The State Port Pilot
Our Town
Long Beach
After a performance review by town council last Tuesday,
town manager Jerry Walters was given a $4,000 salary increase.
The raise will be paid him in a lump sum this year, as he has
not had a salary review in the previous two years. Council said
the manager’s car allowance will remain $3,600 annually.
Walters recently was appointed to the environmental stan
dards committee of the N. C. City/County Managers
Association.
With the prospect of consolidating Yaupon Beach and Long
Beach town governments to form the new Town of Oak Island
looming, Long Beach will begin to cut Yaupon Beach residents
in on certain important decisions well before the July 1,1999,
target date for completion of the municipal merger. Yaupon
Beach residents will be added to the committee discussing
implementation of a Fragile Area Management Plan at “The
Point” and to the town’s wastewater management committee.
Mayor Joan Altman said it is important to involve Yaupon
Beach residents in these two committees now because both are
considering large expenditures of public funds.
Yaupon Beach
Time to compile municipal recommendations for N. C. DOT’S
annual Transportation Improvement Plan will be soon at hand.
Town officials have asked citizens to forward transportation
suggestions to the board of commissioners through Town Hall.
The second bridge to Oak Island at Middleton Street in Long
Beach has been the town’s top transportation improvement
request for several years.
Town property tax bills have been sent. Payment of municipal
property taxes must be made by the first week in January to
avoid penalty. A two-percent penalty is added to the tax bill
after that time and additional interest will be added monthly.
Water bills were mailed to customers two days late this month
So the late payment date has been delayed two days. Late pay
ment date now is November 18.
The November meeting of the board of commissioners of the
Town of Yaupon Beach will be held Tuesday, November 10.
This is a change in the regular meeting schedule. Normally the
board would meet on the second Monday of the month. A pub
lic hearing on the town’s land use plan update for 1998 will be
held at that meeting.
Bald Head Island
Village council will meet in special session Friday to review
proposals from engineering firms willing to perform a compre
hensive study of the ocean sand beach systems on and around
Bald Head Island.
The town already has employed Gulf Stream Environmental,
a consulting firm now undertaking an analysis of beachfront
conditions of a more limited scope. That firm is expected to
report within six months on the volume of sand in the system
and present an analysis of sand flow through the system.
Council may move as early as Friday to hire a beach manage
ment consultant who will take the study of the beachfront a step
further, examining the placement and effect of groins the vil
lage has located on the strand. Several groins have been dam
aged and the village has taken bids for repair. Before repair is
begun, village officials want to verify that they are placed cor
rectly and have had the desired effect on beach conditions.
Council was given information from engineering firms respond
ing to requests for proposals earlier in the month, but asked
more time to study the responses.
The village finance committee will meet at 3 p.m. Friday at
Village Hall.
Boiling Spring Lakes
Staff was busy this week preparing city property tax bills for
mailing. Bills are to be mailed to all property, owners shortly
and payment may be made without penalty any time before the
first week in January. After that, a two-pefcent penalty is added.
A three-quarter-percent monthly penalty may be added to the
tax bill for every month payment is not made.
The board of commissioners of the City of Boiling Spring
Lakes will meet in regular monthly session at a slightly differ
ent time this month. The board will meet at 7:30 p.m. — not 7
p.m. as usual — Tuesday at City Hall. Mayor Tom Tully opted
not to call the meeting until the polls had closed that Election
Day.
Southport
City manager Rob Gandy and public services director Ed
Honeycutt will attend a conference on year 2000 problems fac
ing cities operating electric systems Thursday. The Year 2000 —
Y2K — bug is the name given the likelihood that some comput
ers and microprocessors may not recognize the year change
between December 31,1999, and January 1,2000.
Gandy said this week the city has had a Y2K committee
examining issues in the city for several months. Honeycutt
leads the city’s Y2K team.
“We’ve been going over it for several months now,” Gandy
said. “All of our electric and other service facilities in the field
have microprocessors and we are trying to determine if they are
Y2K compatible. It’s not just our electric system that may be
affected, but also our billing system and many other things we
do.”
The city’s board of aldermen will meet in special session at 6
p.m. Thursday. The board will review paving bids and will
interview candidates for appointment to the city planning board.
Caswell Beach
Town Hall will be closed for municipal business Tuesday as
the county board of elections converts it to a polling place.
The Saturday beach party thrown by the board of commis
sioners’ community outreach committee attracted a good num
ber of residents to the pubjic beach access area. The group was
well fed on beef, chicken/sourdough rolls, pasta salad and
homemade brownies. •
Ed Zalewski has been appointed to the town’s beach preserva
tion committee, a subcommittee of the beach erosion control
committee. The preservation committee will advise commis
sioners on use of the town’s newly created Caswell Beach
Preservation Trust. The trust was created earlier this year to
accept contributions from private sources for beach nourish
ment and stabilization projects and to serve as local match to
federal grants for beach nourishment projects.
DOWN TO THE
.a^irias.,
Photo by Jim Harper
Beach season isn’t over ‘til the weatherman says it’s over, and this week’s mild temperatures and sunny skies
were perfect for shelling, bird-watching -- even toiling at sea -- at Lockwood Folly Inlet
Looking to the future
Old Dosher building
a victim of progress?
m iticnara nuoei
Municipal Editor
It appears increasingly likely the original Dosher
Memorial Hospital building, built in the 1930s, will at some
time be tom down to make way for additional hospital
expansion.
That eventuality will be one of the topics of discussion
when hospital trustees meet with their architectural plan
ning consultants in the next few months to review options
presented in a long-range facility master plan.
Failure to remove the old hospital building would ham
string the hospital’s development on the small section of
Howe Street property it has to utilize.
“Which is something we cannot do,” trustee Eugene B.
Tomlinson said.
Hospital administrator Edgar Haywood said the architects
had already made a presentation to the hospital’s planning
committee.
‘The proposed plan outlines the need to significantly
expand our emergency, surgical and imaging departments,
as well as relocate our existing ancillary departments to
improve the ever-increasing flow of out-patient services,”
‘Any small hospital like we are
that ends up the year in the
black is doing a darned good
job.’
Gib Barbee
Dosher trustee
Haywood wrote in his monthly report.
While the architectural planners have recommended mov
ing Dosher’s physical therapy department across Howe
Street to a new facility on land the hospital owns next to the
Rx Shoppe, planners have set out two options for dealing
with the older section of Dosher that served the community
See Dosher, page 6
Adviser:
Yaupon
proposal
‘concern’
By Richard Nubel
Municipal Editor
Consolidation of Long Beach and
Yaupon Beach can only work if
Yaupon Beach rescinds its annexa
tion ordinance, a Long Beach resi
dent told town council last week.
Long Beach resident Rosetta
Short, long active in municipal
affairs, said she supports consolida
tion of the two municipalities to
form the new Town of Oak Island,
but feels that Yaupon Beach should
be asked, as a condition of the con
solidation, to forsake its plan to
annex 554 acres along Long Beach
Road, Airport Road and Fish
Factory Road on the mainland.
On October 1, Long Beach Town
Council and Yaupon Beach Board of
Commissioners announced plans to
explore consolidation of the two
municipal corporations to form the
new Town of Oak Island. Target
date for completion of the consoli
dation is July 1, 1999, if three task
committees exploring the consolida
tion process report favorably on
merging finances, government
structures and services.
Southeast Brunswick Sanitary
District has filed suit, seeking to
overturn a Yaupon Beach ordinance
of annexation of the land, now in its
jurisdiction. If that suit is unsuccess
ful the annexation will be complete,
and Yaupon Beach corporate limits
will reach from the Oak Island
bridge to the Long Beach Road and
Fish Factory Road intersection on
September 1, 1999.
Ms. Short said the concerns of the
mainland area and the concerns of
the island proper are fundamentally
different.
“Consolidation will only be viable
now if the Yaupon line stays where
it is,” Ms. Short warned.
She also complained the consoli
dation proposition was presented to
citizens as a "fait accomplit" at a
September 30 joint meeting of the
two towns’ governing boards. She
said no mention of the Yaupon
Beach annexation was made at that
time.
“Annexation should have been
discussed by one or both mayors,”
Ms. Short said.
She said state coastal grants may
be jeopardized if a mainland com- '
ponent is added to the town and the
new Town of Oak Island may be bit
ing off more than it can chew by
adding an area with a very different
development history that has only
been guided by zoning ordinances
for a few years.
Do we need the bitterness Long
Beach Road residents have for
Yaupon Beach spilling all over
them?” Ms. Short asked. “I-really
think the mess on Long Beach Road
is too far gone to beautify it. So we
don’t need it.”
Two other residents asserted Long
Beach and Yaupon Beach commis
sioners had already committed to
consolidation of the two towns and
said the public would be left out of
the decisions.
“From what I understand, this is a
done deal,” resident Bud Deitz said.
.“From what I was told, the citizens
will have no further say. We voted
for you guys and you’re going to do
it. Is there going to be a referen
See Yaupon, page 6
City officials say some Southport residents still
haven’t.fully adjusted to solid waste collection pro
cedures changed in July. ; -
Specifically, some city residents have continued
to place yard debris at curbside for collection. The
city stopped collecting yard debris from the ground
at curbside in July when Southport contracted with
Waste Industries Inc. to remove yard debris. Yard
debris must now be placed in the older of the two
collection bins most city residents now have.
“All grass clippings and leaves must be either irt
(90-gallon) containers or in plastic bags placed
beside the container,” a memorandum from the city
says. “Loose piles of leaves or grass clippings will
not be picked up.” •
Brush and limes must be tied in bundles no more
than five feet in length or 70 pounds in weight and
placed at roadside for collection.
Yard debris 'is collected once weekly on
Wednesdays in South-port.’ Each household in
Southport is billed $7.04 monthly to support the
once-a-week debris Collection and the city’s curb
side recycling program
Anyone placing debris along any city street or
state highway, not in compliance with the present
city ordinance, is subject to being fined,” a public
notice from City Hall this week says