Three incumbents debated the man looking to unseat one of them as the candidates in Nov. 2 election for Lexington Town Council participated in an Oct. 25 forum.

The event, held by the Lexington Chamber and Visitors Center, featured current Council Members Steve Baker, Todd Carnes and Ron Williams and challenger Lachin Hatemi, a local doctor who owns the Veritas Health Group urgent care.

Michael Burgess, lead teacher for The Center for Law and Global Policy Development at River Bluff High School, moderated, asking questions submitted by members of the business community. The format rotated between questions posed individually to each candidate and three-to-five-minute periods of open debate. Each candidate was allowed time for a 90-second opening statement and 60-second closing statement.

The night moved through severa topics. Traffic came up frequently, as it always does in Lexington, wit Hatemi questioning if the town ha waited too late to implement some of its recent roadway projects, and the incumbents standing by their records and pointing to the fact many of the desired improvements fall under the state Department of Transportation, putting them out of council’s control.

But the night’s defining subject was whether Lexington needs to be more friendly to small business owners. Hatemi pushed the incumbents frequently on the issue, referring to his frustrations dealing with local regulations as “such a pain ... that I don’t wish it on my enemies.”

He took issue with sign regulations he characterized as hard to understand and too harshly enforced (referring to it as some almost getting into an altercation with a “sign Nazi” who walked onto his property without permission). He also pointed to impact fees passed last year (charged largely to businesses constructing new buildings to defray the burden on public services) and the town’s 2% hospitality tax as making it difficult for small businesses to open in Lexington.

The incumbents spent a lot of their time pushing back on Hatemi’s criticisms.

“On hospitality tax, I mean, it’s a user fee, so if you choose to go and buy your groceries and go home and cook, there is no hospitality tax to do that,” Baker said. “If you live on the lake and you come downtown and you go to O’Hara’s, like yeah, there’s hospitality tax on that. And you, you have the choice on whether or not to do that.”

“Two years ago, we bought a building and we put up a sign. We went through the process,” Carnes said, referring to his real estate business. “And yeah, if I had my druthers, I’d just do that thing totally independently. I went through that. I certainly wouldn’t say it’s something I wouldn’t wish on anybody because we’re all prospering. We open businesses, our businesses are doing great because we’re in a great community.”

“Out of $288,000 that we’ve collected so far over,” Williams said of the impact fees, “Over $175,000 has come from large businesses. The largest payment so far has been for over $74,000 from Murphy’s Gas. Not only did they pay the impact fee, they paid to do traffic improvements.”

“It affects the housing market as well,” he added. “We have nine members on the planning commission, and most of them are in the housing industry, and they fully recommended this to council. And that’s why council unanimously passed it.”

“It kind of proves the point,” Hatemi said, pushing back on the argument that the impact fees are shouldered by larger businesses and don’t deter small businesses. “We have Murphy’s Gas Station paying the taxes because they can afford it. I mean, I don’t mind you guys tax the big guys. But if somebody wants to open a small restaurant or a small business, those are the guys who don’t come to town.”