Cooperative Extension with Wayne Rowland: Fire Ants
Listen live at 100.1 FM / 1450 AM / or on the live stream at WIZS.com at 11:50 a.m. Mon, Tues & Thurs.
Click Play!
Tag Archive for: #hendersonnews
SportsTalk: Vipers Ready For Homecoming Against Northern Durham
SportsTalk on WIZS 12:30 p.m. M-Th
The Vance County Vipers Football Team will come home for the first time in this 2024 season and it just so happens that it’s homecoming weekend for Vance County. Head Coach Aaron Elliott came on SportsTalk to talk about his team’s performance last Friday against Orange and to preview Northern Durham this Friday.
The Vipers have now won three straight games thanks to the 14-6 win last Friday over Orange. Head Coach Aaron Elliott believes his squad did a good job. “It feels pretty good, You know what we did see against Orange, was some things that we’ve been working on the past couple of weeks. I think we play better as a team as a whole…we need to find our identity on the offensive side of the ball. We’ve been working all week at really finishing drives. We kind of leave the game open at times, especially last week we had two more opportunities to score against Orange and we really left it out there…we are definitely getting better.”
Coach Elliott gave some differences between playing Orange from last year and playing them last Friday night. “This year they had a lot of returners so obviously they were better on both sides of the ball. They got two really good linebackers that put us in situations that we didn’t want to be in so they played well. you know just watching them be able to move and their offensive line you know their lines were good and they all returned. You know they were bigger and stronger.”
According to the research done by those at WIZS, teams from Vance County and Northern Durham High School have played each other 43 times since Northern Durham opened in 1955. The history between the two schools is there. Coach gives us his insight on what he expects from Northern Durham, “I expect them to wanna come out and spoil our homecoming you know things come and play they get a little momentum coming. Especially them right now they are sitting at 0-3. Right now they want to win a football game so they’re going to come in here with nothing to lose you know trying to play good football and that’s what we’ve been telling our kids this week.” In preparation for Northern Durham, Coach Elliott says that this week has been the “four best practices every day that we’ve had so far this year. I’ve been really been impressed with the kids.”
Vance County has been on the road for the first three games of the season, and regardless of this game being homecoming, Coach Elliott is excited for his team to play in front of the home crowd. “Oh man, we’re excited! We got a lot of good things going on. The field is going to look amazing because of some of the things we did with upgrades. In the facilities, we’ve been working for the last few weeks. When you think about that side of it, it’s great and then you think about the kids you know just having family and friends and it being homecoming and just a lot of things going on we’re pretty excited.
With Granville Central canceling their football season for the 2024 campaign, Vance County needed to find a replacement. Well, they have found one. On Saturday, October 5th, Vance County will host the Cavaliers of East Rutherford from Bostic, NC at 2:00pm. Coach expressed how excited he is that the Vipers found a game to complete their schedule. “Oh man, we were super excited! Especially for them to agree to play because they are a really, really, good, respectable 2A team.”
Coach’s message to the fans for Friday night’s homecoming game against Northern Durham: “Just show out. Show up and support and have a good time. Hopefully, we can put on a pretty good show for them.”
Sounds good to us Coach! Go Vipers!
Vance County hosts Northern Durham on Homecoming for Week 4 of the 2024 season on Friday, September 13th and you can hear all the action on WIZS 1450AM, 100.1FM, and online at wizs.com with pregame starting at 6:50 p.m. and kickoff thereafter at 7:00 p.m.
CLICK PLAY!
TownTalk: Property Tax in Vance County
Vance County residents have until Jan. 6, 2025 to pay their property tax bills before getting hit with a 2 percent interest penalty. That may add insult to injury this year, when many taxpayers are facing higher bills as a result of last year’s revaluation.
Vance County is among a handful of counties across the state that waits eight years – the state’s mandatory maximum interval to conduct revaluation – and some county leaders have said it needs to be done more often to reduce the sting and surprise of pricey tax bills.
The county published a list of questions and answers following the public comment portion of the Sept. 3 county commissioners meeting. Tax bills were sent out on Aug. 22, according to information on the county tax department webpage.
Much of the information had been discussed already, either during meetings of the board of commissioners or budget work sessions – the merits of sticking with a revenue-neutral budget versus the need for capital improvement projects that include a new fire station, 911 call center and jail, just to name a few.
One issue that county officials said they will explore is splitting the tax bill to show the breakdown between city tax and county tax for those city residents who must pay both. This hasn’t been done in more than a decade, and a change could come as soon as the 2025 tax bills.
County commissioners adopted the 2024-25 budget on June 24, which included a 10-cent tax increase per $100 valuation. The basic breakdown of that 10-cent increase is $.01 for salary increases to help attract and retain county employees and $.09 for those future capital projects.
As the county faces more opportunities for growth, be they commercial, industrial or residential, there also is a demand for adequate infrastructure to support that growth.
The question that municipalities and counties face is how to balance that growth – providing more services for residents, creating a better and bigger tax base that ultimately may reduce an undue burden on homeowners.
Property owners could appeal their tax bills, as long as they met a few conditions; there was an online mechanism to appeal property tax bills as part of the revaluation process. But 157 property owners in Vance County who completed an online submission got news that their data had been inexplicably lost during a routine computer program update.
To make matters worse, “the normal backup procedures failed to restore the data. The company is working “to better the situation and recollect the lost data,” the FAQ statement read.
Visit https://www.vancecounty.org/departments/tax-overview/ to learn more.
Click Play!
The Local Skinny! VGCC Foundation Receives $50,000 Grant To Help Small Business Owners
The Vance-Granville Community College Foundation has received a $50,000 grant award from Duke Energy Foundation to support small businesses in the four-county area it ser.
And community college officials have come up with a creative way to make sure that the money is equitably distributed to do the most good.
The VGCC Small Business Center will select grant fund recipients through a series of workshops, one based in each of the four counties the college serves.
Owners of retail shops, restaurants and other small businesses looking to expand, their business, upgrade technology, improve marketing or downtown storefronts are just the kind of participant VGCC’s Small Business Center is looking for.
“We want to see how creative they’ll be,” said Carolyn Perry, director of VGCC’s Small Business Center. The timing right before the holidays could prove extra helpful; some small businesses depend on a brisk holiday sales season to boost their bottom line.
The first workshop will be held next week in Granville County on the South Campus in Creedmoor, Sept. 16-19.
Subsequent workshops will take place in the other three counties served by VGCC:
- Sept. 30 – Oct. 3: VGCC Main Campus, Henderson
- Oct. 7–10: VGCC Warren Campus, Warrenton
- Oct. 14–17: VGCC Franklin Campus, Louisburg
Each workshop session will be comprised of four evening classes for a total of 10 hours of instruction. The sessions will culminate with a five-minute pitch contest, after which five of the session’s 10 participants will receive a $2,500 award to support their small business.
Perry said there are just a few requirements to participate – applicants must be 18 years old and must be residents of the county of the workshop they sign up for. Only one participant per household is allowed and anyone associated with VGCC is not eligible to take part, she said.
If you do a little quick math, $50,000 divided by 4 equals $12,500. There will be 20 awards – 5 per county – which means that each grant will be $2,500.
The first three days of the process will involve coaching and developing a plan that will be pitched on day 4, Perry said, sort of like TV’s “Shark Tank.”
VGCC Dean of Business and Industry Solutions Kyle Burwell, provided details about how the money would be used.
“When you start off with some capital,” Burwell said, you increase a business’s survival rate, not to mention provide stability and create additional employment opportunities. She said it’s a way to help businesses learn how to use funding and market themselves, which creates “a true impact for all of our communities.”
The VGCC Foundation was one of 21 community organizations from across the state to share in $700,000 in this round of funding, said Beth Townsend, Duke Energy local government and community relations manager. Since it was established in 2020, the program has given more than $2 million in grant funds to small businesses across the state.
To learn more about this program and participant requirements, contact Perry at 252.738.3240 or perryc@vgcc.edu.
Click Play!
Cooperative Extension With Jamon Glover: Supporting Father Involvement Program
Cooperative Extension
Click Play!
TownTalk: Angie Ellington – Autumn at Apple Hill Movie
Angie Ellington said she’s been a fan of Hallmark movies for quite some time, and chances are she’ll be tuning in on Saturday, Oct. 5 at 8 p.m. when “Autumn at Apple Hill” premieres. No need for spoiler alerts for Ellington, however – she already knows the story.
In fact, she wrote the book.
Ellington is a local author who has had numerous books published, but “Autumn at Apple Hill” is the first one that has been made into a movie.
Main characters Elise and Luke are portrayed by Erin Cahill and Wes Brown, and Ellington said they’re both good choices for the characters she first created on paper.
Erin’s hair color is different in the movie, but other than that, “I could totally see Erin as Elise,” Ellington said on Wednesday’s TownTalk. And Brown, she said, “fits the description of Luke perfectly,” even down to the Tom Cruise-like smile Ellington writes in the novel.
Sometimes, movies based on books turn out quite different from the original story, but Ellington said that’s not the case with “Autumn at Apple Hill.”
For one thing, the producers kept the title, she said. And they kept the name of the town the same as the one in the book.
The movie is set in upstate New York, not Maine where Ellington has the character of Elise coming home to operate her grandparents’ bed and breakfast.
In the book, Luke comes to town to open a bistro, but Ellington said that the movie has him as a CFO of a hotel chain – a storyline change made into “something you can tell in a 90 -minute movie,” she explained.
The movie is scheduled to air at least four times during the “Fall into Love” themed movies on Hallmark, Ellington said. Visit https://www.hallmarkchannel.com/fall-into-love/fall-into-love-2024-movies to learn more.
And there will be other events to promote the movie as the premiere date draws near, including what Ellington called a “Zoom-along.”
A woman with an Instagram and Facebook link called “Hungry for Hallmark” creates recipes that pair with Hallmark movies.
What’s on the menu to go with “Autumn at Apple Hill,” you ask?
“She’s going to make an apple tart,” Ellington said. Cahill will take part in the Zoom-along and Ellington will join the small-screen activity for a few minutes as well.
Find out more at https://angienellington.com/
Click on any of the titles there to be directed to Amazon where the books can be purchased in book form or in audible format.
CLICK PLAY BELOW TO LISTEN!
Home And Garden Show
On the Home and Garden Show with Vance Co. Cooperative Ext.
- Vance County Regional Farmers Market is still open on Saturdays 8am-1pm
- Soil samples are still free
- Now is a good time to harvest the herbs that you are growing
- It’s also a good time to renovate your tall fescue lawn
- You need to fertilize your tall fescue with 1 LB of Nitrogen per 1000 sq. ft. in September
- Carolina Lawns Publication, available free of charge
- Use a 3 variety mix of tall fescue
The Vance County Regional Farmers Market is located at 210 Southpark Dr., Henderson, NC 27536
Click Play!
Rebuild Communities NC, AARP Team Up To Offer Technology Classes For Senior Adults
Information courtesy of Edythe Thompson, Rebuild Communities NC
Rebuild Communities NC has partnered with Senior Planet from AARP to help people over 50 learn new online skills. When you sign up for the Digital Skills Ready@50+ program, you’ll gain the essential skills you need to navigate an increasingly digital world.
Whether you’re hoping to stay connected with family and friends, interested in learning new technology, exploring entrepreneurship, or looking for a job, the Digital Skills Ready@50+ lectures and workshops offer training on a wide range of technologies, from video conferencing and online job search tools to office productivity software.
To sign up for the classes, call Edythe Thompson at 252.915.1840 or email Deborah Hall-Robinson at dhallrobinson@gmail.com.
Classes will be held on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the Perry Memorial Library’s Farm Bureau Room from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
The first session was held Tuesday, Sept. 10 and gave an overview of Smartphones.
Additional sessions include:
Thursday, Sept. 12: Finding information online
Tuesday, Sept. 17: Google Workspace
Thursday, Sept. 19: Google Maps
Tuesday, Sept. 24: Gmail Tips & Tricks
Thursday, Sept. 26: Staying Safe Online Workshop
Stay tuned for the October schedule, coming soon!