From Staff Reports

Buncombe County Commissioner Mike Fryar will finally get a seat at the table of AB Tech’s Board of Trustees this month.

Fryar, who vehemently opposed the quarter-cent tax increase for the college, had been squeezed off the board in last-minute machinations.

 Fryar’s seating on the board of commissioners was held up somewhat while the two other candidates in his district fought over a very tight and contested vote count. Once seated, he was going to represent the commissioners on the college’s board, but Madison County Commissioner Wayne Brigman was appointed right before the Buncombe County Commissioners voted. 

State statutes say only one county commissioner may serve on a community college’s board of trustees. AB Tech’s outgoing President Hank Dunn admitted to expediting Brigman’s appointment to bump Fryar. Answering that, the General Assembly created special legislation for AB Tech that would allow Fryar to serve on the board.

 Fryar said he harbors no ill feelings toward Dunn. In fact, he didn’t want to serve until the fray over Dunn was over. He didn’t want to get into details. “I had a stack of email complaints [several inches] high,” Fryar recalls, and “I’d receive a list of complaints every Thursday.”

He knew what was going on when the board, which has oversight for only one position, started holding frequent closed-sessions over a personnel matter.

Looking toward the future, Fryar says he holds interim president Dennis King in the highest regard on several fronts. He also has some good ideas for keeping the college, its students, and local employers integrated with state-of-the-art technology.