SMRYNA – Rutherford County Commissioner, small business owner, and former healthcare executive Rhonda Allen announced today she is a candidate in the Republican Primary for Rutherford County Mayor.

“My blend of corporate and small business experience is exactly the preparation needed to be Rutherford County Mayor. You have to acknowledge how decisions affect Rutherford County residents, but you also must be able to see the big picture. If elected, my priorities will be growth, traffic, and land use,” said Allen, who has worked the past 12 years as director of operations for Smyrna-based Allen’s Air Care, Inc., a company she and her husband, Mike Allen, formed in 1992.

Allen has worked as a realtor and previously led marketing, product development, network services, provider relations, health services, and member services teams for several healthcare organizations.

Elected as Rutherford County Commissioner for District 11 in 2010, Allen has served on the Rutherford County Regional Planning Commission since 2005. She also chairs the Health and Education Committee and serves on the Budget Committee, Risk Management Committee, and Ethics Committee.

“Serving on the Planning Commission, I see how permanent all our land-use decisions are. The number one complaint I receive is that the complexion of Rutherford County is changing and becoming unrecognizable to folks. When people come to talk with you, our responsibility is to find solutions that will accommodate as many people as possible. Those decisions feed into growth, traffic, and schools and whether or not we have adequate infrastructure.

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“Through my work on the Budget Committee, I see every financial decision and how it affects the county’s resources. When you add capital projects to operations, education makes up 75 percent of the total county budget. While we receive state and federal funding per student for instructional and operational costs, the state doesn’t fund capital projects, so we have to fund bricks-and-mortar schools on our own,” Allen said.

Allen attended Middle Tennessee State University and Nashville State Technological Institute. A Leadership Rutherford graduate, she previously served on the Town of Smyrna’s Advisory Council for Comprehensive Plan, the Rutherford County Chamber of Commerce’s Rutherford Works Executive Committee, and as a Motlow Foundation Executive Committee Trustee and twice chaired the school’s capital fundraiser.

Allen and her husband of 35 years have two adult sons. They attend Hope Fellowship in Smyrna.