all of y'all on the board of Commissioners and he wants to hear from y'all as well so he can do a better job.

And if you would also do us a favor, leave it as a five star review down below. It will help us reach more people in Johnston County so that they will learn more about why I and you and Mike Rose loves Johnston County. Welcome Mike. Thanks. Appreciate it. All right. No problem. So, what's your name? What you do?

Mike Rose: Alright, yeah. My name's Mike Rose. I'm from Princeton. Newest county commissioner as you said, and also own quick shirts in Princeton. This is our 30th year. So, I've been from Johnston County pretty much all my life. I grew up here went to Princeton High School as well. Graduated went to school there K through 12.

And had my business located there, lived there. And just loved Johnston County and loved the opportunity to serve.

Jonathan Breeden: I got you. Did you go anywhere to school after you went to Princeton schools?

Mike Rose: Yep. Yep. So I did I actually graduated from East Carolina University and that was a pretty fun time.

And so yeah, I had a, all together about a nine year teaching career. I. Started my screen printing business on the side to make a little extra money. 'cause everybody knows teachers don't make all that much money. And also when I was teaching, I also coached and coached my kids as they came up through Little League and all that kind of fun stuff.

So yeah, just you know, trying to have a successful business here now for, like I said, 30 years. And, it's been a worn a lot of hats over the years saying this county commissioner hat is the latest one.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh my goodness. That's, yeah. That, that is something else. I think East Carolina being the NC State guy.

Yeah. I went up to that bowl game and it's raining and the East Carolina guy ran 80 yards to beat us. That was. Painful. But anyway, that's how,

And we went, and that was the game where ECU came back from 17 down in the fourth quarter they did to beat NC State. And of course I was all purple and gold. But it was.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh that's awesome. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah. No, it's great. It's great. There's no doubt about that. So, alright, well let's look and talk a little bit about your print business.

Mm-hmm. What y'all do what y'all do for businesses or community groups or whatever. So, I mean, I don't know, you print shirts?

Mike Rose: Yeah, yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: Hats. I mean, what all kinds of stuff do you print?

Mike Rose: Okay. So yeah, our business is called quick Shirts and our, our domain is quick shirts.com. Easy to remember.

And yeah, we print t-shirts for all kinds of events. A lot of businesses we do embroidery. We do screen printing a couple of new technologies that are out there called DTG and DTF, where you can actually make digital prints and you can do one-offs. So that's been a, a big holdback of screen printing.

But like I said, we've been doing it for 30 years and I started in my garage actually in my attic space. I was teaching and I needed some extra money and I was scrolling through Entrepreneur Magazine and I was looking at all these franchises that you had to have half a million dollars, you know, to start.

And Of course had to keep rolling, keep scrolling. And then at the back there was a little, little black and white ad about print t-shirts. So I sent off to this company in Florida and they sent me a brochure and then I said, yeah, I wanna do that. And I put $1,700 on a credit card and got some little rudimentary.

Equipment and a book and a VHS tape and figured out how to print t-shirts and started taking orders. And here we are 30 years later, so,

Jonathan Breeden: oh man. That's great. That's great. So y'all print anything other than t-shirts?

And we also do banners and vehicle graphics and promotional items, cups, pins, and, you know. Mugs, all that kind of stuff.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, Cool. Cool. That's great. That's great. That's great. so he says it's quick shirts.com That's right. All together.

Mike Rose: Yep.

Jonathan Breeden: So anyway, so yeah. So people will, if you need any of that kind of stuff mm-hmm.

Reach out to him for that. Yep. So you were on the Princeton Town Board for 11 years, correct. When did you first run for the Princeton Town Board, and why did you run?

Mike Rose: Okay, so, it was a similar situation. There was a guy who was moving outta town outta the town limit so he could no longer serve.

And I heard about it and I got a few phone calls you know, urging me to put in for it. And so it was that first. First couple years was an appointment. And then I ran and successfully was elected twice after that and was into this last term was about a year into it. When once again a spot vacated.

Jonathan Breeden: A much bigger scale. Much bigger scale Right. From the town to the county. Yeah. Yeah. I can understand that. Mm-hmm. But, but there is something about being an elected official.

Yeah. And you know, all the rules and open meeting rules Yeah. And zoning decisions you have to make and, you know, engineering for new buildings and all of that. Mm-hmm. So, I mean, you're not, it's the same thing when we. Butch Lawter was on the Clayton County Council for a long time. Mm-hmm. Before he gotta the county commissioners.

Mike Rose: Mm-hmm.

Mike Rose: I hope so too.

And we actually just attended the School of Government. Had a, a two day class down in New Bern and we just attended that. and there was a lot of good information that we got there, but it was a lot of the things that we had been doing on the municipal level. But and then a few of those things I was thinking maybe we were probably not doing exactly right on the town level.

So, but nothing major but yeah, it was a great class and we were able to attend it and, and, you know, everything from ethics to you know, just basically how a meeting should go and what, what you should be responsible for.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. somebody told me that they went to that class and they spent a day and a half telling you things you can't do.

Yeah. And a half a day telling you things you can do.

Mike Rose: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. That was part of the, that was kind of part of the rules is that you know, if the law says, you know, it's allowed. Well, basically the way it works is the law has to say it's not allowed and it's if it doesn't say it's not allowed, then it's allowed.

And so, yeah. So there was a lot of that that came up.

Mike Rose: So there were several things, but the, a couple things that come to mind right now are, are actually pretty recent developments.

Anyway, we had, situation where our sewer plant had a lot of INI issues where you know, storm water was entering the sewer plant and it caused our numbers to spike. And DEQ put us on a sewer moratorium. No more additions, no more housing permits. No nothing. And. We spent a lot of money trying to fix those problems.

But that wasn't our case. we were, we just had some issues that got worked out. So, we had basically had been told no a few times that our, our moratorium could not be lifted. And basically I had an idea, I, floated toward the new mayor and, and The town administrator and they did the town administrator put together some some charts with our town engineer and everything, and we were able to get some help from Larry Strickland and Benton Sawrey.

And we got that moratorium lifted, which was a huge deal because we were at a standstill. We had developers, we had people that wanted to build in town, and we couldn't issue permits. So we got that done. And that was. You know, that was one of the biggest things that we, right.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, he's talking about DEQ, which is the Department of Environmental Quality, I guess.

Mike Rose: Yeah, so, we did have a lot of storm water issues and I, along with the rest of the town board and and the former mayor, we were able to get some funding from, the state and also from USDA to go in and rework a lot of our storm drains and send water.

we have a major, we call it, it's called the Beaver Dam Creek. It runs right through the middle of town, and that's where all the. The water basically goes out of town. And, and so we, we had to do a lot of cleanup of that because during those floods, like you were talking about, everything that was loose from tires to appliances, to everything had floated and then gone downstream and damned up down there.

And so we had to spend a lot of money just cleaning that, that creek out to get water to flow. So that's still ongoing. And that's, that's one of those things like, you know, you don't ever fix it. It is just you get it better. Then you just keep, keep tweaking it.

Jonathan Breeden: Right.

Mike Rose: Okay. Yeah. So Princeton there's been a lot of residential growth in, the outskirts of Princeton, which is also driving a lot of business growth in town.

We did a little, it actually went around myself and did a little informal photo essay of all the empty businesses in Princeton not that long ago, about seven or eight years ago. And it was it was probably only about half capacity. and since then. Every building is filled. There's nothing that's for rent.

There is we've got two new restaurants. We've got some gift shops that downtown. There's a wonderful coffee shop and there's a lot of people that come into town now for those things. and, you know, and my business actually, I'll say, you know. It's the kind of business we don't really just rely on just Princeton.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, what are the two new restaurants?

Mike Rose: So two new restaurants are Oli & and Eli’s, which is your typical kind of, hamburger hotdog grill. Okay. They serve, of course, Carolina Packers red hot dogs only. And they did have one of our, our Northern Friends that has moved down. He, he insisted.

For the brown hot dogs.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. All right.

Mike Rose: The brown hos brown hot dogs lasted a, a very short time. Okay. They didn't, they didn't make it so, anyway, that's one restaurant. And then the other one is Bread & Bottle. And it's a kind of a neat restaurant that serves more of like Panini's big salads food you wouldn't really expect to get in Princeton.

And it's, it is really nice. And they have a full bar and they do they have a cooler full of sodas and beers and everything, and they probably like a hundred. Different sodas and a hundred different beers and everything to choose from.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh man. In Princeton.

Mike Rose: In Princeton, yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh man. Well that's really nice.

Mike Rose: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: I didn't know that. I see. I gotta go to Princeton.

Mike Rose: Yep.

Jonathan Breeden: There's no doubt about that. Mm-hmm. So, well, let's transition a little bit and talk about why you decided to put in for this appointment.

Mike Rose: Okay. Yeah, like I said, I was just doing my thing, you know, town commissioner, quick shirts, you know, that kind of thing. And then was not actually following the trial that was going on and. I just got a phone call. I got a phone call, then another phone call, and then another phone call.

And they were telling me what was going on and they were like, we need you. We need you. And and so I thought about it for the weekend. That was, I think it was a Friday. and I knew that applications will be opening up and so I decided, yeah, I think that this would be a good opportunity because I do feel like and, and you know, maybe this is 'cause we're all from, you know, the small, smaller towns, all smaller towns probably have a kind of a little chip on their shoulder.

It, it goes from Princeton all the way to Southern Ana County, down to around Benson area, including Four Oaks and Bentonville area. But the way that the way that the rules worked it went by the way the district was written during the last election, which didn't include all the way to Benson.

And so it was a little bit smaller and the two main criteria where you had to be at the same party and be in the same physical district as the last person was elected. Right? And so I met that and I thought. Yeah, it's time. It is time. And I want to keep representing Princeton. I wanna keep representing Johnston County and my entire district.

So I thought you know, this is the time I should try.

To record this. Of course, me being the defacto mayor of Cleveland mm-hmm. I have a chip on my shoulder Sure. And think Cleveland doesn't get what it deserves. Okay. From the county commissioners. Right. And sometimes I don't understand the zoning decisions they make. Yeah. And I think that we're a little bit like Charlotte and we just pay into Smithfield, and Smithfield gives us.

Government type thing, whether it's certain parts of town, if you're on a town board or certain parts of it, is a very big county. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I mean it's a huge county. It's extremely diverse. Yeah. What you understand, you've lived here your whole life. Mm-hmm. So it's it is kind of fascinating. So, I mean, you get on the board and like three weeks later.

The reevaluation notice has come out. Yep. Tell me what that was like and try to explain to the people listing how this process is going to go.

Mike Rose: Okay. Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah. So, first off, it didn't go well. but it's okay. I understand that. My, my evals were a little bit higher than I thought they should be.

So with 120,000 appraisals there's probably gonna be some mistakes made. I mean, it's, they will admit to it. So everybody has the opportunity to appeal and they they can go to the, um. johnstonnc.gov or to  jcto.org and start that appeal process. and I would say anybody who feels like their property is unfairly appraised, they, that's what they should do.

I'm all, I would all for that, but yeah, just saying that, so. Just to understand though, because the property value went up, it does not necessarily mean that there's a tax increase. The tax rate has not been set. So we learned about the property valuations about a day or two before everybody else did.

We were not involved in that at all, and we're not passing the buck, but that's just the way it goes. The tax office does their job. They give us the numbers and then we look at the needs of the county and what do we need to meet those needs of the county? What tax rate times that property value gives us that number.

Right. And we had all that, I mean, everybody's house on the western end of the county went up $150,000 in about 18 months during Covid. Mm-hmm. And I tell people that I would rather have a house than went up. $150,000 in 18 months

Mike Rose: mm-hmm.

Jonathan Breeden: And pay the county a few extra dollars. Mm-hmm. Then not have a house that's going up.

Because in some places the property values are going backwards in North Carolina.

Mike Rose: Yeah. And let me touch on that because it does show that we're in a strong, vibrant economy in Johnston County. But because our houses are going up, our properties are going up. We were just in this, class for school of government.

It's a big county when you get comparing, there's a lot of the counties down east and we were listening to their problems and you know they're talking about having shut down schools. Correct. 'cause there's not enough kids, you know how they're gonna make a budget 'cause they don't have any money coming in.

They have negative growth. Those are not the problems we want to have in Johnston County. So I'm everybody's got problems, but I'm thankful that these are our problems.

Jonathan Breeden: I agree. I mean, I grew up in Scotland County and they're closing schools 'cause they have, they don't have kids. Mm-hmm. And they, they're looking at negative growth down there in a lot of ways.

And so I understand how it can be the other way. And I will take Johnston County's problems any day of the week. Mm-hmm. And you know, and you know, so we'll transition to this, You know, you got appointed, so you didn't go out and get, you didn't go out and campaign. So we don't really know where you are, but there's a lot of people with this sort of drawbridge syndrome where I live here now, let's pull up the drawbridge.

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Jonathan Breeden: So what are your thoughts on how we're going to deal with the inevitable growth? Mm-hmm.

Mike Rose: Okay. Well, you're right, growth is inevitable.

I mean, that, that is where we're at. that with RTP, where it's at and 40 and 42 coming through and, and 95, that that's inevitable. We're gonna see growth. You know, and, and what we've gotta do is just be smart about it and make sure that you know, a big problem is runoff. If we've got, you know, so many rooftops, so much asphalt, and then we've got flooding issues downstream, those are the things you have to look at.

and so that falls back on. Not just us, but our county staff and I mean, they're, they're really the ones that are doing the hard work. I don't want anybody to think that the county commissioners are, are drawing up engineering plans and, you know, all that. We don't want that, you know, we've got professionals that did that for us.

but yeah, I do think that the growth is, like I said, it's inevitable and we just got to be smart about it and make sure that it's the kind of growth we wanna see and that, as we were talking about earlier. The fact is that cost of government is going up every year.

It's gonna our employees are gonna want pay raises, which they deserve. Equipment's getting more expensive. Vehicles getting more expensive. Buildings are more expensive. Everything's more expensive. So how do you handle that as your income needs or your revenue needs are, are going up?

So because of growth, we were able to lower county taxes that many times. So, or I say the commissioners work. So, having said all that you know, my opinion is as we said, growth is inevitable. And so we just got to be smart about it. We gotta have proper infrastructure, we gotta have proper runoff plans for all this storm water and, you know, have schools for kids.

There's a lot of planning going on and I don't think we can stop the growth and I'm not here to try to stop the growth.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay. And so have you been assigned to. You know, you have to be on lots of committees. Yeah. Yeah. Which, have you been assigned your committees yet?

Mike Rose: Well, actually, I actually, I asked commissioner Lawter about that just a couple days ago because we have not been assigned my committees yet, and those are coming out very soon.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I don't think people have any idea how much work being county commissioner is. It is so much work. Mm-hmm. I mean, it's probably. 30 hours a week at minimum. Mm-hmm. For the amount of work that they have to do.

And they all have regular jobs. I mean, I guess Ted's maybe retired and Bill's retired now, but the rest of 'em work. I mean, you know, I mean, like Patrick's kind of retired. Yeah. but I mean, you know, I know April Stephens works very hard. Works very, you work very hard. Mm-hmm. Michelle's got her.

Michelle Pace Davis has a farm. Yep. I dunno how much work that is. And she has a small child. I mean, it's, yep. It's, it's a lot. Butch Lawter's an engineer. Yeah. Like I, I don't how y'all find the time to do it. It's, it's a ton of work. But so what is, before we get into the last couple questions here, what is sort of your vision now?

I mean, you've only been on there a couple of months. By the time this comes out, it'll probably be three or four months, but I mean, what do you, what do you want the citizens to know about. Your vision and what you're gonna try to do for the citizens of this county.

I've not seen anything and I do not believe that any of the commissioners have any self-interest in it. Where they, they, we all kinda laugh about how much time. We do have to put into it. It is a lot. and I don't think, and they told me like, when you apply for this, get ready, get ready. And I believed them. And, and you know, it, it's, luckily they were able to give me warnings that it was gonna be kinda like it is, but it is, it hasn't even exceeded that. But, but having said all that, yeah. What I want to do for Johnston County is I want, I wanna make sure that that I am a voice for our constituents, our residents, as I am, and you are one too.

But you know, that's not what I want to do is look at how much is it affecting the average homeowner, what is their out-of-pocket? Doesn't matter what, what the rate is, what is their out-of-pocket cost at the end of the day, you know, when they've gotta write that tax that check to the tax office at the end of the year, is this year gonna be substantially.

More than last year, and, and I hope that it will not be I'll just be one voice on there. But the other thing is that I hope to provide to the county is just having been here for all my life, just have a, I'm not professing to be an expert at any one thing. I, I think I'm, I'm kind of good at knowing what I don't know and trying to ask the right questions when that comes up.

And, and of course my district. I wanna get around and meet as many people as I can from the whole county, but especially from my district is where I represent. and see what their needs are and what they're asking for. Just like we had a meeting last night with the fire department and Tahir, you know, they had some complaints some legitimate complaints and some that, you know. It is their job to try to get all that they can. Just like the school board's gonna present a giant request, I'm sure it's their job to try to get all that they can. And it's our job to try to keep everything in check and not, not, you know, ask too much from our citizens for those things.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, that's great. That's great. Well, the last question I'll ask you this time, but we're definitely gonna have you back as you get into it for sure, is what do you love most about Johnston County?

Mike Rose: That was one of the questions on the questionnaire is like, what do I wanna see changed by Johnston County?

Almost within the town. And if not, you know, we're at, at 40 minutes from a major airport. You know, it's, it is, we're still rural, we're still small enough that we're still community. It still has an identity as a farming county. I think still glad to see the jobs coming in from, you know, the western part of the county through the pharmaceutical industry of course.

You know, when you look at the top counties, you got Mecklenburg, they got Charlotte, you got Raleigh and Wake, you got Forsyth and Winston-Salem. All of the ones bigger than us have a a recognizable city. we're just a conglomeration of small towns and I really like that, you know, um. whether it's Micro or Kinley or Clayton, you know, we're Clayton of course our biggest town, but still it still has a small town, five Hill, and I like that.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, and the Cleveland Township is bigger than all of those. Yeah, that's true. Even though we're not a town. Yeah. So anyway, we would like to thank Mike Rose Johnston County Commissioner from coming and being on. With our podcast here today. As we mentioned earlier, please like, follow, describe this podcast wherever you're seeing it.

We'll give your comments down below. We'll make sure we get those to him. If you have any questions for him or whatever reach out to him at his business there. And Princeton as well. We'd be love to make some t-shirts for you. Until next time, I'm your host, Jonathan Breeden.

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