^^Morrisville & Preston
The Progress
Published Monthlv ^ Morrisville, N.C. November 28,1996
Cobey reflects on hardball Richard Petty campaign; he’s still a fan
By Bill KIHdand
His bruising assignment as
campaign manager for Ricbard
Petty complete, former Morrisville
Town Manager Bill Cobey is ex
ploring job options in both the pub
lic and inivate sectrx'.
Cobey, a former Congressman,
Who’s got
the plan?
Town board’s
animosities cioud
Shiioh sewer issue
By Det^ie Burdick
A plan that either does ot does
not exist, but caimot be revealed,
and general lack of communication
between the Mayor and some mem
bers of the Board of Com
missioners, are so fm the unsatisfy
ing response to complaints about
the lack of comprehensive sewer
services k> the Shiloh Community.
Morrisville Mayor Margaret
Broadwell said an informational
meeting held fw the town Oct. 29
was attended by the Town Board
and between 60 and 70 residents.
Broadwell said she pledged at that
meeting to bring forth a plan by
AjmtI of 1997 to serve the needs of
the entire community. "It may not
be a completed plan," she said,
"but it will be a plan."
Broadwell said the town lacks
both a technical plan for how to
serve the Shiloh community, as
well as a financial plan of how it
will be paid for.
Commissioner BiUy Sauls said
however, that "we do have a plan
and it is moving forward. I think it
could be put in place within the
next year."
Sauls said that Mayor Broadwell
"saw fit not to let us speak about
our plans. We were not, as cmn-
missioners, allowed to properly
present our case to the Shiloh com
munity." Sauls referred to wmk he
had dene on the proposed projea
with CtMnmissioner C.T. Moore.
Sauls declined to say what those
plans were.
Commissioner Moore said he
didn’t know of a plan that is ready
to be presented, but added that
there may be otte in the process.
"I’m not at liberty to discuss it," be
said.
For her part. Mayor Broadwell
said that if anyone has a plan, she
would like to know what it is. She
said that she had beard rumors to
the effect that Moore had ap
proached Shiloh residents with a
plan to bring sewer service to the
area, but when she ^)proached him
about it, be told her that he was
"not an engineer."
Mayor Broadwell said the ex
change led her to conclude that
there really isn’t any plan at all.
The Mayor said that communica-
Sm TOWN, page 2
resigned the Morrisville post in
March to head up Petty’s un
successful bid for Secretary of
State.
"I didn’t have any plans after the
campaign, win or lose," Cobey
said. "I was just going to use this
time to check out what was avail
able.
"Something related to govern
ment is the most likely possibility
for me," said the 57-year-old
Ch^l Hill resident, whose highly
visible career has found him in
such roles as the director of
athletics at UNC-Chapel Hill and
as a key administrator for six years
under Governor Jim Martin.
He took the Morrisville assign
ment in late 1993 and was regarded
as the right man at the right time as
the town positioned itself for future
growth.
Despite his leanings toward a
government position, be does not
rule out the private sector. "I would
have a preference even then that I
have some int^action with stale or
local government. That’s the type
of thing I’ve been doing for the last
16 years."
Whatever direction Cobey’s
career takes, the assignment is like
ly to be cushier than his role in the
Petty campaign. "It’s a hardball
game," he said of politics. "It’s not
badminton."
With Petty, it more closely
resembled roller (toby. The NAS-
See COBEY, pag« 3
Town protests
state’s plan to
nix crossing
Rail official says concerns carry
‘significant weight’ in decision
Town’s first-ever parade already drawing crowd
Phyllis Newnam has been the
driving force behind starting a
Christmas parade in Morrisville,
and ^e’ll get her wish Dec. 7 when
marching bands, horses and
Shriners riding mini-trucks make
the holidays all that more exciting
the town’s youngsters.
She began pushing for a parade
over a year ago, but found little
support until last Decmnber, when
members of the Morrisville Board
of Commissionm beard parades
being praised at the annual Christ
mas party sponsored by the Asstto-
atioD of Mayors.
When the parade came before the
board earlier this year, the vote was
nnanimniis
Commissioner Newnam then
turned to Lisa Day-Cobb, the Mor
risville Police Department’s admin
istrative assistant It has been Ms.
Cobb who has bandied all the
details that go inft> organizing a pa
rade.
"We’ll have floats, fire trucks,
police cars, ambulances, horse-
drawn carriages, old-timey cars, the
Mayberry police car replica.
Brownie troops, bands and Santa
Claus," she said.
More than 40 groups have signed
up so far, including high school
bands from Apex, Cary and Athens
Drive.
Mayor Margaret Broadwell will
be riding in a convertible, and Ms.
S*e PARADE, page 2
Toy stories
School librarian uses coilection
to teach children about fairy tales
By David L^one
Ever since her cbildb(X)d, Nancy
McNitt has been fascinated by
slack dolls, painted wtxxlen figures
of increasingly smaller sizes that fit
inside each other.
What the librarian at Morrisville
Year Round Elementary didn’t
know is that her love of the dolls
would lead to a bobby, a collection
and a whole new way of teaching.
"I always start the beginning of
the year with our new kindergar-
toiers with a lot of stcuytelling and
I use the stack dolls for the chil
dren," she said.
McNitt keeps the stack dolls in
side a glass case which is up
against one wall of the media cen
to.
She said she began the collecticm
long before she started working at
the school.
"My husband and I were in New
Yorit City in 1981 and bought a
Sm morrisville, pag* 2
MORE THAN A HOBBY-Morrisviile Year-
Round Elementary librarian Nancy McNitt has
been coliecting story telling nick-knacks for 15
years. The Bremen Town Musicians (left) make
By Suzatta Rodriguaz
A notebook full of comments
about a state Department of Trans
portation plan to close the Barbee
Road railroad crossing awaits the
state’s review.
And Patrick B. Simmons, whose
task will be to weigh the objections
voiced by residents of the Shiloh
Community and the Town of Mor
risville during an Oct. 29 meeting,
says a final decision won’t be easy.
Simmons, who heads the state’s
Rail Division, says the last thing he
wants is for folks to get fiustrated
and angry over the issue.
But residents speaking up at the
meeting, held at the Luther Green
Community Center, were adamant
that the crossing stay open.
The state wants to close at least
half of the 190 public crossings in
the state to prepare to high speed
passenger rail service between
Raleigh, Charlotte and Richmond,
Va.
Simmons said the crossing at
Barbee Road is a good candidate
because of the relatively low
volume of traffic using it each day,
about 275 vehicles, and the
proximity of another crossing a
half-mile away at McCrimmon
Parkway.
"We’re not trying to railroad or
run over people," Simmons said.
"But in the grand scheme of things,
this crossing is relatively small."
But along with town officials,
Shiloh residents countered that
closing the crossing would in-
ccMvenience motorists, delay po
lice, fire and rescue vehicles
responding to emergencies and
thwart eccMKHnic development.
The crossing is located next to
Shiloh Baptist Church just off N.C.
54 near the Durham County line.
Town Manager David Hodgkins
said Morrisville was already
divided by the railroad. He smd
closing the Barbee Road crossing
would further isolate one jurisdic
tion from another and would split a
an historically unified Shiloh Com
munity.
He said local residents also used
the crossing as a cut through to
avoid early morning and evening
commuter traffic.
Hodgkins said the railroad cross
ing was scheduled to get signals in
state’s Transportation Improvement
Plan although funding had not yet
been aside for the project.
"We’ve contact^ our Board of
Transpestation representative, other
highway officials in our division
and the Governor’s office," he said.
Hodgkins said last August, as part
of a plan to realign Morrisville-
Carpenter Road, the town agreed to
close a crossing on Ashe Street
which didn't have any signals.
'We gave up something there,
now we’re being asked to give up
something else," he said.
A new crossing with signals and
gates will replace an existing cross
ing on Morrisville-Carpenter Road
once the realignment is complete.
Simmons said he believed a gen
ial perception was that railroads
were in a period of decline. "But
they’ve grown tremendously.
Freight shipment and passenger
trains are busier than ever.
"More pet^le are driving, there’s
more frequent rail service, and
everyone wants to go faster...that’s
a formula for disaster,” he said.
Simmons said, cemtrary to what
people believe, trains don’t slow
down at crossings. They follow
track speeds as low as 35 mph and
as high as 79 mph.
"Railroads are private property.
The public has an easement to cross
them and it’s the burden of the
motoring public not to pull out in
ftont of trains," be said.
Simmons said Salisbury was an
other town that objected to the
state’s proposal for closing cross
ings. He said the town had 17
crossings in a 3 1/2 mile stretch.
But when a fatal accident oc
curred recently at one of those
crossings, the town then endorsed a
plan to close 14 of them.
However, the 70 cjr so residents
attending the Shiloh meeting said
there had been no accidents at the
Barbee Road crossing as far back
as anyone could remember. And
they were skeptical of the state’s
using safety as its reason for clos
ing the crossing.
(The meeting had been planned
as a one-on-one informal meeting.
But citizens asked that the state
give a formal presentation and that
they be allowed to publicly voice
their concerns in a forum setting.)
Simmons thinks people are skep
tical about the long-term prospects
of high speed rail. And that lets him
know the public needs more in
formation about the state’s plans.
During the next two to three
weeks, Simmons will review the
public’s comments and consider a
host of factors, like the impact the
closing of the crossing mi^t have
on school buses, before be makes
bis recommendation.
"They carry substantial weight,"
be said about the comments.
up one menagerie on display,, but most of
McNitt’s collection is kept in a seven-level show
case in the media center. Here, she shows her
favorite stack doll, the three little pigs.
Delivered expressly
to the residents of
Morrisville and Preston