Burns receives award from NC Association of County Commissioners

Burke County Commissioner Randy Burns received an Exemplary Service Award from the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners (NCACC) at its annual meeting in Winston-Salem last weekend.

Burns received the award for his efforts in chairing the group’s Public Education Steering Committee for 2024. He appreciated the honor but deflected the praise.

“My role was to facilitate the meeting, line up speakers, and develop the agenda,” Burns said. “Usually, each session was so jam-packed with speakers and information, I just got up and said, ‘Hey, how y’all doing? Let’s get started.’”

Many of the topics the committee covered this year concerned community colleges and workforce development, areas of expertise for Burns, who serves as Senior Executive Director for Corporate and Economic Development at Catawba Valley Community College.

He said the NCACC is privy to a wealth of knowledge in the form of experts on various topics. That made it easier to find speakers on a given subject.

“One thing I learned about the association this year is they have a plethora of content experts,” Burns said. “If you need to know about anything, there is someone to call who knows somebody.”

Burns said the committee focused on efforts like myFutureNC, a nonprofit initiative to bring the state’s educational attainment up to speed; various apprenticeship programs; and CVCC’s K-64 workforce development program.

A former Burke Board of Education Chair, Burns is in his first term as a county commissioner. He said he hopes to serve on the NCACC’s Legislative Goals Committee this year.

He said reaching the ‘opportunity youth’ demographic — people ages 18-24 who neither attend school nor work — is vital to the state’s future workforce and wants to focus on that problem as part of the goals committee.