Brian Alligood was sworn as Beaufort County manager at Tuesday’s regular Beaufort County Board of Commissioners meeting.

For Alligood, the assumption of the role feels like coming home, he said.

Alligood comes from a background of county management: he put in 11 years in Granville County management, serving first as head of emergency management, overseeing EMS, Animal Control and 911 communications, then working as deputy county manager before being hired as county manager. He returned to his native Beaufort County two years ago as Washington’s city manager.

Taking on the county manager role offers challenges, both from within the county organization and outside, he said.

The biggest challenge facing Beaufort County as a whole is economic development, he said, and he has a less traditional take on the subject — focusing less on big industry and more on helping existing businesses that are doing to the brunt of economic development in smaller ways.

“Small businesses and existing businesses in your community are the ones that are really growing the jobs,” Alligood said. “(The goal is to) find existing industries and local small business that are working hard and doing good stuff and give them information about what’s available to them.”

A big factor in that is grant money from higher levels of government, he said. While some object to such funding sources as a misuse of taxpayer dollars, Alligood argues that if the people of Beaufort County are paying into this system, it only makes sense to get something in return.

“We want to receive (those funds), not just be a donor,” Alligood said.

As an example, he mentioned grants available to counties through the North Carolina Department of Commerce providing funds for large, cost-prohibitive pieces of equipment needed by a local industry — equipment that the county would then lease to the business.

“There’s stuff like that that businesses aren’t aware of, that we can help with,” Alligood said.

Inside the county system, a different sort of challenge exists, this one based on a new watch at the county helm. In the past six months, four key county employees have retired or moved on to other job opportunities — county clerk, county manager, chief finance officer and county attorney.

“It’s a challenge when you have one new person come in, but when you have a large amount of folks who are new, there’s a loss of institutional knowledge,” Alligood said. “There are a lot of new faces and it takes time to get everybody to gel together and get everybody moving in the right direction.”

Alligood said he looks forward to overseeing the migration to countywide paramedic-level EMS, as well as finding ways to keep information flowing to the general public, so residents can make informed decisions about county issues.

“I’m excited to be here and look forward to the opportunity,” Alligood said. “I think we’ve go a great bunch of folks working in Beaufort County and I’m just pleased to a be a part of it.”