December 25,1996 Nei< ‘Twas just mas and Bolii get out their j Our Bald Head [ group keeps I million-dolla; ’Healthy Families’ County accepts Reynolds grant By Terry Pope County Editor Brunswick County’s rate of heart disease, diabetes and cancer exceeds both the state and national averages. But local health officials are arm ing themselves with the necessary funding to fight back. With the help of a $342,860 grant just accepted from the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust, the Brunswick County Health Depart ment will start a “wellness” program aimed at teaching families about proper nutrition, exercise and stress management in hopes that fewer resi dents will die of the diseases each year. The “Healthy Families Program” will teach hundreds of low-income and rural families how to protect and improve their health, said Brunswick County health director Wade Burgess. The allocation is the largest ever awarded by the Kate B. Reynolds Trust to a county for a wellness pro gram. The Coastal Carolinas Community Health Assessment, in which the i *v.u.;> p...i.-ipaicd last ye^.showed Brunswick to have death rates in can cer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and diabetes higher than the state average. The rate of heart dis ease among county residents from 1989 to 1993 was 294 cases per 100,000 residents compared to the national average of 144 cases. During the same period, cancer struck 235 victims per I ()(),()()() com pared to the national average of 133 victims. The rate of diabetes is more than double the national average, 23.3 cases in Brunswick compared to the national rate of 11.9 cases. Each of these diseases may be prevented, or at least the effects minimized, by See Families, page 11 ‘With the rising cost of health care, we have to put more emphasis on wellness and not just on medical treatment.’ Wade Burgess Health director forecast Winter is on it’s way with colder temperatures in store lor this week end. We can expect highs to only be near 50 and lading to the 3<)'s at night. TNS1DE Business ... * • * 8 Police report ... 10 Obituaries ..... 11 Church.6B Calendar.8B TV schedule .... 4C Classifieds.ID District Court .. 7D Photo l»\ ' 1' Harper Symbols of the two most important Christian holidays are displayed together in sanctuaries through-ut the community this week. Congregations welcomed the Christmas spirit in special services Sunday and again on Christmas Eve. Over $3 million owed County cracks down on delinquent owners By Terry Pope County Editor According to court records, Gerald W Williamson of Carteret County owns two lots in Boiling Spring Lakes for which county taxes have not been paid over a nine year period dating back to 19Kb. A complaint filed in Brunswick County District Court earlier this month by county attorney Huey Marshall seeks the right to foreclose on the properK and to have it sold lor hack taxes of $406 VS ami $160.61. It is the first lawsuit tiled under the county's tax foreclosure policy adopted by county commissioners last month And the stack ol delinquent accounts forwarded to Marshall’s office earlier this year by tax collcctoi Nancy See Owners, page 10 Tough stance City rezones; puts demand on developer By Richard Nubel Municipal Editor City officials have demanded the would-be developer of a 131-acre parcel adjacent to the city petition for annexation if he wants city sewer ser vice provided his planned develop ment. “It is the consensus of this board that in order to get sewer, you will take our water, you will take our elec trical service and you will petition for annexation to the city," mayor Bill Crowe Thursday told James R. Prevatte, attorney for Oleander De velopment Company. Oleander, which has an option to purchase the 131 acres between Leonard and Moore streets opposite Ferry Road from Pfizer Inc. had asked See Re/ones, page 6 ‘We really don’t oppose annexation, but we think it would properly be done at a later time when construction had begun and infrastructure is in place.’ Jim Prevatte Oleander attorney County hike cited Beach tests waters, may provide own By Richard Nubel Municipal Editor With only councilor Frances Allen voting in opposition. Fong Beach down Council last week voted to com mit SI 15,(XX) to digging test wells in its effort to see if the town can pro vide its customers drinking water more cheaply than Brunswick County can. long Beach, Brunswick County's second largest water customer over all and the county’s biggest munici pal buyer of treated drinking water, recently received a report from con sulting engineers Rivers and Associ ates. of Greenville, indicating that by 2005 or 2004 Fong Beach may be able to recover water from the ground and treat it more cheaply than Brunswick County will be able to sell n to the town. Rivers’ projections show Brunswick County's asking price for Healed water to escalate through the period ending in 2020. Conversely, 1 ong Beach will be positioned to sell The engineering consultant has estimated the cost of developing wells and building a water treatment plant to be about $9 million water at less and less cost in that time, as the town grows and more custom ers huv water from it Rivers has estimated I ong Beach will be able to sell drinking water at a cost ol S3 per thousand gallons ini tially, but that cost will drop to close to S3 7s per thousand gallons by 7003 In that year. Rivers projects, Brunsw ick ('ounly s price for treated See Waters, page 7 County not fixed on mobile homes By Terry Pope County Editor It may he a perception that older manufactured homes clutter up the county But is it a reality ? County commis sioners decided last week not to pur sue proposed age limits on such hous ing, at least until the issue is studied more carefully. “It's not a major problem," said in terim Brunswick County planning di rector Judy Russell. "By bringing this before the planning board and com missioners it was good because we were able to do a lot of research. We were able to determine that most ol the homes were being moved around within Brunswick County, and most ol the trade-ins were people moving up for a newer model.” The planning board voted Octobei 23 to ask commissioners for a ban on units that are more than 15 years old An original proposal asked for te strictionson units more than ten years See Mobile homes, page 6 Happy New Year? Grant on SBSD list By Richard Nubel Municipal Editor Southeast Brunswick Sanitary District com missioners have but one New Year s wish they hope will come true. They hope the state’s Ru ral Economic Development Corporation will make good on promises to provide the approxi mately $2.7 million needed to complete financ ing of a sewer system to serve the district. “Hopefully, before too long into January, we hope to make an official statement,” district secretary Lucille Laster said this week. REDC officials visited the area once again recently and district commissioners spent most of a December 11 meeting fine-tuning docu ments needed to secure the remainder of an es timated $7.02 million to bring public wastewa ter management services to the area surround See Grant, page 6 m TOP STORIES ON THE INTERNET www.southport.net

Page Text

This is the computer-generated OCR text representation of this newspaper page. It may be empty, if no text could be automatically recognized. This data is also available in Plain Text and XML formats.

Return to page view