Learning that a subdivision planned for land near his home required rezoning that ran counter to Bulloch County's guidelines led Brian Pfund to start paying attention to what the Board of Commissioners was doing, and that, in turn, led to his decision to run for a seat on the board.

He and Nick Newkirk are the challengers and Jappy Stringer is the incumbent in District 2, Seat C. The winner from among those three, either May 21 or a possible June 18 runoff, will face Democratic Party candidate Len Fatica in the Nov. 5 general election.  Meanwhile, Fatica appears alone on the May 21 Democratic ballot. The three-week early voting opportunity for the May 21 primaries began Monday.

To be specific, it was someone else's "random Facebook posting" about a then-proposed development on Shuman Road, and Pfund's own growing alarm about rapid development creating "sprawl" and turning rural Bulloch County into a snarl of traffic and subdivisions like he sees in Effingham County that he says led him to start attending meetings and doing his own research.

"I'm the type of person that can't just sit back and, for lack of a better word, just complain …, so I said, you know what? I'm going to get involved," Pfund said. "So I start getting involved. … So what do I have to do if I'm going to get involved, and then me and my wife talked and then, finally, I'm like, what do you think if I run for office?"

At first he thought he probably "didn't have a prayer" because he hasn't lived here very long and doesn't "have the right last name," he said. But then he realized how many friends he has here, and when he started talking to other people, he found that many responded positively.

"I'm going to be honest with you, win or lose, I have met so many good people in this county that right now it's worth it to me," Pfund said. "But it will even be worth it more if I can get in there and let them know what's going on. There's a lot of people I talk to — a lot of people I talk to — that thank me."

Pfund, who grew up in Pennsylvania, joined the Army at age 26, in 1996, and was trained as an aircraft structural mechanic. His first duty station was Fort Stewart with the 3-7 Cavalry, and he served in a six-month peacekeeping mission to Bosnia. Shortly before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on America, he had put in to be assigned to Special Operations Aviation, and soon after "9/11," he got his assignment to the "Night Stalkers" 160th Special Ops Regiment at Hunter Army Airfield.

War veteran

He was deployed multiple times to Afghanistan and Iraq and reports that he even took part in the 2011 mission to kill Osama bin Laden, not going to the site with SEAL Team Six, but helping to bring helicopters to the forward-operating base.

Honorably discharged as a sergeant first-class the week of Thanksgiving 2013, he started civilian work the following Monday with Gulfstream Aerospace, where he still works. He had bought a home in Effingham County, but he and his wife moved to Bulloch two and half years ago.

Effingham "was getting kind of crowded," he says. "With traffic, it was taking me way, way longer to get to work. My wife works at Georgia Southern."

They bought a 10-acre place on Cleary Road. His wife, Celine Pfund, Ed.D., MSN, RN, is an assistant professor in the School of Nursing. She has two grown daughters, who he considers his daughters as well, and likewise one grandchild.

Now 52, he is making his first run for public office

"My agenda really is I want to do what the people want, and right now the people want slow growth, they want their infrastructure really taken care of first," Pfund said. "And foremost, they're hurting on taxes because inflation's killing people, and I've talked to some of these people on fixed incomes, and $500, $600 might not sound like a lot, but if you don't get a cost of living raise or this or that, it's hurting people."

He agrees in part with one commissioner's comment that county officials "are trying to run a business," but Pfund says they need to remember that the owners of that business are the taxpayers. Department heads who have grown accustomed to asking for what they want should instead be asked to "trim fat" and ask for only what they need, he asserts.

Pfund on taxes

➤ When would a tax increase be justified? 

"It would be justified when you have no other choice, when you have exhausted all resources and cuts and trying to trim," Pfund said. "Any tax increase should be thought about hard, should be talked about hard, and before you ever get to an increase, you should be first trying to decrease. … So if you strive to reduce taxes and you miss, the worst you can do is actually raise them, but you've still got one notch in the middle, where we don't have an increase."

➤ And when should a reduction in taxes be possible?

"We try to lower them. If we can't lower them, we at least keep them the same," he said. "If we can't keep them the same, we need a really, really good reason to tell the taxpayers of why."

Planning for growth

➤ How should the county deal with population growth and industrial development versus protection of rural land and lifestyles?

"When growth comes, it should be planned for," Pfund said. "I understand that there was a lot of stuff hidden in the weeds with this Hyundai plant, or hidden in the weeds from us and I don't know who was in on it. …The state should have funded some infrastructure before anything else, but now it's  going to come to use  local citizens for the infrastructure."

Officials say "it's about jobs, jobs, jobs," but area businesses and industries were already having trouble finding anyone who wanted to work, he added.

"Don't give them tax abatements," Pfund said. "It kills me to know  how much people who  have worked their whole lives to build a business in this town, and it almost feels like a slap in the face that  a foreign corporation can come in, get tax abatements, throw  money around  to charities to make everybody think they're  the latest and greatest, but nobody wants  to talk about the family that has a second- or third-generation business that has  got no tax relief and  has sponsored a Little League team with uniforms and given back to the community. There's a disconnect."

Both Republican challengers for this seat said that transparency is also an issue. They particularly criticize the way the board has recently lumped many items, including some of substance, together for a single vote on a "consent agenda" with no public discussion.

Pfund said he would hold at least quarterly townhall discussions with citizens as a commissioner, not in the commission chambers but an informal venue such as the Farmers Market site.