TownTalk: The Dangers of Illicit Fentanyl

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It can’t be overstated: The only safe drug you can take is one that is prescribed for you and comes from a pharmacy, said Cathy Hazlett, substance use prevention & treatment program manager with Granville-Vance Public Health.

Hazlett will be the featured speaker at tonight’s community information series at Baskerville Funeral Home. The talk begins at 6 p.m. and is open to the public.

Hazlett was a guest on Tuesday’s TownTalk and discussed the science of addiction, street drugs and some tips for parents about how to help their children steer clear of potentially deadly situations involving illicit drugs.

Research has shown that teenaged brains are not fully developed, Hazlett said. Specifically, the frontal cortex – the part of the brain that is responsible for thinking about the consequences of actions, she said.

Teens’ brains are “biologically structured to take risks – that’s how they’re wired,” she said. So, when a young person wants to try something, and if that something has fentanyl in it, it can have deadly consequences.

Similarly, people who abuse drugs – even marijuana – undergo physical changes to their brain structure, she noted.

Addiction becomes a disease of the brain, she said. “That drug has taken over the brain,” and the addict no longer thinks logically when it comes to using drugs. The overuse of opioids quickly became a crisis because addiction can happen so quickly, Hazlett said.

Fentanyl – a potent synthetic opioid – is pervasive in counterfeit drugs that are sold on the street and people who buy drugs from dealers have no idea what they’re actually getting.

“There’s no guarantee that what you’re getting is going to be fentanyl free,” Hazlett said.

Warning people about the dangers of using illicit drugs is only part of the education piece that Hazlett shares in the community. Another part includes raising awareness about harm reduction – steps drug users and others can take to reduce the chance of an overdose.

Of course, the best outcome for drug users is to seek treatment and get into a recovery program, she said.

But if that is not an option, at least have Narcan nearby and don’t use alone, she said. There also are test strips available to determine if the drug you are getting ready to use has traces of fentanyl.

Although it can be scary to think about, parents should keep the lines of communication open with their children to steer them away from risky behaviors, often driven by peer pressure.

Hazlett suggests asking open-ended questions to encourage dialogue and avoid sounding judgmental.

“Come up with strategies to say ‘no’,” Hazlett said.

Both Granville County and Vance County will receive millions of dollars over the next 18 years from the multi-billion opioid settlement. Granville County currently has two projects – one that helps inmates in the county jail get treatment and stay clean after they’re released and another that has created a post-overdose response team that follows up on EMS calls that involve drug overdoses.

Vance County will hold a meeting at 4 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 16 to discuss options for projects. The meeting will be held in the county administration building.

One simple step anyone can take: make sure you store safely and properly dispose of any unused medication, whether prescription or over-the-counter. Some pharmacies will take unused or outdated medicines, and local police departments and sheriff’s offices have secure bins where you can take medicines.

Dispose of them in a safe manner, but please, not down the sink or flushed in the toilet. That just contributes to water contamination.

She’ll have some lockboxes with her at tonight’s meeting for people to use at home to store the medicines they are currently taking.

“Keeping medicines locked up is not a bad idea,” she said.

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TownTalk: McGregor Live! Series

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When the lights dim this Saturday night at McGregor Hall, the audience can expect to be wowed – the Traveling Salvation Show has come to town!

It’s the first in the 2024-25 McGregor Live! series, which features some top touring companies mixed with local talent taking the stage to entertain audiences into the fall, winter and beyond.

“It is a really energetic, fun show,” said McGregor Hall Executive Director Mark Hopper of the Saturday show, a tribute band of sorts to music legend Neil Diamond.

“This is a really professional outfit,” Hopper said, “with a top-shelf band.” The show begins at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 14.

The company travels with a live band, backup singers and terrific lighting to create an unforgettable concert, with a nod to Diamond’s extensive body of work over the course of many decades of performing in arenas and concert venues all over the world.

Purchase season tickets for McGregor Live! at https://www.mcgregorhall.org/

The price is $135 – a bargain no matter how you slice it, Hopper said.

“It’s a real value – the price is NOT indicative of the level of performance,” he said. “You will not be able to attend this kind of entertainment for this cost.” Hopper takes great pride in keeping ticket prices as low as possible – he said nobody will pay more than $35 for a show at McGregor Hall.

As executive director, it’s Hopper’s job to manage the calendar, booking shows and other types of entertainment during the year.

It’s not as simple as making a phone call and booking an act, however. Sometimes, he can schedule a performance for a touring company that’s traveling between shows say, in Charlotte and Richmond, or between Asheville and Wilmington.

And as important as landing those big-name acts is, Hopper said it’s the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to generating revenue.

The annual sponsorship campaign just ended for the upcoming season includes more than 100 businesses and others who recognize the impact performances at McGregor Hall has on the local economy – retail, lodging, restaurants and more, Hopper said.

The sponsorships are “a huge portion of our income,” he added, and make it possible to keep ticket prices affordable so the whole community can attend and enjoy plays, concerts and more at the 1,000-seat entertainment venue.

If the big acts represent the tip of the revenue iceberg, Hopper said all the rentals and community events comprise the other two-thirds that goes unnoticed. Whether it’s summertime family reunions, church services throughout the year or other competitions, Hopper said McGregor Hall is a place the community uses and enjoys.

Here’s a quick rundown of the rest of the performances scheduled for season’s McGregor Live! series:

  • Nov. 2-3, 9-10 – “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” – about 100 members of cast and crew are in rehearsals now for this local production, “just about the biggest one we’ve ever tackled,” Hopper said. He is the show’s director and he said the storyline isn’t in lockstep with the Disney movie, but the music comes straight from movie score. “This one’s going to be a big deal,” he said.
  • Dec. 20 – “Grand Ol’ Christmas Show” brings to the stage all the trappings of a classic variety show – Hopper said it’s a great family show that will surely put everyone in a holiday mood. This company is based in Texas, and brings a dozen performers who will sing, dance and tell stories to create “a really good family night,” Hopper said.
  • Feb. 14-16, 22-23 – The Bridges of Madison County – with four shows in February, this performance, also directed by Hopper, will debut on Valentine’s Day. Auditions will be held in October, and Hopper said he expects to draw interest from a great distance to earn a spot in the eight-member cast. “Nobody in the Triangle has tackled this before,” he said. By the way, there will be a special dinner available on Opening Night – Feb. 14 – in the Gallery, so Hopper said folks can opt to add a special Valentine’s dinner before the curtain rises.
  • Mar. 27 – Shadow Dance “is the BIG one,” Hopper said. A company called Catapult will tell stories via silhouette. This group was on the TV show “America’s Got Talent” and is doing a two-month tour on the East Coast, Hopper said. “It’s the most unique, fascinating thing you’ll see on the stage…it’s mesmerizing to watch them.”

Visit www.mcgregorhall.org to see the full calendar of events.

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TownTalk: Around Old Granville: A Visit To Cokesbury And Vicksboro

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The North Carolina Room at Thornton Library in Oxford is full of all kinds of books, maps and bound volumes of all sorts and conditions.

And cookbooks.

“I must say, God bless people who do cookbooks,” said Mark Pace, North Carolina Room specialist and local historian.

Located among all those historical tomes are more than 100 local cookbooks, and Pace said they are helpful to him in his research.

These cookbooks, often published as a fundraising effort for churches, civic groups and volunteer fire departments, surely contain lots of favorite recipes but also some nuggets about the history of the organization.

And that’s exactly where Pace got some of the information about Cokesbury for Thursday’s Around Old Granville segment of TownTalk.

As he was doing a little research, he came across a cookbook from Cokesbury Methodist Church and “sure enough, there’s a nice page in there about the founding of the church.”

And when he fielded a question about when the fire department was started there, he got his hands on a cookbook that the ladies auxiliary group had published and found out all about it.

Pace and WIZS’s Bill Harris talked about the communities of Vicksboro and Cokesbury, both located in the area of the county known as Sandy Creek Township.

Vicksboro was originally known as Coley’s Crossroads, Pace said, and there was a post office located there called Steedsville that operated from 1884 to 1894. Pace said it’s unclear how the name change came about, but one theory is that a Steedsville postmaster had an affinity for Vicksburg, MS and changed the name to VicksBORO to avoid confusion with the post office in the Mississippi town.

The little communities like Cokesbury and Vicksboro that dot the countryside often had their own little businesses that it was known for.

If you grew up in the 1960’s and ‘70’s in Vance County, there’s a chance your parents took you to the shoe store in Cokesbury. There was a shoe store and a small textile store in Justice, Pace said, and a dry cleaners in Manson. In the 1950’s and ‘60s, Egypt Mountain had a sewing shop where folks could buy sewing notions and cloth, Pace said.

Perhaps the heart and soul of the community out in Sandy Creek Township, however, was Aycock School, he said.

It was built as a consolidated school in 1925 and named for the former governor, Charles B. Aycock, known as “the education governor,” Pace said.

“It was really state of the art for its day,” he added. There was a gym and a teacherage located on the site of the original school on Vicksboro Road.

Listen to the show in its entirety at wizs.com.

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TownTalk: Vance Recovery

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The road to recovery from addiction does not look the same for everyone, but it’s only natural for people to think that what is working for them is what is best for others, too.

Twelve-step programs like AA and NA, and faith-based programs that focus on celebrating recovery are just a couple of paths that get a lot of attention – and publicity.

But there’s a stigma attached to programs that prescribe medications to help addicts kick the habit of using street drugs like heroin and Fentanyl.

It’s a stigma felt not only by patients, but also by the professionals that work in clinics like Vance Recovery, which uses the MOUD method to help people on their own path to recovery.

MOUD stands for Medications to Treat Opioid Use Disorder, and Vance Recovery’s Program Director John Mattocks said he would love for people plagued by addiction to be encouraged and celebrated for choosing the MOUD approach instead of it being a last resort.

“When someone walks through our doors, they’re desperate,” he said.

Vance Recovery is one of nine – soon to be 11 – clinics owned and operated by Dr. Eric Morse, a national leader in nationally acclaimed leader in the field of opioid treatment and recovery programs.

“Stigma is definitely the number one thing,” Morse said, adding that whatever path works is fine. But because everyone’s brain works differently, one specific recovery program doesn’t fit all addicts.

Using prescribed medications to help lift a patient from the grip of addiction can be an effective method, and the staff at Vance Recovery is dedicated to helping patients navigate the recovery process.

The process could take a couple of years, Morse said, for a patient to gain sobriety from their preferred substance. And then, after a year of being sober – through holidays and other events that could be triggers for using again – only then will a gradual taper of the substitute prescribed meds begin for another six months to a year.

There are ways to earn take-home meds so patients aren’t making daily trips to the center, he added.

“The medical evidence is so strong for MOUD,” Morse said. “I really feel passionate about ending the discrimination of patients who are following that protocol…I really want to see us respect the medical evidence, respect the science, the research and open up the doors for people to get life-saving medicine.”

Opening doors is literally what Vance Recovery is getting ready to do when it opens a larger facility next month at 932 W.Andrews Ave., in the space formerly occupied by Fastenal.

“I could see us doubling the number of people,” Mattocks said. Although still awaiting some final inspections, staff is planning an Open House on Oct. 10.

Methadone, naltrexone and buprenorphine are the most commonly used drugs to help addicts in recovery.

Patients using these types of medicines, Morse said, are much less likely to die of a subsequent opioid overdose, while making it much more likely that they will stop using the street drugs and stay on their path to recovery.

“You can’t recover if you’re dead,” he said.

The MOUD approach helps “keep them alive so that they can recover.”

Vance Recovery takes steps to educate addicts and their families about the various options available to them, from program specifics to navigating insurance and how to stay on the program if circumstances change.

Katie Lee is a registered nurse who works with patients at Vance Recovery. Lee said she sees people at their worst when they are in the beginning of their program, but she also sees them at their best.

“I’m so proud to work here and be a part of this team,” Lee said.

Staff at Vance Recovery are part of a substance abuse collaborative group that meets monthly to find solutions to the challenges that surround recovery and figure out ways to “reduce barriers and make it easier for people to get into treatment, Mattocks said.

“The pain of this disease is driving change.”

Visit https://www.morseclinics.com/locations/vance-recovery to learn more.

(This post, audio and radio program not a paid ad.)

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Ducky Derby

TownTalk: Ducky Derby Is September 21st

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Head to downtown Henderson on Saturday, Sept. 21 to watch the annual “release” of ducks down Garnett Street.

It’s the 15 annual Ducky Derby to benefit the Franklin Granville Vance Smart Start, and Kimiko Williams said it’s sure to be an afternoon of fun for all.

This year’s festivities begin at 1 p.m., with activities for the children along the race course, – which will become a watery route for when the ducks are spit out the back of the cement mixer to make their way to the finish line.

The ceremonial cement mixer will churn the rubber ducks out onto the street promptly at 2 p.m. at Breckenridge Street – the finish line is a couple of blocks away, near Montgomeryt Street, Williams explained on Tuesday’s TownTalk.

Purchase tickets to sponsor a duck – the first duck to cross the finish line wins $1,000. Second place is Chick fil A for a year, third place is a $250 Sheetz gas card and the last rubber duck to cross the finish line gets $100.

In addition, FGV Smart Start will have a raffle for the cost of a month’s child care.

Organizers say they hope to raise $15,000 this year. Most of the money comes from ticket purchases, but there are community sponsors and in-kind supporters that help add to the bottom line, said Linda Frederickson, FGV Early Childhood Systems director.

And while families must qualify for some of the programs the early childhood agency offers, Frederickson said the Family Resource Centers are available for anyone who wants to learn more.

One resource center is located at the FGV office in Henderson; a second is located on the campus of the Masonic Home for Children in Oxford; and a third is located at Franklinton Elementary School.

“The big spotlight is on the children,” Frederickson said, not just on Derby Day but all year long.

Purchase tickets online at www.fgvsmartstart.org, or from any FGV staff member.

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TownTalk: Oxford Gets Ready For Hot Sauce Festival

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There’ll be a hot time in O-Town this weekend as the 18th annual Hot Sauce Contest and Festival takes over downtown streets for an expanded two-day event.

Granville County Tourism Director Angela Allen said this year’s festival kicks off Friday, Sept. 6 and continues for a full day of activities the next day that includes live music, food vendors, crafts and more.

Vendors will be set up Friday evening from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. to showcase their goods, Allen said on Tuesday’s TownTalk. There will be live music by Gump Fiction, which she describes as a cover tribute band playing tunes from the 1990’s and 2000’s. There also will be an 18-hole glow-in-the-dark miniature golf course set up near Little John Street.

If that’s a little too staid for your tastes, step right up to the Flying Hatchet and try your hand at ax throwing.

There will be more live music throughout the day on Saturday, and all eyes – and taste buds – will be focused on the pepper-eating stage from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. to see which pepper-eating contestant can outlast other competitors.

This year, the local cooperative extension agency is getting in on the action by sponsoring a pepper decorating contest, Allen said. It’s just another example of how the community comes together to support the festival.

“At the root of it, it’s all about community,” she said.

But it’s also about the peppers. Granville County’s own Bailey Farms is the largest pepper distributor on the East Coast, so when Julia Overton originally hatched the idea of a pepper festival almost two decades ago, the pepper was an easy choice.

It’s gone from a small gathering in the basement of Stovall’s (now The Hub on Main) to a two-day street festival that brings pepper-loving people from all over to sample, shop and enjoy sauces that range from mild to wild.

“We’ve gotten over 200 entries of sauces,” Allen said, and judges have narrowed down their choices. In addition to the traditional categories of sauces, bbq sauces and spices and rubs, this year’s competition includes a category for salsa.

More than 50 of the sauce-related vendors will be at the festival, so folks can sample different products to find the perfect one for them.

Allen said this annual gathering is really becoming an event for foodies and for producers not just from Granville County, but from across North Carolina.

“It’s going to be a pretty awesome weekend in Granville County,” Allen said.

Visit www.nchotsauceandfestival.com for a complete schedule of events.

 

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TownTalk: Budding Chefs Can Sign Up For 4-H Cooking Teams

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If Micah Sharpe can get young people to buy in to 4-H at an early age, the chances are better that they’ll stick with it through their teenage years. And if some of those youngsters are interested in learning their way around a kitchen to create healthy, nutritious foods, the Vance County 4-H Youth Development agent said they’ll be able to whip up something a little more exotic than Oodles of Noodles.

A team of local 4-Hers from Vance and Warren counties participated in the “Got To Be NC” festival competition back in May and they represented themselves well, said Nitasha Kearney, who works in the Granville County Extension Office’s Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program.

Kearney and Sharpe teamed up to guide the young chefs-in-training on the path to the competition, called the Dinah Gore Healthy Food Challenge. The kids learn the 4-H curriculum from Sharpe and then Kearney came in with her EFNEP curriculum.

The new classes for youth begin on Thursday, Oct. 10 at 5:30 p.m., with the ultimate goal of being in the 2025 competition and bringing home the gold. The classes are free.

“My very first lesson is going to be on food safety,” she said. There are four simple rules: Clean, Separate, Chill, Cook.

Team member Kadin Bowden can attest to that. The 11-year-old Vance Charter student said he learned that “you wash your hands before you touch anything in the kitchen – 20 seconds with soap and water.”

Bowden said he’s learned a lot about cooking and enjoys cooking for his family. Knowing the rules of cooking – using the right temperatures and knowing the right way to cook different items keeps foods “safe for you to eat and not get sick.”

He and his teammate and brother Timothy, see their dad Ken Bowden show off his cooking skills in his food truck T&K Best Bites in Town.

“He taught me all the basic stuff about cooking like Miss Nitasha and Mr. Sharpe,” Kadin said. Breading catfish, cooking eggs, chicken, hotdogs and more, Kadin and Timothy have a role model close by to emulate.

Team Captain Jaque Oliver said he took his role seriously. “I want to try to help as a team,” Oliver said. “Let them have fun, have a nice time, but don’t let anybody down.”

In the competition, the team had to create a salad with a homemade dressing within the prescribed 40-minute time limit. They were given a list of ingredients and one “mystery” ingredient. The final product looked pretty impressive, he agreed, especially since they added some pork balls and fresh strawberries and blueberries.

The setting for the competition didn’t really resemble those popular cooking shows on TV, but there was a nice-sized table that all the team members could fit around to do prep work, Oliver said.

In their own preparation before the competition, Kearney estimated that the team already had created 40 different recipes. “We expect rice, we expect pork chops,” Kearney said, referring to probable foods they’d be working with in the competition. “We don’t expect goat cheese.”

The final product must be healthy and delicious, but the team also must utilize food safety skills in its preparation.

Jamera Oliver is Jaque’s 12-year-old sister and also a member of the team. She said she’s a bit of a party planner and said she’s likely to create healthy dishes as a result of what she’s learned in 4H.

She’s got plenty of experience helping her parents with holiday food prep – turkey and mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving, and candy apples at Halloween. She said pasta dishes are pretty easy and so is stir fry, but her favorite dish to make is lasagna.

She likes the idea of working with a team to create food. “I feel like these things will help me out through life,” she said, meaning not just cooking, but also other things too, like making new friends. “It was fun working with everyone here, being a team.”

Kearney said “fun” is a key ingredient in cooking and preparing meals that she relishes sharing with her community.

“I feel like this job was made for me,” she said. “The fact that I get to show my community how to cook, prepare healthy foods, (and) how to have fun” while doing it, is icing on the cake.

Visit https://vance.ces.ncsu.edu/ to learn more about 4-H in Vance County or call the office at 252.438.8188.

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TownTalk: Frank Sossamon – Litter Clean Up Program

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In speaking with constituents across Vance County, State Rep. Frank Sossamon said he picked up on a familiar theme: litter.

“Litter kept coming up as our Number 1 problem,” Sossamon said. “It’s a plague on our county.”

And he’s making a connection with the trash that fouls the roadsides and public safety. A public safety task force is being assembled to strengthen a community-wide partnership of agencies and organizations to help improve the situation.

Overgrown trees or debris that obscures road signs, public safety issue. Trash blowing across the highways and interstates, public safety hazard.

“If we’re going to tackle it, we’re going to tackle all of it,” Sossamon said on Wednesday’s TownTalk.

A good first step is the kickoff of a litter campaign that will take place on Friday, Sept. 13 at 9 a.m. at the city’s Operations Center on Beckford Drive. Sossamon said there have been litter pickups before, but this is the first full-on campaign in the area.

“We’ve got to change the mentality of our citizens,” he said. Illegal dumping along roadsides, throwing fast-food containers from vehicles, junk cars cluttering yards – are just a few examples of what needs to be addressed through education and through awareness.

Groups ranging from civic organizations and churches to the local Chamber of Commerce and the local school district are all part of the community-wide partnership.

And the city is going to implement an “adopt-a-block” program to encourage residents to tidy up even a small section of the city. “Hopefully we can get every block adopted,” Sossamon said. A couple of fringe benefits of getting outside to pick up trash include extra physical activity and getting to know our neighbors, he said.

“The potential is to make the community even healthier,” he said.

Sossamon is putting stock in the younger generation for everything from reminding their elders not to litter to sending letters to the editor about cleaning up streets, sidewalks and roadways.

A letter-writing campaign provides extra benefits as well, he said. “It helps them academically, improves their critical thinking,” but youngsters also can take pride when they see their name in print.

“The schools have already opened the doors for us to come in,” Sossamon said, adding that trash containers painted with children’s handprints are in place as a way to build capacity.

“Education is what we’re after,” Sossamon said, and the public safety task force will be driving that home in as many places as possible.

The goal is to not to have more and more groups who fan out into the county to pick up trash. The goal is to have fewer and fewer litter sweeps because there is less trash to pick up.

We’ve all probably witnessed a driver or passenger in the vehicle in front of us throw something out the window, and Sossamon said NCDOT’s “Swat a Litterbug” campaign is one way to discourage littering.

If you see someone throw out trash and can get the vehicle’s license plate number, you can submit it to the NCDOT and the car owner will get a letter to report the offense. The letter is just a warning for the first offense

“The second time, you won’t get a letter, you’ll get a citation,” Sossamon said. The link to report a litterbug is https://www.ncdot.gov/litter/default.aspx

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TownTalk: Introducing Matthew McLaughlin, Kerr-Vance Academy

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Matthew McLaughlin said he didn’t set out to be a school administrator – he really wanted to be a middle school band teacher.

And McLaughlin was quite happy doing just that for many years.

Now, after close to two decades in the field of private education, he finds himself not in front of a bunch of tweens and teens learning music, but as the Head of School at Kerr-Vance Academy.

“School leadership and administration wasn’t on my radar,” McLaughlin said on Tuesday’s TownTalk. But as he took on various leadership roles, he was led to the University of Notre Dame to pursue a graduate degree that is specifically designed for private school leaders.

Since private schools are funded differently and governed differently than public schools, McLaughlin said private school leadership inherently involves aspects of business that public school leaders may not have to contend with.

He described his studies at Notre Dame as training that marries education and business, which he said is critical for private school leaders.

“We have to have some different conversations,” McLaughlin said. “The facilities are our facilities,” and they have to have some “pretty tight operational procedures” in place to make sure those facilities are maintained properly.

And although McLaughlin has only been on the job a month or so, he’s already witnessed one capital improvement project at his new workplace.

The school is finishing up work on a major renovation project at the Crawford Gymtorium, a multipurpose facility on the KVA campus that has been used over the years for everything from basketball games to graduation exercises.

They’ll have a ribbon-cutting on Friday, Sept. 13 at 3 p.m. to unveil the new gym floor, which McLaughlin said looks amazing.

A crew gutted the floor down to the concrete pad and built it back, he said, noting that it’s rated to last for 100 years.

Elected officials, alumni and others from the community are invited to attend the ribbon-cutting, which will take place during the KVA Fall Classic, which will bring several area schools together for two days of volleyball and soccer matches.

McLaughlin said he sees value in having a school like KVA in a community like Henderson, and you’ll never hear him say negative things about charter schools or traditional public schools. There’s room for all.

“I’ve made a career out of private schools,” he said. “There are some things that we do really, really well that can’t be recreated in the public schools…(but) they can do things that we’ll never be able to do.”

One of KVA’s advantages, he said, is the way it intentionally creates a feeling of community among its students and their families. There’s a day care on campus, so a child spend his or her entire school career at one school. That’s a long time to build community, McLaughlin said.

That dovetails perfectly with what McLaughlin said he has worked throughout his career for – watching and overseeing “the development of the whole person – it’s not just about reading and math. I love being a part of that and being a part of their story.”

Want to learn more? Visit https://www.kerrvance.com/.

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TownTalk: James Baines – Vance County Board of Elections

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No doubt, county boards of elections all across the state – and beyond – have been preparing for quite some time for the launch of in-person early voting and requests for absentee ballots in advance of the Nov. 5 General Election.

Vance County is no exception, but local elections officials have had an extra layer of logistics to deal with, thanks to the results of a couple of routine inspections – one by the fire department and one by Homeland Security.

As a result, Vance County Board of Elections Chair James Baines said folks who visit the elections board offices in the Henry A. Dennis Building in downtown Henderson may notice a few changes. And if they want to come down to witness election results, they may find themselves on the balcony outside.

Turns out, Baines said on Monday’s TownTalk, that the elections board is going to have to “downsize” the number of people allowed into the space to wait for elections returns, adding that attendance for previous election nights “had been exceeding capacity that is safe and secure.”

“In November, when they all come, there will be a limited space for poll workers,” Baines said, adding that he and local elections officials will adhere to the fire code recommendations.

An inspection by a Homeland Security agent produced findings that were passed on to the county manager and county commissioners, he said.

The agent “told the director that the election board was not a safe place for the director or any staff in Vance County” and recommended that the director’s office and that of the deputy director be moved from the front of the office space to the rear “for security reasons.”

According to Baines, Elections Board Director Hayley Rawls submitted the findings to County Manager C. Renee Perry, who relayed the information to the board of commissioners for action.

In the meantime, elections officials continue to plan for the start of in-person early voting, which begins Thursday, Oct. 17.

Vance County has two early voting locations – one at Aycock Rec Center on Carey Chapel Road and the second at the former Eaton-Johnson gym located on the county government complex on Beckford Drive.

Baines reminds voters that the City of Henderson Operations Center is no longer a site for early voting.

Early voting continues for “two weeks, back-to-back,” from Baines said, “and the last time (residents) can early vote will be Saturday, Nov. 2. Polls close that day at 3 p.m.

Absentee ballots will be mailed out beginning Friday, Sept. 6. The deadline to request an absentee ballot is 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 29, Baines said.

All completed ballots must be received by the time the polls close at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 5.

Completed ballots may be returned in person to the board of elections office or to either of the early voting locations, Baines said. Any voters casting an absentee ballot needs to make sure that there are two signatures on the form – the voter’s signature and the signature of a witness.

Baines said requests for absentee ballots usually come from nursing homes, the homebound elderly, military personnel and people “who don’t wat to get out into the hustle and bustle” of election day.

“I’m pretty sure, with the general election coming up – and it’s going to be one for the books – that we’ll be getting large requests from across the county” for absentee ballots.

Visit https://www.vancecounty.org/departments/board-of-elections/ or call 252.492.3730 to learn more.

TownTalk Airs on WIZS M-F at 11 a.m.

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