Amanda Benbow Lunn: 0:09

Hello friends, welcome back to the NC Deep Dive podcast. I am your host, Amanda Benbow Lunn, and today I am honored to be speaking with Joe Cuccurullo as part of our 2025 Municipal Election Candidate Conversations. Joe is running for the four-year seat on the Holly Springs Town Council. For this race, Joe will be running against Kara Foster, Tim Forrest, Annie Drees, Josh Prizer and Sarah Larson. These races are nonpartisan, so there will not be any party affiliation, like an R or a D next to their name on your ballot. You will be eligible to vote for up to three of these candidates for this seat on your ballot.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 0:51

In this election, the top three vote getters will join Holly Springs Town Council members Danielle Hewetson and Chris DeShazor to make up its five-member body. In these candidate conversations, each candidate will be asked the same questions formulated by our constituent survey, observing community members in person and online, and fine-tuning with AI to keep them as fair, unbiased and open-ended as possible. Without further ado, my friends, let's dive in. Well. Thank you, Joe Cuccurullo, for hopping on the North Carolina Deep Dive podcast If you want to take a few moments and tell us about yourself, how long you've lived in the area and what's inspired you to run for office.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:35

Sure, well, first of all, thank you so much for having me, Amanda.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:37

I really appreciate the opportunity to sit down and speak with you and give the voters an understanding of who I am and where I came from.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:48

In regards to your question, I've been here for a little over five years. I moved down here in the middle of the pandemic, left New York City during the heat of everything, moved here and started my business, which we already had going in New York, but moved one of our locations down here to Holly Springs. It took us about 10 months after moving here to get rented and open our doors and start to get to know members of the community, the business community that is. Within a few months of being here, I had really recognized immediately the type of community that I moved to and loved every moment of it. I got to start to frequent some of the local restaurants around my subdivision, got to know a lot of people and it's amazing that so much of the early successes that we had actually came from those chance meetings of sort of myself getting involved in the community and so a lot of things really came together for us when we moved here.

Joe Cuccurullo: 2:32

The way that I got here was that my uncle, who lives in Holly Springs, had been here for several years, and I called him during the pandemic and said you know what is it like where you live?

Joe Cuccurullo: 2:40

I know a lot of people are moving to North Carolina, and I came down in June of 2020, took a look at some neighborhoods and some subdivisions, was just in awe at the beauty of the subdivisions in the sense of how they were laid out, how they were built, the adjacency to the schools which I had a three-turning four-year-old son at the time and who was about to be turning school age, and so that was extremely attractive to us. Immediately, I noticed the cleanliness, I noticed it smelled nice, I loved the tree canopy, the blue skies and, obviously, the temperate climate Well, temperate most of the year. We all know what June through August is like here the price you pay, though, for those mild winters. But we immediately fell in love with the town and saw it in June of 2020, purchased in July of 2020, moved between September and December of 2020. And then we had our business open within 10 months after that, and then the rest was history.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 3:28

Wow, I also hail from New York, but Western New York, and so when we moved here, it was amazing to see the sunshine more than 11 days out of the year, yeah, so I noticed that immediately when you live near the water.

Joe Cuccurullo: 3:40

It's an amazing thing. I lived around the water most of my life being Staten Island, and I lived in three of the five boroughs, so I lived in Staten Island, brooklyn and Manhattan for most of my time. While I was in New York, I also lived in DC, which was my first sort of entrance below the Mason-Dixon and into what people refer to as the South, and I noticed the difference in the sky in DC and Arlington area versus New York City. And then when I came here I was just loved, loved that that blew you every day and sort of lifted my mood and kind of elevated everything, and so I agree with you on that it was a big difference from up north.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 4:13

So what has inspired you to run for town council?

Joe Cuccurullo: 4:16

So when I moved down here I didn't have any intention of becoming political. I wanted to rebuild my business. That was my main focus. We had suffered some serious setbacks as a result of the pandemic, with our business being education-based. When schools are shut and tests are postponed when I take tests particularly, I'm talking like SATs and ACTs, which are a big part of a private tutoring business the main focus was to get back on track and figure out how we were going to adapt post-pandemic and then also understand the school system here. I had zero intention of running for public office. I had been involved politically previously.

Joe Cuccurullo: 4:49

When I moved here, my main focus was to rebuild the business, understand the community and to provide a service to the people of this town that I knew they needed, which was a place for students to be educated from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade and then just the way the school schedule is down here with year round, which doesn't really exist up north, certainly doesn't exist in New York City. We had this whole opportunity for trackout camps, so that became a focus of ours and so we really invested very heavily in the small business community and getting to know the families and the schools. So there was no initial interest in running for office, but what happened was was through learning about the community and understanding the people that I met, all the different families, all the different business networks that I was involved in, seeing all the different stories of people that were coming here for various reasons, and everyone sort of shared this one thing, which was this love for the town and this idea and sense of community, and it mattered to a lot of people. No matter where you came from whether you came from New Hampshire, you came from California, you came from Western New York, you came from Long Island, you came from New York City it didn't matter where you came from. People immediately recognized community, which is sort of what I opened with when I talked about just going right to my local spot and starting to get a sense of community.

Joe Cuccurullo: 5:58

In fact, if you look at not the most recent issue of Suburban but the one I believe it was the last issue, I did an article in Suburban Magazine and one of the things that I highlighted in that article was the sense of community to me was apparent immediately and the way in which people got together every week and hung out and I see it even now just been in my neighborhood and subdivision. So other people that are listening to this podcast who live in Holly Springs will know that a beautiful fall night generally doesn't mean where do we get in the car and go to Raleigh. A beautiful fall night means who's in their driveway. Did anybody break out a fire pit? I feel like I can smell it and what are we going to do and where are the kids going to go and how are we all going to hang out together? And so I see that frequently.

Joe Cuccurullo: 6:34

So understanding that sense of community very quickly and then noticing how many other people notice that sense of community made me feel that I was part of something really special. And then it turned into well, how do we protect this? How do we keep this the way that it is? How do we make sure that outside forces of all different types and interests whether there's a million that you could list don't come in and sell this for a bunch of really happy, well-adjusted people who enjoy being around each other and enjoy the sense of community, enjoy raising their kids and being with their families and going about their business and traveling on the weekends, in some cases right, the beach is two hours away, the mountains is two hours away, and so I started thinking, well, how can we protect this? And then one day I had a chance meeting through some friends, and I met Dan Berry, who was on the town council. He was a friend of mutual friends of mine.

Joe Cuccurullo: 7:19

And so when I met him, I started to ask him some questions about the town. My whole life I've been around people who are in politics and government and I lived in Washington DC and I've lived in New York City and whenever I meet someone who's in politics, I always tend to ask questions in a very open way. I say why is this like that?

Joe Cuccurullo: 7:34

Or.

Joe Cuccurullo: 7:35

I never try to ask leading questions.

Joe Cuccurullo: 7:36

I always try to ask actual, legitimate questions and learn about why things are the way they are.

Joe Cuccurullo: 7:41

And so I started to do that with dad and we had some great conversations and I told him my story about why I left New York and how difficult it was in the pandemic when we were shut down, and we were shut down for six months, yet our bills persisted and it put us in a real bind.

Joe Cuccurullo: 7:52

And we had that conversation and we started to develop a professional relationship where we would chat when we crossed paths, when we would talk about the town and when I started to really look how the town was developing, when I drive around the town I started to see development pop up here, development pop up there, and the one that really caught my eye it was before it was built, but when it was approved was the Main Street Vista project behind Mama Bird's at the corner of Holly Springs Road and Main Street. I did a video about this on my Facebook but it was a 277-unit building, mixed use with commercial, on the bottom right at the corner of Main and Holly Springs Road, and I said, well, that's really big and that's right here and traffic is really tough here. It's tough at rush hour, it's tough at peak hours, and how does this fit? And why did this happen?

Joe Cuccurullo: 8:36

Who approved it and why. And so when I say that, I mean that not with any sort of anger or frustration. When, essentially, and I started to ask questions about the project and started to understand it and Dan had said to me he goes, you really are interested in these things and why they happen, he said you really should think about getting on planning board, he's like, because planning board is really where a lot of these decisions start before they get to council. And so over time I got on planning board and then I got into planning board and started to really understand the complexity of zoning and development and how much goes into it and how much regular people who are not planners, zoners or developers need to learn in order to do that job effectively. And so for the last two years I spent a lot of time learning, asking questions, asking questions of staff, asking questions of developers, asking questions of town council members, and I've started to sort of formulate my own vision for how I think the town needs to move forward.

Joe Cuccurullo: 9:23

And that vision is based not only on my own experiences as a planning board member and the conversations that I've had, but also, I think, being in touch with the residents through all the various ways in which I meet with people throughout this community, primarily through my business. I see a lot of the general public throughout my business, but I'm also very active in the community in other ways and I'm the kind of person that loves to have conversations about what's going on in the town. So if I'm sitting at baseball for my son, I happen to be talking to a parent and they make a comment about the baseball schedule and why we're at this field one week and why we're at this field another week, and I turn around and I say oh well, good news is we have a new park opening up on the other side of 55 and that Siegel's landing and it's going to alleviate a lot of the stressors that Parks and Rec is currently facing.

Joe Cuccurullo: 10:04

And they sort of look at me and they kind of tilt their head, they start asking me questions and I'm knowledgeable about it because I've been involved in it for the past couple of years, and so I love talking about the town and I love understanding what's going on, and so for me it became the next logical best step, which was to move into a position that's a legislative role, to have a little bit more of an impact on sort of how we move forward and the decisions that are made and how they are made.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 10:25

Okay, have you been an active voter, including in the local elections?

Joe Cuccurullo: 10:30

Yes, I have. I voted in all the elections since I've been here.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 10:34

What do you feel is the role of a town council member?

Joe Cuccurullo: 10:38

It's a great question, and I think that there's no one answer to that. I think that there's many different people in town council, different personalities that all serve differently and have different visions and all serve a purpose. And so I think, if you look at the town council, it's a five member body. I think the current makeup is a very good representation of our town, and I believe that a town council member should be authentic. I believe that they should be in touch with their community. I believe that they should have a vision for where the town needs to go.

Joe Cuccurullo: 11:07

Planning board's an advisory body, so you can vote and you can voice your opinion, but all it is is advice to the town council, and they can choose whether or not they want to accept that advice or they want to ignore that advice. There have been many instances throughout my last two years where we at planning board have made votes as a body that have been overruled or have gone the opposite direction when it's gone to council. So town council members need to have a vision of where they believe the town needs to go, because it takes many, many years for the decisions that they make to be implemented and realized, and so you must be a long-term thinker, so I think that's a really important aspect of town council.

Joe Cuccurullo: 11:39

And finally, I think for town council you need to have the ability to communicate well with the people that you are representing, and so if you take all of those factors together, I think they make a good council member. I don't think that there's any one way to be a good council member. I think that there's some people that are very analytical and very finance focused and they do a really good job of understanding sort of the fiscal aspects of the job. And then there's other people that are really good communicators and there's people that have different strengths and it's the collectiveness of those strengths together that make a really well-functioning body. But if you have a council member that is essentially understanding of the town, understanding of the needs and wants of the residents, effectively able to communicate and has a vision for the future, I think if you have all four of those things together, then you're going to have a really great council member.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 12:26

Excellent. What is your involvement within the community and town government and what qualifications make you prepared for this role?

Joe Cuccurullo: 12:34

So within the community, obviously I'm a small business owner. I own Resource Room Learning Center with my wife, sam, and through that have been very involved in several business networks. We are involved in the Holly Springs Small Business Network, hssbn the Holly Springs Chamber of Commerce. We've been involved in that since 2021. We are active in the community through various donations and supports. Many PTAs reach out to us. We wish we could support every single one. We support as many as we can throughout the year, so we have a lot of inroads and connections to many different schools and community functions through our PTA support. We're big supporters of the Holly Springs Food Cupboard. A lot of that has come through being members of the Chamber of Commerce. We've been involved with Great Grains and Giving for several years and we've been sponsors of different chamber events like First Responders for many years. Since that event started, the business has created many channels for us to be active in the community and the small business community.

Joe Cuccurullo: 13:28

As far as the personal side outside of the business, I'm a youth sports coach for my son, which no one likes to put on their resume, but it's honestly something I love doing because it's time I get to spend with my son and as an educator who's around children often, it's natural for me, when there's a group of children together, for me to sort of jump in and want to, you know, help, provide some structure and some order. And I'm not the greatest athlete of all time, I can assure you of that but I am really good at working with kids and so I've been an assistant coach on several teams and very good at cheerleading on the kids and watching some of the coaches who've been lifelong basketball players or lifelong baseball players, you know, do some of the technical stuff. What sports? My son's in basketball and baseball here and he plays those through the town and has been for several seasons, and so we really enjoy that. So on a personal side, we're connected that way. And as far as my history goes, as far as what qualifies me for this position, I work in politics for a really long time.

Joe Cuccurullo: 14:25

As a young person I started interning with political figures throughout New York City as early as my freshman year of high school, and that persisted for the better part of a decade through college and into my early 20s. Eventually I ended up as a paid professional campaign staffer. After that I was in Washington DC for a while and I worked for the federal government. I got a master's in public administration. I worked for the National Institute of Health and it was a wonderful job. It gave me a lot of experience, learned a lot of acronyms, but it really didn't have some of the vitality of the fast-paced job that I was looking for.

Joe Cuccurullo: 14:50

That suits my personality and I always had this idea that I would grow up to be a teacher. But I always dismissed that idea because I felt like I was supposed to do maybe something more than just being a teacher. I was supposed to be a lawyer or a doctor. This was told so much by so many people. But I love teaching and I love the interpersonal aspect of it, and so I became a teacher and then from teacher I became a small business owner within that profession. So I've had a lot of different paths, but all have been sort of public service oriented, from politics to government, to small business owner, and sort of circled back to government as a member of the planning board and some of the other various committees that the town has that I've been on. So I've been on this trajectory for quite some time, sometimes intentional, sometimes not. But I think if you take all of those things together, I have a career that has spanned 20 years, and it's almost exclusively been in public service.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 15:36

You mentioned some of the town's committees and you had mentioned the advisory board. What other committees have you been on?

Joe Cuccurullo: 15:48

So planning board is my primary function and through planning board there's a planning board representative that goes to different committees. I started on the tree advisory committee as a representative from the planning board, learned a lot about Tree City USA designation that we have, which I really love. I love the green, I love the buffers that we put in place around developments and I love that when you drive you see a lot of green and contrast it with that beautiful blue sky that we talked about. I think it adds to the Petresse Division. That was how we springed right. The blue skies it was deep green, it was tall pines. So I really liked the Tree Advisory Committee. It didn't meet often, it was a quarterly meeting but I did get to really understand the tree city designation, keeping the tree-lined streets.

Joe Cuccurullo: 16:20

The Tree Advisory Committee works with tree replacements every year. So if you have a tree that is dying or diseased, every year the town will go through and work with neighborhoods to try to replace those. Because that beautiful tree-lined streets in Holly Springs it's part of the character and fabric of the beauty of Holly Springs. I think it makes people feel good and I think it's obviously good for our environment and so I loved being a part of that, even though I think most people don't ask me about that, so I appreciate the opportunity to talk about that for a few minutes. Currently, I sit on the Land Use Advisory Committee, which is also known as LUAC, again as a representative from the planning board, and that body is meant to work to help decide how undeveloped land should be used, whether it should be rezoned and what the future direction of undeveloped plots should be.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 17:05

How long have

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 17:06

you been on that committee?

Joe Cuccurullo: 17:07

Well, I was appointed to that committee in February and that committee actually has not met since I have been appointed to it.

Joe Cuccurullo: 17:14

It usually does.

Joe Cuccurullo: 17:15

So for full transparency, that committee usually meets semi-frequently but has not met since I have been appointed to it. One might say that's a sign that growth is not unchecked, because that committee has not had much business of late. But that is something that I am interested to understand why that committee has not met. But I am appointed to it and that is a function.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 17:36

Very good. What's your long-term vision for the future of Holly Springs?

Joe Cuccurullo: 17:41

I think there's a lot of things that we need to look at. I think some of those things require a lot of thought and understanding of the interconnectedness of the many issues that we're facing, and so this could be a particularly long answer, but I'll try to do my best to at least give the short version first, and if you want to ask me some questions and make me deep dive on some of these things, I'm happy to expand. But, in short, the town is doing quite well. So, if you look at the surveys that residents provide, the last one that I referenced recently was the 2023 survey, where 92% of residents rated the town as good or excellent overall, and so residents are happy, and so that's good, and so we have to make sure that we maintain that, and we have to do that through various means One, making sure that we maintain the level of services that they've come to expect. Two, expanding services where we can and need to scale them up.

Joe Cuccurullo: 18:31

For example, my neighborhood is one of the older neighborhoods and we have a very large tree canopy and our backyards were not clear cut when the houses were built.

Joe Cuccurullo: 18:36

So I have several 90 foot pines in my backyard and we produce an extraordinary amount of leaves each year, and when the town switched over to the brown yard waste bins, the fall is extraordinarily difficult for us, and we still have the leaf vacuums that come around in the fall, but they pile up real high, and so a lot of residents in our neighborhood are concerned about the fact that the leaf vacuums don't come around as often as they used to, and that's a level of service that they are used to having.

Joe Cuccurullo: 19:02

This is a relatively small issue in comparison to some of the issues that we're going to face, but it's one that's very tangible and easy for people to see, because you can physically see large leaf files when you're going down the street in the fall, and so it's something that's readily on people's minds, and someone talked about this at town council recently, and so that's a service that has been scaled back, that essentially needs to probably be scaled up a bit, and so, in regards to looking at services not only making sure that we maintain them, but scale them where they need to scale we need to make sure that, as a town, we preserve the community sense that we all enjoy and that comes from making sure that we don't overdevelop and that we are making sure that we put in place all of the infrastructure that needs to be put in place as the town does grow, develop and change, and that also means making sure that we're prepared to start to repair some of that infrastructure that was put in place 30 years ago, that is going to start to age and might need to be, at some point, within the next decade or so, reinvested in.

Joe Cuccurullo: 19:59

And, finally, we need to make sure that we maintain that sense of safety that has brought so many people here. So I'm a big proponent of making sure that we keep our police and our fire well-funded, well-supported through technology and investment, because, if you ask many people why they move here, they have families, they enjoy the safety, they enjoy the security, they enjoy that it's clean, that it is a place that people can feel secure and raise their families without general threat or worry, and I think that's a really important thing as well. And so, when we look at it, in short, we want to make sure that we protect that charm, balance, that development and infrastructure, and maintain that sense of security and safety through our police and our fire.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 20:37

What are your top three priorities for our community if elected?

Joe Cuccurullo: 20:40

So, as a function of town council, much of what they do is zoning and development, so we want to make sure that we deal with the zoning development issues properly, and so that is a top priority of mine, and it's one of the reasons why I firmly believe that my planning board experience is exceedingly important in becoming a town council member, because it takes some time to learn and understand the complexity of how all of these projects come to fruition, the different players within these spaces and also the needs that we have as a town that development is trying to meet, and so we have to make sure that we balance zoning and development properly. The number one thing that residents voice their opinions on is traffic congestion, and I will say that I read a lot of Facebook posts and I engage with many residents, and there are aspects of traffic and congestion and zoning and development that residents are spot on about.

Joe Cuccurullo: 21:34

And then there are some areas that may be not as spot on about, and so what we need to do is we need to be able to effectively communicate to people what it is that we are trying to do in our long-term vision, and we need to be as transparent as we can about the zoning and development needs of the town as it moves forward, and we need to make sure that people understand why some of the decisions that are being made are being made, and so we need to do our best to try to communicate that as we go through and make those decisions. So top priority is definitely going to be balancing development and I've used this term a lot in my campaign balance because, at the end of the day, the demand that there is to be in this county, in this community, is extraordinarily high. You're going to hear this number a lot throughout the campaign season 66 people per day net migration into the county. So that means after deaths, after people moving out, there's still 66 people a day net population increase.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 22:25

I feel like the networking meetings that I was in 10-ish years ago. It was between like 61 to 66 people per day, and so it's been consistent for a very long time.

Joe Cuccurullo: 22:36

Yes, it is, it's consistent, there's no two ways about it. And so when you have that high level of demand of people wanting to be here, you have to find ways to balance that demand with the community's needs. And so that is why a theme of this campaign has been about balance, because the truth is, you cannot simply stop development. You cannot, you cannot from a legal standpoint. Carrie did this, by the way, a decade ago they tried to essentially what was a moratorium on development? That development just pushed out to Apex and Holly Springs. And not only that. Not only is it proven to not be successful, complete moratorium, but it's also something that, from a legal standpoint, is going to raise a lot of challenges, because development is a function of the multi-layered governmental system that we have. So we have municipal government, which is what Holly Springs Town Council is, and you have the county government, then you have the state government and then you have the federal government. So from a county and state perspective, we do not have full and complete control over development. So there's some layers of complexity there that I think some people don't necessarily understand if they don't dig deep into it. So we have to make sure that we balance development properly to manage this demand. That's happening. Well. Why is this demand happening?

Joe Cuccurullo: 23:40

Well, it's happening for a lot of reasons, and I think about it often. One you have people moving from other states that are high tax or maybe have become undesirable to them for some reason, whether it be potentially climate we have a very nice climate here. We don't get a lot of snow, right, it's wonderful not to have to shovel all winter. That's important for a lot of people. You have high taxes in other states that, in comparison even though the county has raised our taxes quite significantly and that's a topic we can touch on later if we need to are still comparatively lower to other areas.

Joe Cuccurullo: 24:09

You have really amazing colleges and universities in this area, and so that's very attractive for people with families and kids who are going to be going to college and maybe want really amazing university options at low in-state tuition rates. Not only do those universities bring education, but those universities bring jobs. You have a low corporate tax rate in North Carolina, which was intentionally done to attract businesses and so your large corporations. Look at the research triangle, look at RTP, right, why did that develop the way it did? Well, we had favorable corporate tax rates, and so that continues, and so companies come, and when companies come, they bring workers, and when workers come, they need houses, and so you have a number of factors that are pulling people to this area, have for some time and continue to do so today, and so that is why it is important that we understand as a community that the path forward for development is balance, and we can dig into some more specifics of ideas on that, but you asked me my top three priorities, so balance on development, number two.

Joe Cuccurullo: 25:03

I would like to see us continue to have a strong, thriving community a well-centered community, and one of the ways that I would like to do that is by closing a gap that I believe exists, which is teen entertainment. I thought about this recently when I was leaving an ice cream shop and I saw a bunch of high school kids hanging out and just sitting outside and just talking. They don't have many places to go to socialize in town, and so I would like to see that gap get filled, and that can get filled, by the way, through zoning and development, so that's something that I would like to see accomplished. Now that we have the new park opening, we have kind of filled that hole, and so I think the next hole really now is teen entertainment and also just large-scale community events that I'd like to see be expanded. The two large-scale community events that we have every year that most people are aware of are Winterfest and Springsfest. Winterfest used to be the tree trail that was run by the town and now the Chamber of Commerce runs it, and it's essentially the same thing where people go and take a look at the different trees that are decorated by businesses this has been expanded to have vendors and such trees that are decorated by businesses. This has been expanded to have vendors and such, and I can tell you for someone who's a sponsor of both of these events for my business, springs Fest is by far the largest of the events and the number of people that we see come through and those large scale community events people really like. It's a sense of community. It brings people together in the same place doing the same thing and it creates a sense of unity and community and I want to see more of that.

Joe Cuccurullo: 26:24

I went to the Everclear concert at Ting Park when they came through. Yeah, it was great. So sold out 2,600 people, which was sold out and I thought that was absolutely amazing because you saw how many people just love having this venue used in that way. It was great the way they set it up. They had the stage on the field and they had a whole bunch of people that could kind of hang out on the field as seating and then you had the regular stadium seats being used.

Joe Cuccurullo: 26:52

So I would love to see Ting be utilized for more entertainment and so that's something that I would like to be involved in. From a mid-tier priority, third level priority that I have. That is something that's really important to me is I'm set on wanting Holly Springs to be a multi-generational town, and with being a multi-generational town, that means that we're going to have more seniors than we did previously, and so I would like to see more senior services and I'd like to see things that are more geared towards our seniors, and I think this is true for people who have been longtime residents, people who are going to age here as residents, and then also for the parents that are coming down to follow their children that are moving here and their grandchildren that are moving here.

Joe Cuccurullo: 27:26

And so that's a third level priority that I have as well, and maybe looking at whether it be funding for more senior centers or looking at transportation. We do have the microtransit starting. I would love to make sure that we have paratransit, so if you're someone who's in a wheelchair or has limited mobility particularly wheelchair, because wheelchair you really need a specific lift and a vehicle to be able to do that. Anyone who's from New York will remember the white and blue accessorized vans, and so I think that's something that is important for us to make sure that we have as a town and making sure that we have care for our seniors as they age, and so that would be my third level priority Perfect.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 28:01

What is working well in the town today and where do you see room for improvement?

Joe Cuccurullo: 28:05

What's working well in the town has been the fiscal side of things. I can tell you that from the conversations I've engaged on Facebook, there are many people that think that the large biopharma life sciences hub that we've built has not been a positive to the community and I hear those concerns. But they, at the end of the day, pay large amounts of property taxes and even with incentives that were given as part of the EDAs our Economic Development Agreements the amount of money that comes in from those property taxes to the town is significant and that has provided a stable revenue stream that has allowed the town to keep their municipal taxes low. So when we pay our taxes every year, a large portion of our property taxes go to the county. About 60-something cents per dollar goes to the county and 30-something cents of the dollar go to the county. About 60 something cents per dollar goes to the county and 30 something cents of the dollar goes to the municipality. And the county taxes have increased significantly but the municipal taxes have stayed low. We did have an increase two years ago but that was the first increase in a while and the projection is that those taxes will remain stable and low and we are the second lowest in the county right now and we will soon be the first in the county as far as lowest municipal taxes. So that's working well.

Joe Cuccurullo: 29:14

We need to make sure that we keep municipal taxes low, and one of the reasons for that is and I want to explain this because I don't know if we're going to circle back Sure when we talk about property taxes and why it's important to keep them low. It's not just for the residents that is extremely important, especially our seniors who are on fixed incomes. It's very important that we have stable taxes for them and other people as well, who may have limited means to adapt to significant property tax increases. But more importantly than that, something that I think a lot of people don't understand when property taxes go up county, municipal, both one doesn't matter those increases run through every single business that you frequent, because every business who rents their buildings even if you don't own the building, you're just a renter portion of every business's lease is called the TICAM your rent, your base rent plus your TICAM taxes, insurance, common area maintenance. So when your property taxes go up for the business that you're renting, that goes right into your leases, that goes right into your monthly rent payment. And so if you have these consistent property tax increases, not only does it affect the residents directly in their homes, but it also affects every single business that you frequent. So what happens when businesses get increases in their costs? Well, they have to offset those costs. Maybe they can absorb them for some period of time. You're going to hear every business that said this with inflation over the last five years that they've done their best to absorb costs, but they've just got to a point where they simply can't absorb those costs anymore and they have to pass it on to the consumers. And so that's why I think it's extremely important that our property taxes stay low and that they don't get out of control, and so that's why I think the fiscal responsibility aspect of the town has done well.

Joe Cuccurullo: 30:47

Areas of improvement I definitely think can happen in the zoning and development realm. We have to look at the process of zoning and development. I hear a lot of concerns from small and medium-sized developers who feel that they're completely priced out of the process, and anytime you have any group of people that feel that they are priced out, that lowers competition, and lowering competition is never good. So small and medium-sized developers have some legitimate concerns, and it's something that I would like to look into and address. How we do our zoning and how we do our development is a really complicated process, but essentially, most of the land needs to be rezoned before it can be developed, and so I think there are probably some ways, if we look at our comprehensive plan and our UDO, that we can streamline some of the processes to make it a little bit more manageable for small and medium-sized developers.

Joe Cuccurullo: 31:35

Now that doesn't mean that we move into unchecked, unregulated development, and that means I'm promoting unchecked, unregulated development. So I want to make sure that people who are listening don't think that's what I'm saying. What I am saying is that zoning and development is going to continue. We already talked about this with the net migrations. It's not something that can easily be stopped, but it can be managed and it can be balanced, and one of the things that we can do is make sure that we are having a level playing field for people who want to do things in this town. So when people call for affordable housing, when they call for workforce housing in order for us to do some things, where we're going to look at how we can provide more housing options or even more commercial options.

Joe Cuccurullo: 32:11

If you're a business owner in this town, you know rents are high. Well, why are rents high? Rents are high because there's not a lot of commercial space and, by the way, when commercial space does become available, it gets rented very quickly. Why there's high demand? There's high income here. So if you're a corporation, a large corporation, forget mom and pops. If you're a corporation, a large corporation, forget mom and pops.

Joe Cuccurullo: 32:27

If you're a chain, national chain corporation, this is an area you want to be in because there's a high average median income, and so you're not only having small businesses, mom and pops, that are wanting to rent spaces here. You also have a lot of large national corporations that want to rent here. So we need to make sure that we are providing the appropriate commercial spaces, the appropriate housing options, and looking at how we're doing zoning and development is really important. The downtown development plan, the comprehensive plan those are things that I would like to look at and think that need some revamping. They need to be done, probably a little bit more often than they've been done, but I think we're certainly due for that now and it's something that I intend to call for if I'm elected.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 33:05

All right. Do you support the current town budget? Where would you advocate changes, including any adjustments to taxes or spending priorities, if needed for fiscal responsibility?

Joe Cuccurullo: 33:15

Yeah, so our current budget right now is about $117 million per year. What we cannot do is we cannot go into deficit spending. We don't have the ability by law to do that. So if a municipality wants to do a big project, they must take out a bond, which is why we had the parks bond a few years ago, while we had the transportation bond a few years before that. So, when it comes to the town budget, I've watched all the budget meetings that town council has that are open meetings, they watch online, and there's been a lot of really great discussions amongst council members of how we can manage this. When you look at the budget right now, we have prioritized public safety. We have prioritized police and fire. I think that was really well done and that was a conversation in the 2024 budget workshop, and support for public safety prevailed and that was really important.

Joe Cuccurullo: 33:58

When it comes to cutting, that's always a difficult thing to do, right, because once a town department has a certain operating budget, it becomes very difficult to pull it back. It's especially difficult to pull it back once you're growing, and I think most or all the town council members are aware of that. They looked at areas that they could potentially cut and there was not much alignment on areas that could be cut. So I'm inclined to believe that there is not a lot of waste or abuse that needs to be pulled out of our budget. So that is a good thing and that's something that I have not seen town council members call for. If I'm elected and I get in and I see some things that I think could be kind of trimmed or streamlined from a private sector eyes looking at a public sector budget, it's certainly something that I'm willing to keep my eyes open for.

Joe Cuccurullo: 34:38

When it comes to expanding the budget, that's going to happen naturally with the money that's coming in from the life sciences. So we are going to see more revenue that is going to come in over the next several years from those life sciences agreements and we have to figure out how we're going to prioritize those monies. You're going to see some members that are going to call for use of those funds for greater infrastructure and road improvements. That would not be my number one choice for the money, because if you look at how expensive it is to build roads and if you look at the fact that if you have to move a utility line, go ahead and add another zero because it's going to be even more expensive. And so, when it comes to investments in infrastructure, there are ways that we can do it by not necessarily just building or expanding roads. That has to be done with partnership from NCDOT and continuing to use grants and the like to do that, which, unfortunately, is a slower process. So, if you are going to take direct taxpayer money from town budget to build roads, you are going to have a more immediate impact, but you are going to exhaust that budget very quickly and you're probably going to only have minimal impact.

Joe Cuccurullo: 35:41

Now, if you want to focus on particular infrastructure projects that are smaller scale and specific like, for example, fixing an intersection or revamping an intersection that is something that potentially could be done using taxpayer funds from the municipality, from our town budget. It's specific, it's isolated and it's potentially manageable from a budgetary perspective. If you want to talk about taking a road that's two lanes and making it four for several miles, that is not going to be something that's going to happen within our current municipal budget, unless we were to take out an additional transportation bond. Where I would like to see some of the money spent is on scaling services that our residents are accustomed to and are starting to feel stretched or pinched in. So, for example, parks and Rec is something that is very important to many families in this community and they want to make sure that they have continued to have access to their youth sports and all the services provided by Parks and Rec. That's a great area to use our money as it comes in from the life sciences. I'm an advocate, along with council member Tim Forrest, for putting a crossing guard program in place in some of our high traffic, high density areas that need to be monitored when kids are walking to school, and so that's a really good project that we could do. That would be reasonable from a budgetary perspective to do and would have a tangible impact that people could see, feel and touch.

Joe Cuccurullo: 36:55

I don't expect to see massive injections of town funds, absent DOT or absent state grants for infrastructure improvement the infrastructure improvement which is on everyone's mind, particularly road expansion. So when I say infrastructure improvement, which is on everyone's mind, for particularly road expansion, so when I say infrastructure, infrastructure is a large bucket. It's sewers, it's stormwater, it's many different things. A lot of the infrastructure improvements that we have are developer funded.

Joe Cuccurullo: 37:18

I can tell you that many developers complain about how developer funded they are. I hear it all the times in meetings. So developers complain often about how expensive it is to build in Halley Springs, and one of the reasons is is because a lot of our infrastructure sewers, stormwater, expansions, et cetera, side paths, greenways are done through developer investment, and so, when it comes to how we use our money the things that I mentioned I'd like to see a crossing guard program. I'd like to see scaling of services that are meaningful to people. I'd like to see that our taxes stay low. What I would also want to be an advocate for is not necessarily spending all of the money that comes in and not overextending us from a liability perspective and saddling ourselves into a very difficult position in the future if we have economic slowdowns and now we have all these liabilities and we don't have the money coming in and oh, by the way, we don't have the ability to borrow money.

Joe Cuccurullo: 38:06

We can't deficit spend unless we take out a bond and we have to send that to the voters to do that. So fiscal discipline, fiscal responsibility, scaling up services, making sure that our residents have what they need, doing targeted infrastructure improvements within a reasonable budgetary perspective, of things that are of immediate need, but making sure that we don't overextend ourselves for the future and wind up going from what is currently a good fiscal position to potentially a bad fiscal situation if we overextend ourselves from a liability perspective.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 38:34

Oftentimes it feels like government waits until a specific need is critical before taking action. Do you support being more proactive? How and in what way specifically? If so, so.

Joe Cuccurullo: 38:46

I think that government moves extraordinarily slow way, specifically, if so. So I think that government moves extraordinarily slow, and so if you talk to anyone who gets into government from the private sector, they are actually surprised at how slow things move. So I think there are some times where governments, bureaucrats, politicians look at and have challenging problems that they don't address as quickly and immediately as they should. I also think there are times when the perception is such, but the reality is that government has moved exceedingly slow and has not kept up with what it needs to. In our area, the one thing that most residents claim about moving slow is infrastructure development and road improvements, and so that is partially correct. Ncdot came to town council. It was early in the summer, I believe, this year, and NCDOT came and every single town council member, to their credit, was like so when are these road improvements coming?

Joe Cuccurullo: 39:33

And they're like oh, 23rd 2032 is our timeline. And then town council pressed them. All the members did, ncdot went. Yeah, we hear you, that's the timeline. Thanks so much for asking.

Joe Cuccurullo: 39:44

And so that's essentially how it went, and so I think in some levels there is potentially some areas that could be addressed more quickly, and I think that sometimes there is just the level of coordination that is necessary with all the different government agencies and entities is extraordinarily complicated and takes a really long time, and so from a resident's perspective it's taking extraordinarily long time. But then when you talk to stakeholders and power brokers at the state level or county level, it's moving relatively quickly based on how the government moves, and so it's a little bit about perspective on that. The one thing that I would not want us to is to be deaf to the residents and not understand and hear their concerns. And so, if we know that infrastructure improvements, particularly road improvements, which we're very dependent on NCDOT for because they own and control vast majority of the roads, 90% of the roads we need to make sure that we are balancing our development in a way where we are not overdeveloping too quickly. Many people are going to listen to this podcast and say we're already doing that. I can hear their criticisms coming through, and this hasn't even aired yet. I can assure you we are not Only 20% of projects get through development, but what we can do is make sure that we are looking at development from a perspective of what is it that we need, where is it that we need it and what gaps do we have that we must fill. And so that is the first thing that I would like to do if I was elected is really taking a look at where there are holes in our services that need to be filled from private sector sort of development.

Joe Cuccurullo: 41:16

Housing is obviously a huge issue. There is an unbelievable demand for housing, but people have to understand that. I often have conversations sometimes where people are telling me that housing is an unbelievable need. We need to have more housing, and they're also sometimes the same people that are complaining to me about traffic and losing the community charm, and we don't have as many trees as we used to have, and that's very bothersome to them, and so sometimes those two things aren't compatible, and so we have to really take a look at what it is that we need and what is the best way forward to balance all of the different interests that are out there. Maintaining community charm, managing our density, so that we don't have these mega developments that people look and say that just doesn't fit the character and charm of our area. I don't love the Main Street Vista project. I said that earlier. It was my impetus for getting on the planning board. It was right.

Joe Cuccurullo: 42:00

In our downtown area, if you dig into what the downtown development plan is, it calls for density in that area. The downtown development plan that is currently in existence calls for density in that area. You also have two five-story apartment buildings that have been approved adjacent to Ting Park, that have just been recently approved but have not yet broken ground, that are going to have mixed use. It's going to have a rooftop bar. You're going to have a lot more apartments in the area, but I think there's going to be a lot of people that are going to say, well, this is ridiculous. Well, guess what it's? The downtown development plan calls for density, and so that's something that's already in place. So we have to look at where it is that we want to have density, where it is that we don't want to have density, and how we're going to preserve the things that we want to preserve, and so it's going to take, like what I said before, a really good look into the comprehensive plan, the downtown development plan.

Joe Cuccurullo: 42:46

I didn't love the Main Street Vista project, but the Main Street Vista project is there because that has been identified as an area where density should be, and so we have to take a look at what it is that we want to do from an economic development standpoint, and we need to take a look and see where these high density developments can go in the future and maybe where it's just not a great idea to put them From a downtown development perspective. I think we have to look at the downtown development plan because we now have the density, but I'm not entirely sure where else we're going to put commercial. If you look at Main Street, you have all the business condos which are not going anywhere. They are privately owned by many businesses. I was at a ribbon cutting just the other day of someone who purchased one of those condos and did an unbelievably beautiful investment in redevelopment of the interior of one.

Joe Cuccurullo: 43:31

Those aren't going anywhere. You have the church and you have the cemetery. That doesn't seem like that's going anywhere anytime soon. Nor am I suggesting that it should, but you look at the one side of Main Street and there's not really much room to develop, with the exception of where the car wash was. That can be something, but that one side of Main Street doesn't really look like the other side of Main Street. But now we have a lot of approved density there, which was meant to support that downtown area. So what exactly is the downtown plan? What are we going to put there? There's talks about a festival street. There is some undeveloped land over there Not much, but there is some. So what exactly are we going to do now? And so I think that's really important to take a look at.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 44:06

What new initiatives or attractions would you champion to boost revenue and community pride?

Joe Cuccurullo: 44:11

Well, I mentioned this before, I'm definitely interested in looking at teen entertainment, and so I do envision an entertainment complex that would have broad appeal, not just to teens but to families. Something like trampoline-type parks right, that people frequent Urban Air is one of them. Like with those companies Defy right that we have. Urban Air is one of them. Like with those companies Defy right that we have, but they're not in Holly Springs. Something like that, I think, is really good for young people to get their energy out and have a safe place to go. I would love to see something like McWally's that has developed in Fuquay bowling arcade right, we don't have anything like that. We could use something like that. Right, we need some sort of teen family entertainment complex that would allow families and teens to have a space to really play, eat shop and have a good time. So that's something that I really envision, that I think is necessary and would be very good for the town, you know, from a financial perspective, with the commerce that would come with that. Okay.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 45:00

You've already mentioned this a little bit, but have you ever disagreed publicly with a current town decision or policy? What was it and how would you handle a?

Joe Cuccurullo: 45:09

similar situation in office. I didn't love Main Street Vista. Still don't love it. I'm going to try to be reasonable and sit back and determine how that project plays out from a traffic and development perspective for the downtown.

Joe Cuccurullo: 45:19

I've already mentioned that there have been issues that I've seen where I have voted on things in planning board that when the project made it to council I felt like I found out information that I didn't necessarily have and might have changed my vote if I did have it. Could that be from staff In some cases? Could it be from residents? Also, in some cases I've seen residents go and do public comment at town council on specific projects and not come to planning board. And had they come to planning board and made some of those comments or pointed out some of the problems, it might have swayed my vote and changed it, particularly the Reagan vote that just took place recently. That's a large development in the ETJ area that was going to be kind of duplexes, quadplexes and it was going to develop over by the late. That was a project that I initially voted for in Planning Board and again, remember, planning board's an advisory body. So I want everyone to know that and I think it's again it's important that you have that experience, because that's a vote I wish I could take back and that's a vote that I think if I could do it again, I would do it differently. And I'm glad that I was in an advisory role there, right, Because I think when you're going were some residents that came and voiced some concerns and some issues that I was not aware of.

Joe Cuccurullo: 46:30

They did not come to planning board and could you say that maybe there was something that I missed in the staff packet or wasn't included in the staff packet potentially. But I will tell you that from that situation I learned there are certain questions in the future that I need to ask that I was not asking previously, and so I think it's good that when you're in an advisory role, you learn this process and you figure out some of the things that you need to ask and think about so that when you are in that decider role, that legislative role, you're more prepared to do so. And I feel that now I have my sea legs under me in that sense and it really makes me ready to be in this position. But that is another one that I did not necessarily agree with. It was rezoned by town council and I think that maybe, looking at it, I might have looked at it differently. On planning board now.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 47:09

Sure when you hear smart growth. What does that mean for our town in practical terms?

Joe Cuccurullo: 47:14

I think it means managing the density. So, if you ask me to make this very simple for people, it means managing density. So if we just build apartments, we're going to have a lot of density, which is going to bring a lot of cars and a lot of bodies, and a lot of bodies also requires a lot of services. So your police services, your fire services, your trash services residents require a much higher level of service than commercial does. Okay, so from that aspect, if we're looking at one thing that we could really identify from a smart growth perspective, it's managing density.

Joe Cuccurullo: 47:47

Well, how do you manage density? Well, it could be making sure that you're building single family homes instead of just building duplexes and quadplexes and apartments. It could be managing the amount of commercial that you bring in and using the commercial base as a balance to some of the residential base. But that, specifically, is what smart growth means to me. It means managing the density appropriately, because if your density gets too high and it gets too high on the residential side, not only are you going to feel that impact from a traffic perspective and from a congestion perspective, you're also going to feel it from the financial perspective and the services perspective that it requires to manage that, and so I do not want to expense our current residents for future residents. I want to make sure that we take care of our current residents first and that our future residents walk into a situation that's ready for them.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 48:35

How would you ensure new development maintains our town's character while remaining affordable for residents?

Joe Cuccurullo: 48:41

So it's not affordable currently if you ask a lot of people. And one of the reasons it's not affordable right now has everything to do with the fact that land is becoming scarce. I did a video about this recently. The more scarce the land becomes, the more expensive the land becomes. Not only that, but a lot of the land that's left is what many developers would consider to be less desirable than land that once was available. So now maybe you have topography that's more challenging and that's why those plots are left. You've got a stream running through it, you've got a lot of hills, you've got a lot of elevation issues. The land that was flat and had no stream and no pond, that's gone. That's been developed.

Joe Cuccurullo: 49:16

That's a target right now.

Joe Cuccurullo: 49:17

That's a pizza shop, now that's an ice cream store. Now, insert whatever you want to insert now. So now the land that's left is not only scarce, so it's more expensive.

Joe Cuccurullo: 49:25

It's also more expensive to develop because it potentially is topographically undesirable. Oh, and then we're expensive to build here. Holly Springs is expensive place to build. Well, why is it expensive to build? Well, you could argue that Holly Springs shouldn't be so expensive to build it, but again this goes back to my term of balance. If we're not expensive, that means we're not requiring developer-led infrastructure. So the money that comes in people would say it's expensive to build here and I'm making air quotes for our listeners is that developers have to pay their fair share, so they have to invest in our infrastructure.

Joe Cuccurullo: 49:55

That means greenways, that means side paths, that means infrastructure improvements at road widenings along the frontage, making sure that our buffers are maintained. Buffers are the 10 or 20 foot areas of trees that separate a development from the road or separate a development from the adjacent development. So those have to be either kept intact or, if they're not able to be kept intact during the initial clearing, then they have to be replanted. And so when you look at how expensive it is to build here is because we are keeping the character through having high development standards. And so when you look at affordable, it's currently not affordable for the masses. It is becoming more and more expensive and that is partially because of policy, partially because of scarcity, partially because of the complexity of the land in Holly Springs proper. That's left.

Joe Cuccurullo: 50:41

Now when you start talking about the ETJ, there's a whole host of other issues that exist there. You don't have any of the utility infrastructure in ETJ that would be necessary for it to be on sewer, and so that if you're looking at ETJ and you're looking at developing an ETJ, well, maybe the land might be a little less expensive because there's more of it. Right, it hasn't been as fully developed, but it is going to be challenging to extend all of those utilities out to those areas, and so that would be put into the development costs as well. So when you look at how development is likely to proceed, if there's not good mitigation by town council, it's going to be expensive, because it's going to be expensive for the developers to develop, and so it's currently not very affordable.

Joe Cuccurullo: 51:25

And I know affordable housing is a big topic. But the only way that affordable housing or workforce housing because those things are separate but similar in their approach is going to be through some sort of subsidization. You have to either subsidize using taxpayer money or you need to bring in outside money, which can come from various different sources. It could come from grants, it could come from nonprofits, public-private partnerships and come from a lot of different ways, but it's currently not what many people would consider to be affordable, based on a number of different metrics. It is becoming more and more expensive, and everyone who's listening to this knows this, because if you move to here within the last five years, your house value has doubled. I bought in 2020, I bought in the threes. My house is in the sixes now, and I think that's the case for a lot of people. Take whatever number they started at and probably you're up 80, 90, 100 percent, and so you feel it. You don't just see it.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 52:10

Our town is growing rapidly, putting pressure on infrastructure like water and roads, public safety, parks and recreation and housing affordability. If you had to prioritize only one of these areas this year, due to limited funding, which would you choose and how would you communicate that decision to residents?

Joe Cuccurullo: 52:27

All right. So I'm going to put public safety. I'm going to put public safety number one. And I'm going to put public safety number one not just for a talking point, but I'm going to explain why. One of the reasons why this town is so desirable and the value of the land has increased so much and the value of people's houses has increased so much is because people want to live here. It is typical supply and demand. And one of the reasons why people want to live here is because public safety is strong.

Joe Cuccurullo: 52:52

When you walk down the street you're not harassed. That's wonderful. When you walk into a Walgreens, you can pull something off the shelf without having to ask someone to unlock it. That is a wonderful thing. That is a quality of life issue. So when you ask people why they move here and why businesses come here, it's because it's safe. And when it's safe it's also economically thriving. So those things are all interconnected. So number one has to be public safety. I give great credit to Councilwoman Danielle Ewartson who, during a budget meeting, said I don't care how many roads we have if I'm not safe on those roads. And so public safety is number one. I want to give credit to Councilwoman Ewartson for that quote. So public safety number one. Number two is water, but probably should be co-number one, because without good, sound water infrastructure we are not going to have a town right. Everyone knows water is the lifeline for every single one of us.

Joe Cuccurullo: 53:37

So, building out and developing and ensuring that water infrastructure remains paramount. The good news is the town council has been exceedingly effective in doing that, in their partnerships with surrounding municipalities and sourcing our water from many different places and making sure that we have a good roadmap and a very robust water management policy. There are many people that have concerns and criticisms of the town when it comes to water, but I can assure you they have a very robust water management policy and as soon as development is in the pipeline, we start accounting for that water resource, even if that development has not broken ground. So that would be two, but really code number one Parks and rec and housing affordability. So let's unpack both those. So parks and rec is a really important quality of life aspect for many of our families and residents and if you look recently they had a post up.

Joe Cuccurullo: 54:23

They're going to do more events for seniors. So parks and rec isn't just the little kids playing t-ball, it's also our seniors as well. And when the Eagles Landing Park is developed, you're going to have an all wheel skate park and you're going to have an entire new beautiful center for people to frequent.

Joe Cuccurullo: 54:35

So that's a real quality of life issue. So I'm going to put that one. Next Fourth, I'm going to put affordable housing, and not because I don't like affordable housing or because I don't think that housing should be available to people. But if I have to rank, I'm ranking in order. Of course, public safety, number one, because we have to make sure that the place remains safe and desirable.

Joe Cuccurullo: 54:50

Water is paramount to all of our lives. Parks and rec is quality of life issues to our current residents. Affordable housing benefits future residents. So that's why, if I have to rank from this list that I'm giving, that's why I'm placing it there, because affordable housing benefits future residents, not current residents. Now that doesn't mean that we don't have to take a look at how we provide more housing options for people we do. It's a need. You can't just bring in large scale companies into your area and say they're gonna bring 15,000 jobs or 5,000 jobs or 700 jobs or 250 jobs, and then not have a plan to house those people who are gonna work those jobs. So that is something that I am keenly aware of as an issue.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 55:30

Do you feel we already adequately meet the needs of any of these infrastructure public safety, parks and recreation or housing affordability?

Joe Cuccurullo: 55:40

I think we do a really good job and I think that the surveys that go out speak to that. I don't think you have to take my opinion on that. If you go back and look at the 2023 survey, it wasn't just the quality of life. We were ranking over 90% in many different areas. So I think current residents feel that many decisions that are being made are adequate or at least meeting or, if not exceeding, their expectations.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 55:58

Okay, as the population grows, what strategies would you prioritize to address roads, utilities and other infrastructure challenges?

Joe Cuccurullo: 56:06

Manage the density. If you manage the density, you're going to have a big impact. Let me tell a story. When I grew up in Staten Island, New York, there was still land to be purchased, so Staten Island was always the most suburban of the five boroughs. And back in like the 80s and 90s I remember going with my mom and looking for lots of land that we could buy, potentially build a house. By the mid 90s that was all gone and when the land became super scarce, developers went from building one single family home to duplexes, or what they call six over sixes, which is someone owns the bottom, someone owns the top. I'd rather own the right side or the left side than the bottom or the top, but that's just me. But six over sixes and duplexes, it became a thing. Then it became four houses and then two became four and then if they had a decent size plot of land that they could get, because they could either buy it and they could buy the surrounding areas and knock some things down Now you've got a fleet of townhomes that were all put together. Where there may have been in the past eight or 10 single family homes, Now there's 30 townhomes. So when the land gets scarce, it gets expensive. When it gets expensive, developers find ways to manage that. Generally, it's through density.

Joe Cuccurullo: 57:06

So we have to manage density. That is the number one priority. I'm not saying that we don't build anything new. What I'm saying is we put a lot of care and thought into how we build what we build, where we build it, when we build it. That's number one. When it comes to managing the roads and the infrastructure, again, a lot of the infrastructure improvements that we currently enjoy are done through developer-led financing. They're done in not only in what they have to do throughout the construction process, but they're also done in fees in lieu. So they have to give money to Parks and Rec, or they have to give money for this or that while they're doing the development process. So that's important as well. That has to continue, but it has to be managed appropriately.

Joe Cuccurullo: 57:46

When you look at how all of this density together creates these issues.

Joe Cuccurullo: 57:47

We have to make sure that when we are making our long-term plans, that we don't put ourselves in a position where we don't account for this, where we don't understand that, as things are more and more scarce, it becomes more and more likely that developers are going to push for high density.

Joe Cuccurullo: 57:59

So if we manage our density first and foremost, then we are going to be in a much better position. Because when Staten Island really started to feel congested, most people you take from here, you put them in Staten Island at any point in the 80s or 90s, you're going to say it was congested, but when it really as a resident for myself felt like, wow, we have reached the point of no return. That was when, if there was something that could be built and it used to be one, now it's four and it got away from us very, very quickly, and that's what I don't want to see happen here. I want to make sure that we have an understanding of the economics of development so that we don't overdevelop. Overdevelop doesn't just mean cutting down too many trees. Overdevelopment also means putting too many people in too small of a space, and that's really important to me.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 58:38

Holly Springs has focused on bringing in biomedical and science-based businesses. How would you balance supporting these businesses and garnering more with some public sentiment that may be skeptical of science and vaccines currently?

Joe Cuccurullo: 58:54

Well, I think we have to sometimes separate what might be our personal beliefs from economic realities, and when we had Securus that came in here 10 years ago or more, it became the starting point for the desire for stakeholders to push for a larger life sciences industry focus here.

Joe Cuccurullo: 59:13

And so I think, regardless of how people may feel individually about drug companies or vaccines, the economic reality is that these are businesses in the biomedical field that are not going away.

Joe Cuccurullo: 59:26

In fact, even if I held beliefs that might be contrary to some of the production, they are industries that are not going away and so, from an economic perspective, this is not something that I would look at.

Joe Cuccurullo: 59:37

From an economic perspective, this is not something that I would look at and say, well, this is an industry that's really concerning to me, that we might have like a downturn in.

Joe Cuccurullo: 59:44

I would think that these are probably one of the safer industries to have within our borders, and I also think that not everything that a company necessarily produces is bad and not everything that a company necessarily produces is good, but it's the responsibility of the market and it's the responsibility of the regulators, which is far outside of our municipal control, to determine safety and efficacy, and so I would say that, understanding the economic reality that these industries are not going away, understanding the economic reality that these are probably very safe industries and are probably more immune to economic downturn than other industries, and then understanding that there's an entire layer of regulatory bodies that exist to monitor this and a market that exists, a capitalist market that exists to accept or reject those products, I would say that if you put all those things together, I'm comfortable with the fact that we have life sciences here from an economic perspective, from an employment perspective and from just a public health standpoint. All right.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:00:37

As our town grows, farmland faces pressure from development and some residents struggle to access fresh food. How would you support local farmers, protect farmland and help ensure everyone has access to healthy, affordable food?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:00:50

So there's really not much from a municipal perspective that we can do for protecting farmlands and supporting farmers. For farmers, they need support and subsidies that does not come from the municipality. So just to be clear I love the farmer's market, I love having access to fresh food. If there's a strawberry stand that's growing and selling local strawberries every spring, we're first there to grab our buckets. From a municipal perspective, understanding the roles of town councils is really important. We do not have any control over that.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:01:20

You also have the issue with property rights, where a lot of farmers have this land that it's not as economically viable to farm on anymore and the last crop is coming in and that is the acreages of land that they own and they have the right, if they so choose, to sell to developers. There's nothing we can do to stop that. So oftentimes people feel that farmland is disappearing and there's something that can be done. Well, if the farmers themselves or the landowners themselves say I don't want this land anymore and the maintenance of it and the property taxes of it, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, I'm going to sell it, Then that is their right and so they have that right to do that, but from a subsidy perspective to support farmers. It is very difficult from a municipal perspective to do that. I would say I'm going to have to kick that up to our state officials and to decide how they would help our farmers.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:02:09

Listen, I enjoy driving through parts of North Carolina, seeing beautiful red barns and open land. I really enjoy that. I come from the city. I moved away from the city. I don't want to just drive through and constantly see nothing but development. But sometimes these choices are not within our control. They are up to the landowners and I think that's really important for people to remember. I think it's something that sometimes gets lost within these. Now, if you say we have farmers that are feeling pressured to sell and they feel that the area is not supportive anymore for agriculture, I can understand that criticism.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:02:40

But at the end of the day.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:02:42

there's a lot of development that's happening here, a lot of people moving here, and you have a lot of problems with agriculture that go far outside of what municipalities can govern. That's something that's happening everywhere throughout the country, and so I think it's important for people to remember that. But, I would love to live near more farms. I really mean that sincerely.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:03:00

Our police sometimes receive requests from outside agencies while also addressing local needs? How would you set priorities for public safety with limited resources?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:03:10

The short answer for you is we have to always make sure that we care for our current residents, and so if our taxpayers are funding our police department, which they do from our municipal budget, we need to make sure that our first responders are available for our residents and making sure that our residents' needs are met first and foremost. When it comes to extraordinary catastrophes or something of that sort, obviously we could take a look to see where we could be of assistance. We should always help where we can and how we can, as part of who we are as North Carolinians, as part of who we are as members of one community and as members of the human community and doing the right thing for other people. But we want to always make sure that we prioritize our current residents first, and I'll never be bashful about saying that.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:03:50

Okay. How can the town better support small businesses and connect with their needs?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:04:01

So this is a great question. As a small business owner, I love this question. I'm having a small business roundtable coming up soon, so I'm looking forward to hearing some of the needs of other small businesses. From a municipal perspective, I can tell you one of the areas that a lot of small business owners want some help is in the area of navigating the development process. So, for example, if you're a small business let's say, gross revenue under a million or even 1.5 million and you have a pretty successful business and you want to open a second location, you want to expand or renovate your current location, maybe take over the store next to you, or you want to potentially look at stopping renting and building your own building and keeping your business here in Holly Springs, it's extraordinarily difficult to go through the development process. So in this podcast a lot we talked about developer funded infrastructure improvements. Well, guess what? That doesn't just apply to Toll Brothers and MI Homes, it also applies to anybody who's trying to build in this town. So if you're a mom and pop restaurant and you have a really successful business and now you want to build your own building or you want to build a second restaurant and you got a plot of land to do it. You are held to the same standards as Toll Brothers is right when they're building a 60, 70, 80, 90, 150 home development, and so that's really hard and really challenging for some of our small businesses, and so we need to take a look at how we streamline the process for our small businesses from a development side perspective. That is something that I have a plan for that it's on my website. I would like to either look at creating or restructuring a town staff position to become a dedicated liaison for small businesses to work directly with development services. One of the areas that I've seen is small businesses go to development services and they say I would like to do X, and development services says, okay, they want to do X. How do we help small business do X? What, really, if they had asked the question differently, if they had said, well, I'm looking into the idea of doing an expansion, or how would it be best for me to do what it is that I'm trying to achieve? And then maybe, development services well, listen, if you try to open a second location next to the location that you're in, it's going to create a whole host of requirements that you're going to need to fulfill and it's going to cost you all this money and permits and expansion costs, and you're going to need to put in this and you need to put in that. Well, if you had just said how do I expand my current location and just focused in that direction, it might be a much simpler, more streamlined process.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:06:14

There's a particular instance that I have in my mind and I'm trying to speak in general terms because I don't want to talk about anyone's particular business but I can tell you that what I'm saying is based on real situations.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:06:24

I've heard and that if small businesses who had less means meaning they maybe don't have access to the same architects or access to the same attorneys and such that often do business with the town, if we had sort of a dedicated person within the town staff that was a liaison to our small businesses and helped our small businesses formulate ways in which they expand, they renovate, they add or build in this town, I think that would be very, very supporting for a lot of people. There's a lot of the small business complaints that I hear are directly connected to development services. When it comes to supporting through grants, the ones that we've had have been relatively underutilized. The criteria has been very narrow. I would like to see us have the ability to provide more support for new businesses that are in need or businesses that are looking to expand within the town, through more opportunities to apply for and utilize those grants.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:07:13

Okay. What approaches would you take to foster understanding and collaboration amongst residents with differing perspectives?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:07:21

I think that everyone is united by more than what divides us. So at the end of the day, I think that we are a community of people that truly enjoy our families, that truly enjoy our safety, that truly enjoy economic prosperity and opportunities in education, and so we live in a world where there's always going to be varying and differing perspectives.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:07:42

We need to continue to maintain and foster an environment where we are respectful of people's individual choices and their desires to live their life as they should, but I think that I would always, as a public servant, remind people to focus and center on the core values that unite us first, before we focus on the differences of things that divide us.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:08:02

Okay, how will you ensure diverse voices and those most impacted are not only included, but truly embraced in decision-making?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:08:10

I think the town currently, when I'm speaking from a municipal perspective is very responsive to the residents, and I think that one of the things that is really important to me is that people always have a forum to voice those concerns, and so I would encourage people to utilize the public comment portion of town council meetings if they have concerns and to continue to communicate with their legislators if they have concerns, Because I do believe and feel, just from my own experiences, that our local government is very responsive to the needs and concerns of the citizens, and so I would continue to encourage people to communicate that and I know there's always been some talk about whether or not the public comment period of town council should be moved to the front or to the end, but I think that's a silly argument to have.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:08:53

The fact that the public comment period exists is all that matters and people, if they have a problem or an issue or a concern, they should utilize that, because I think that people listen.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:09:01

Okay. Do you support a non-discrimination ordinance or policy? Why or why not?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:09:06

So, in particular with the NDO that was discussed previously. I've kept up on how effective it has been in adjudicating issues and the number of issues that have gone before it, and the most recent numbers that I saw were extremely low. There was less than a handful of incidences that were actually adjudicated using that approach and I'm a firm believer of the state and federal laws that are in place to handle much of what that NDO does. This is an issue that was a campaign issue of serious concern in the last election. I don't think that it is a significant issue now, nor do I think it should be based on the numbers that are publicly available and how it has been utilized.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:09:46

The town council did sign a non-discrimination resolution basically saying that they would be supportive of anyone utilizing state and federal laws to adjudicate any issues, but I do know that one of the major concerns from some people that were in opposition to this when this was a really heated debate a couple of years ago was that the manner in which the language was structured would make it exceedingly challenging for small businesses and would add a tremendous expense to small businesses in terms of their legal costs and not even if they were accused of doing something wrong, of just the compliance to it, and so, as a small business owner, that's something I would definitely be sensitive to.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:10:25

I don't think that this is a major issue in our town and I don't think it should be a primary campaign issue this year. I think this has been through the court of public opinion already and if you look at the numbers of how it has been used throughout the county, it's exceedingly low.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:10:38

Okay. Have you gained any endorsements thus far and if you gain more, where might voters find that information?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:10:45

By the time this airs, I think you'll see a number of endorsements that will come out, and you can go ahead and just check my website for those. Those will be announced there.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:10:52

Okay, and where can listeners connect with you and learn more about your platform, upcoming events and ways to get involved?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:10:58

I'm really active on Facebook. I would love for people to follow me on Facebook. I do a lot of just direct communication with constituents and plan to do that if I'm elected consistently as well, so I would love to see people follow me on Facebook I mean a lot of people use Instagram and they love Instagram, but I don't have the ability to write and be as verbose as I like to be and dive as deep as I would like to. Facebook provides me the best platform to do that.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:11:25

And then, obviously, my website, joe for Holly Springs dot com

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:11:27

Is that the number four or for spelled out for?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:11:28

for, for

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:11:28

Ok, and what is your Facebook page called?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:11:31

Also, Joe for Holly Springs as well.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:11:39

Do you have any final thoughts you'd like to share with those voting in the upcoming election?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:11:42

I think this is a really wonderful community and I don't believe that this is a change election, and what I don't want to see is, from a municipal perspective, which we have very limited control over things that we can do, but the things that we can do have a really big impact on everyone's everyday life. I don't want to see, just for the sake of political momentum, people trying to create issues that aren't necessarily there, just to create that momentum to potentially gain attention and get elected.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:12:02

And I'm not saying that anyone's doing that right now, but it's just a general statement. I would like us to remember that we are in a highly desirable area and we are neighbors first and a community first, and we need to figure out a way to manage all of the interests that want a piece of what we already have. So, sometimes, when we complain about traffic and we complain about development, they are legitimate concerns, but we are also in a highly desirable area with a lot of great services and amenities.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:12:32

And when I walk around restaurants, sometimes just to introduce myself as a candidate. You will be stunned to find out how many people are in our restaurants that are not from our town.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:12:42

And it has happenedville or in the ETJ area, and they're here maybe doing business, so they're having dinner before they go home.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:12:48

We have a thriving economy and so many of the issues that we talked about today and have are a result of that high desirability and that really thriving economy. So I want to make sure that, even in the intensity of the political season that we have, people recognize that we have a really great community. I'm running to protect that, preserve it. You know, one of my slogans is, I always say, is protect the progress while preparing for the future. And so let's not, even in the heat of political campaigns, start to become divided, because what we're really all trying to do is maintain something that's really great and that, even if we have different ideas of how we get there, everyone's working to do the same thing, which is to really do our best as informed citizens some of us who are now running for public office and putting ourselves in that position to preserve a community that is really doing great. And I think we would be best to remember that, at the end of the day, we have something that's wonderful and we should all work together to protect it.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:13:51

Al right, Now we have the lightning round. So not political, not to do necessarily with Holly Springs, but just to get to know you a little bit better. Bring some humanity to the conversation. What's something you do that helps you to recharge?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:14:04

I like to go to the gym and I like to go to my favorite restaurants, and I have a bunch of people that I will see on certain nights in certain places and spend some quality time talking and relaxing with those people.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:14:18

Awesome. What's a hobby, talent or fun fact about you that most people don't know?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:14:23

Absolutely love Star Wars big Star Wars fan and I have a really amazing lightsaber collection.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:14:29

Fun.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:14:30

What's something that is difficult for you?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:14:32

Managing my time and all of the different things that I'm involved in.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:14:36

What book, podcast or TV show are you enjoying right now?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:14:41

The North Carolina Deep Dive podcast.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:14:46

Who is your favorite superhero?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:14:47

Superman

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:14:48

What's the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:14:51

That's a great question I really like that one. Best piece of advice I was ever given was not to take myself too seriously.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:14:58

There you go. What's one guilty pleasure? You secretly enjoy Dark chocolate. I love that answer. What's a simple thing that always makes you laugh or smile?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:15:07

My son.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:15:07

Coffee or tea?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:15:09

coffee

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:15:09

Morning person or night owl?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:15:10

night

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:15:11

Mountains or beach?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:15:12

Mountains.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:15:13

Book or podcast?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:15:14

Podcast

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:15:14

Dogs or cats?

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:15:14

dogs

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:15:17

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Joe. I appreciate you taking the time to be part of the North Carolina Deep Dive podcast and our candidate conversations. I wish you all the best in your election.

Joe Cuccurullo: 1:15:26

Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:15:28

Yeah, absolutely. Local elections are where democracy lives closest to home. The decisions and actions of our mayors, the Holly Springs Town Council and the Fuquay-Varina Board of Commissioners influence the services we rely on each day, the safety of our streets, the character of our neighborhoods and even the future direction of our communities. Democracy is at the heart of all we hold dear. Our local governments set priorities that touch everyday life. They pass ordinances, fund our fire and police departments, set property tax structures and shape the look and feel of our towns. Because turnout is often lower in municipal elections, every ballot cast carries even greater weight. Here's what you need to know for 2025. The voter registration deadline is October 10th, unless you register at an early voting site. Early voting begins October 16th at the Wake County Board of Elections office in Raleigh. Additional sites open on October 25th, including the John M Brown Community Center in Apex and the Avery Street Recreation Center in Garner. Those two will be the closest to us in Holly Springs and Fuquay Varina. Early voting concludes on Saturday, November 1st. Please note that this year only includes two Saturdays, October 25th and November 1st, and one, Sunday, October 26th. The last day to request a mail-in absentee ballot is October 21st and election day itself is Tuesday, November 4th, where you'll need to cast your vote at your assigned precinct. Please remember you will need a valid ID to vote. That wraps up another NC Deep Dive candidate conversation. You can find all of our 2025 municipal election interviews at www. ncdeepdive. com, as well as on Spotify, apple Podcasts, audible or wherever you currently listen to podcasts. Show notes will include links to candidates, voter resources and election information. If you find these conversations helpful, please subscribe, share them with friends or family and consider leaving a rating or review. Spreading the word in your local spaces helps strengthen informed participation across our communities. If you have thoughts or topics you'd like us to explore, reach out on social media or email us anytime at ncdeepdive@ gmai l. com.

Amanda Benbow Lunn: 1:17:47

I'm grateful you spent this time with me today. Staying informed is how we shape communities worth calling home. Your choices matter, your perspective matters and you matter. Your ballot is your voice, and both carry more power than you might imagine. Democracy isn't passive. It only works when we each show up. Thank you for helping me to make it thrive. May we continue to work together to build stronger, more vibrant communities, to live, work and play in Ones we can all be proud. To call home, work and play in ones we can all be proud to call home. Until next time, my friends namaste. The love and light in me sees and honors the love and light in you.