GRANITE QUARRY — Jason Hord was officially sworn in as the Granite Quarry town manager during the town council meeting on Monday.

Hord had been acting as the interim town manager since the town terminated former manager Larry Smith’s contract in February. The town council had been working with Centralina Regional Council to identify and interview candidates, and that search eventually ended with the man who was already performing the role. 

“I’m blessed to be here and I love our little town. I don’t want to be anywhere else. I hope to be here as long as the citizens and the town council will have me here,” said Hord.

Before being named as the interim manager, Hord was the director of the Granite Quarry Public Works Department and the chief of the Granite Quarry Fire Department. He joined the town as public works director in February of 2017 and became the fire chief in October of 2018.

His new employment contract will require him to give up the public works position, but he said that he and the town council agreed to allow him to continue as fire chief, believing that continuity was important in a department that has undergone large changes recently including hiring three shifts worth of full-time staff. Hord also teaches rookie academy classes part-time at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, and pointed to the hiring of multiple “top” graduates from that program as a benefit that would need to be replaced if another fire chief was hired.

Hord said that when he first began working for the town, he had always envisioned moving into a managerial role at some point but assumed that it would be years in the future. However, throughout his months working in the interim role, he said that he fell in love with the position and put his name into consideration for the permanent position.

Hord credited Smith and another former town manager, Phil Conrad, for putting into place a strong support structure in the administration, saying that he viewed the staff in the Granite Quarry front office as some of the best, pointing to Finance Director Shelly Shockley, Town Clerk and Human Resources Director Aubrey Smith and Events Coordinator and Office Assistant Debbie Loflin-Benge as people who greatly helped inside the town’s administration.

“I’m just proud of what we have right now and I want to try to grow what we have here in terms of culture, both with the town and the staff,” said Hord.

For now, Hord is concentrating on the many moving pieces he said that the town has ongoing. He pointed to transformational projects such as the downtown streetscape project, the Civic Park renovations, and a sidewalk project connecting the town’s parks as large undertakings.

Hord also said that town staff and the town council were working on how best to handle the town’s growth as it moves towards Interstate 85. At the same meeting, Town Planner Rick Flowe introduced a petition for annexation for a future Circle K station near the intersection of Julian Road and Rowan Summit Drive. During the staff report, Flowe said that because the town did not previously have interstate commerce on its radar he was working at the direction of the planning board to introduce a zoning district focused on commercial usage around the interstate.