Al Leonard is the “$80 Million Man” in getting grants for Columbus County towns Allen Turner PHOTOS Submitted
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o call Al Leonard the “$80 Million Man” might be a bit of a stretch, but it wouldn’t be that far from the truth, either. Since 1997, Leonard, the Tabor City town manager who also consults on a part-time basis for four other municipalities in Columbus County, has been a driving force behind the infusion of $79,251,505 in grant funds here. The biggest chunk of that funding – $37.6 million – has gone to Fair Bluff instead of Tabor City, the home of Leonard’s fulltime job, but that’s only because Fair Bluff had the misfortune to be hit so hard and suffer such damage from flooding after hurricanes in 2016 and 2018. Leonard has actively and continuously pursued funding for all the towns with which he is involved. Things have changed a lot since Leonard, a native of Burlington, first arrived in Columbus County in 1987. He was 23 years old, single and attending school three days a week working on a master’s degree in public administration at UNC-Chapel Hill. The other four days a week he lived in a room at the Todd House and worked for the Town of Tabor City. Fast-forward until today: The 56-year-old grandfather continues to be active in assisting five local governments but also finds time to spend 30 | 954 | Spring & Summer 2020
every moment possible with his new grandson in the N.C. mountains and with his aging parents in Alamance County. His wife, the former Suzette Spurrier, has already mostly retired after a career with the Wright, Worley, Pope, Ekster and Moss law firm in Tabor City and has moved west to be near that new grandson, although she still returns to Tabor City to work one day a week in the law office. Will Leonard be following Suzette into retirement? Not in the near future, he says. “I’ve made commitments to each of the towns that I work for that I will carry out some of the big projects that we’re working on right now, and I envision that to be at a minimum another two or three years,” he says. Those projects include a major overhaul of the wastewater treatment plan, the repair of the Lake Tabor dam and the development of a business incubator. In Fair Bluff, Leonard will be busy with the development of the EDA business incubator to replace businesses destroyed by Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Florence. Brunswick just received a planning grant to combine three small water systems in the Brunswick area into one larger system. Cerro Gordo has just received a three-year recovery and resiliency grant and in Boardman they’re looking at the possibility of a large commercial project (in addition to a new N.C. Dept. of Transportation interchange there).
