/dmf 'til uti/k-"* Supplement included in this issue. mu Hook, Line & Sinker The latest fishing report and a newly chartered safe boating organization check out all these and more on Pages 11-C and 12-C. THf nniiiun Twenty-eighth Year, Number 3* ?Z'ON . * t'Uu! B I NDER " ? H I N&f 'i *f\ i N I /i - 1 . CIWO TM t BRUNSWICK BEACUfl V: Sign Of The Times Brunswick County's newest recycling center Is set to open Saturday in the Holaen beach area. For the details, see Page 12-A. anaiione, North Carolina, Thursday, June 28, 1990 25c Per Copy 92 Pages, 4 Sections Holden Beach ABC Store May Open Friday The Brunswick County ABC Commission's first store will defi nitely open Saturday at 9 a.m. and could open sometime Friday, ABC Board member:; agreed Tuesday. Tiio Brunswick County ABC Board also unanimously approved a store liability insurance policy by Brunswick Insurance Service of Supply at an annual premium of $2,198. After a short meeting, the board recessed to the new store on Holden Beach Road and board members and store manager Dorothy Kelly began sorting and pricing the 737 cases of liquor that have been deliv ered to the store. State ABC officials were sched uled to come to the store Wednes day to begin helping set up the store and stack the merchandise and the store's computerized cash register was scheduled to be set up Wednes day. Douglas M. Robinson II, assis (Sec STORE. Page 2-A) Questions Still Remain About Ash Drowning A lot of questions still remained unanswered Tuesday in the Satur day night drowning of a Shallottc man in a pond off Alligator Road near Ash, according to Sheriff's Det. Lindsay Walton. Larry William Miller, 38, drown ed while apparenUy swimming dur ing a camping party at a private pond in a sccludcd location in the woods, Walton said. "It was a camping trip and party," Walton said. "People were partying and drinking. Practically everybody was intoxicated and nobody can tell us what was going on. We haven't reached any conclusions yet." He said people apparently were in and out of the water during the party. Walton said Tuesday that he still had not been able to interview ev eryone he needs to talk to about the drowning. Someone called the Sheriff's De partment between 11-12 p.m. Satur day night to report a missing per son, Walton said. The Sheriff's De partment and Waccamaw Fire and Rescue searched Saturday night and then returned Sunday morning and found the man's body, he said. Walton said Miller was a person who was "in and out" of Brunswick County and that he recently return ed to Shallotie. BEACON Fill rttOTO BY DOUG BUTTER FIREWORKS will light the night skies at several locations, in cluding Campground By the Sea at H olden Reach, as Brunswick County celebrates the Fourth of July next week. One of the largest events is the N.C. Fourth of July Festival at South port; details on Page 8-A. Fireworks To Light Skies At Beach , Batfieship Aiso Southport's not the only placc to go for a dazzling display of fire works on the Fourth of July. At Holdcn Beach, Campground By The Sea near the west end of the island will hold its Independence Day fireworks display at dark, about 9 p.m. Visitors can go to the camp ground to watch, or view the light spectacle from elsewhere on the is land, from across the. waterway or from Ocean Isle Beach. A display of fireworks will also be launched from the USS North Carolina Battleship Memorial, on the Cape Fear River near the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge at Wilming ton. The free show will begin at 9 p.m. The fireworks will he visible over the Cape Fear River between Wilm ington's Riverfront Park and the Battleship Memorial. However, pa trons of the Independence Day pre sentation of the Battleship's Sound and Light Spectacular, The Immor tal Showboat, will literally have grandstand scats. The outdoor drama will begin ap proximately 20 minutes after the fireworks display ends. The Immortal Showboat tells the story of the battleship's role in the Pacific in World War II through voice, music, sound cITccls and more than 4(X) lights of varying col or and intensity. Special effects in clude 20mm and 40mm antiaircraft gunfire, the blast and flame of large 5- and 16-inch guns and a simulated torpedo explosion. Admission fees to the Sound and Light Spectacular are $3.50 for adults (age 12 and older) and S1.75 for children ages 6-11. Admission is free to those 5 and under. Commissioners Cut About $600,000 From Budget BY BOB HORNE The Brunswick County Board of Commissioners had cut approximately $600,000, or between 1 1/2 cents and 2 cents on the tax rate, in a series of three budget sessions through Tuesday. The commissioners were to have another budget session Wednesday, with some of them vowing to adopt the budget, which still called for about a 10 1/2-ccnt in crease in the tax rate Tuesday, at the Wednesday ses sion. The board also voted to shift $235,000 in bond money, which had been earmarked for improvements on the Public Assembly Building a! the County Government Complex in Bolivia, to engineering design for water-system improvements and expansion. Commissioner Kelly Holdcn made the motion Friday to designate the funds for the water-system im provements and rescind previous action that committed those funds to the Public Assembly Building. It passed on a 4-1 vote, with Commissioner Grace Bcaslcy dis senting because, she said, she arrived late for the meet ing and didn't understand the vote without being in volved in the discussion. Holdcn said $1.9 million will be available for the water system in January and he would like to have the engineering design completed and "be ready to move on it" when those funds become available. Commission Chairman Gene Pinkcrton made mo tions that the county add 11 1/2 of the 42 new positions that were included in the recommended budget. He pro posed to start a county EMT program with seven new employees and to add a computer programmer/analyst, a person in the Sheriff's Department to implement a Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, one of two people requested for the Clean County Department and 1 1/2 requested for the Engineering Department. He said that, as new departments, the Clean County and Engineering departments "don't even have basic people yet." All of the commissioners expressed concern about the growth of county government. Pinkcrton said the county had 410 employees in 1987-88. That number, he said, increased by 5 percent to 431 in 1988-89, he said, then 2 percent to 440 in 1989-90. The 42 recommended increase to 482 in 1990-91 would be a 9 percent in crease, he said. Commissioner Frankie Rabon said, "If we keep go ing, we'll be the biggest industry in the county." Pinkerton's motion Friday to employ an EMT su pervisor beginning July 1 at a salary of $22,500 and six other EMTs for nine months of the Fiscal Year passed 3-2, with Mrs. Bcaslcy and Commissioner Benny Ludlum dissenting. Mrs. Bcaslcy opposed "piece-milling" such a pro gram and said, "I can see the supervisor, but I just think you're talking about six people in that budget you don't know what you're going to do with." She also ques tioned whether such a program could use Rescue Squads' ambulances and how other necessary equip ment would be purchased. Ludlum said he agrees with the program but said, "I think we need to work some things out. I think we need to chargc, sincc insurance will pay for it It's worth de laying three months or six months to do right. But we can't do it today; I want to see it on paper. The north won't support it in the south, the south won't support it in the north and Mr. Pinkcrton won't support it in the west. You have to put 120 EMTs out there and do it countywidc." But Pinkcrton said his idea was to employ the su pervisor and allow that person to help set up the pro gram. He also specified that the program would be sep arate from the county Emergency Management office. He said his proposal would cost no more than employ ing the six positions that were included in the recom mended budget. No other mention was made of charg ing for the service. Mrs. Beasley and Ludlum also opposed Pinkerton's motion to include the other 4 1/2 new positions, which also passed 3-2. Then, after commissioners determined that Pinkerton's motion had not done all he intended, he made another motion that no other new positions be added. It passed 4-1, with Mrs. Beasley dissenting, "not because 1 want to go out and hire more people but be cause 1 disagreed with the previous action." However, the board received a visit from Sheriff John CarT Davis Tuesday afternoon. Davis, who had re quested seven new positions and had one approved, told commissioners that, beginning Oct. 1, the state will mandate that female jailers have no other duties. Therefore, he said, he would need five more positions to provide a female jailer 24 hours a day, seven days a week. "1 don't know what we will do if we don't get those positions," Davis told the board, "unless we contract with someone to watch the female inmates." The board took no action on the sheriff's request. The recommended 5 percent across-the-board pay increase for all county employees was approved after one failed motion and discussion on another possibility. Ludlum made a motion that funds equal to the 5 percent increase be divided equally among all county employees, which would have amounted to about $750 per employee. It failed on a 2-3 vote, with Pinkcrton, Mrs. Beasley and Rabon dissenting. Rabon expressed concern for the employees with the higher salaries, some of whom would have received pay increases less than 2 percent under that plan, and initiated discussion for a plan that would give each em (See COMMISSIONERS, Page 2-A) Calabash Cuts Tax Rate 9 Cents BY DOUG RUTTER Calabash Commissioners adopted a budget for fiscal year 1990-91 Tuesday night featuring a hefty 9-cent cut in the tax rate. The tax rale will drop from 24 cents to 15 cents per S100 of property valuation next fiscal year, which starts July 1. Despite the 37 percent drop in the tax rate, however, adoption of the budget did not come without controver sy. As officials went through the spending plan and vot ed on each line item, some board members voiced ob jections about three expenses included in the budget Commissioners George Taubel and Phyllis Manning, who have worked on the issue of trash pickup for sever al months as members of the community services com mittee, opposed the $49,000 budgeted for contractcd sanitation service. As proposed, the S49.000 includes $24,000 for an ex isting contract that provides residential and commercial trash pickup in District 1. The $24,000 will come from Calabash's fund balance, which is a reserve fund built up over the years prior to the merger of Calabash and Carolina Shores. The other $25,000 in the sanitation budget could pay for the disposal of trash dumped in green boxes located in District 2, monitoring of those green boxes and four pickups of yard and bulk waste in both districts during the fiscal year. The town won't have to deal with green box collection in District 2 until Feb. 1, 1991, when the county slops picking up the trash. Commissioners Taubel and Manning Tuesday night restated their earlier objections to the town paying for commercial trash pickup in District 1 . Mrs. Manning said town taxpayers should not subsi dizc businesses by paying for their trash pickup. "As I've said time ami lime again, I see no reason we should pay for commercial pickup," she said. Taubel said the businesses don't pay enough town taxes to cover the cost of curbside trash service. Using the restaurant operated by Commissioner Keith Hardee's wife as an example, Taubel said the town gets about $300 in taxes each year but pays S900 for trash pickup. Other commissioners, however, favored the $49,000 budgeted for sanitation service, and it was approved on a 5-2 vote. Commissioners Taubel and Manning also objected to the S24.000 budgeted for street paving. They said the money budgeted isn't enough to meet the paving needs in Calabash. Taubel suggested the $24,000 be increased to $52,000. But Mrs. Manning was the only board mem ber to support his recommendation, and the allocation was left at S24.000. 1-atcr in the meeting, Taubel objected to the $35,000 budgeted for mowing grass along the sides of the roads. Mowing should be the responsibility of the property owner, he said. 'This is the same thing as picking up commercial trash," he said. "You are satisfying a small number of people." Commissioner Ed Rice joined Taubel in opposing the appropriation, but other board members supported the budgeted expense and it stayed at $35,000. Although commissioners had talked earlier about cut ting the lax rate by 1 3 cents, the board had to adjust the tax cut Tuesday night because state sales tax revenues (See CALABASH, Page 11-A) STAFF PHOTO BY DOUG Bl/TTE* Beating The Heat Mark Leonard of Occur, his Reach bent the heat last week by taking to the surf. He was one of about a dozen surfers and body boarders enjoying good surf conditions last Wednesday near Ocean Isle Beach Fishing Pier.

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