By Delayna Earley
The Island News
The new year has brought in a wave of change for Beaufort County Council.
Councilwoman Alice Howard of District 4 was elected as the new County Council Chairman, and Anna Maria Tabernick of District 6 was elected as the vice chairman during the oath of office ceremony on Thursday, Jan. 2.
This is the first time that a woman has held the two highest positions on County Council at the same time.
Howard unseated former Chairman Joe Passiment with a vote of 6 to 5 after she was nominated by Councilman David Bartholomew. Passiment had been in the position with Councilman Larry McElynn serving as his vice chair since 2020.
This change in leadership comes after a challenging year for the council highlighted by public concerns regarding transparency, failure to get a $950 million sales tax referendum passed in November 2024, hiring a new County Administrator after firing the previous one and disagreements among council members.
“I think that the previous chairman and vice chairman had a hard job…,” said Howard. “We are all only one vote. You know we each represent about 17,000 people We’re not always going to agree, but if we have a consensus on how we’re going to tell the public and how we’re going to work with the public, that would be good. We just need openness.”
Tabernick agreed with Howard and said that they need to unite the council members to do what is best for the county and not just the individual areas.
“So one of the things we have to do, Alice and I, is bring everyone together to figure out what are the priorities for the county as a whole,” Tabernick said. “Because that’s our job. We can’t look at only north of Broad, south of Broad, it’s what’s best for Beaufort County as a whole. Giving our residents a good return on their money. They’re all paying taxes, and we’d like to make it a good return on those funds.”
Both Howard and Tabernick said that they plan to work with council members to ensure that going forward, all council business that can be discussed publicly will be discussed in open session and not in executive session, which has been a common complaint from constituents who have been critical of council’s process.
Howard has been a member of County Council since 2015 and Tabernick was elected in 2022.
Council chairman and vice chairman serve for two years.
Delayna Earley, who joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
