Hosts Trey Snide and Ron Noel announce this week’s Player of the Week Winner. Cheyenne Owen, senior center/forward for Kerr Vance Academy takes the award this week. Due to Covid 19, Kerr Vance has only been able to have six players on their team this year and Owen has been instrumental in the team’s on court success.
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Host John C. Rose discusses a shooting incident that occurred in Henderson resulting in the death of a horse.
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When was the last chance you got to help a local food pantry by, well, eating?
Area residents will get that exact opportunity at the Feb. 1 fundraiser at 220 Restaurant to benefit Area Christians Together in Service (ACTS).
Lee Anne Peoples, executive director of ACTS, said tickets are $8 each and are available now. Advance sales are preferred, Peoples said, but not required. The fundraiser plates include trout, French fries and cole slaw. “We’d love for people to come and join us,” she said. The fundraiser is from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
ACTS, located at 201 S. William St., has been a beehive of activity, she told host John C. Rose during Monday’s Town Talk. “We’ve seen about double the amount of people in the last few months than we saw prior to COVID.” The fundraiser will help the organization continue to provide hot lunches on weekdays as well as hep to keep the pantry stocked.
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“We’ve been serving between 120 and 160 or 170 (people) Monday through Friday,” Peoples said of the hot lunch program. She and cook Thomas Blackwell are the only paid staff, she added. “We’re almost completely volunteer-driven,” Peoples said. “We would not be able to do what we do without volunteers.”
More lunches are headed out the door each day because people are taking food to family, friends and neighbors who need the assistance. “COVID has increased the numbers of people we’ve been serviing, but it has decreased the number of volunteers,” she said.
Peoples said tickets are available at ACTS from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. – and ACTS will happily take donations to help fill the pantry, too. In short supply are items like canned fruits and vegetables, 1-pound or 2-pound bags of rice or beans, boxes of crackers packaged in plastic sleeves such as saltines. Also needed are gallon-size cans of food that can be used for lunches, she said.
Of course, monetary donations are always acceptable, Peoples said. Mail checks to ACTS, P.O. Box 25, Henderson, NC 27536.
The last 220 fundraiser to benefit ACTS sold between 800 and 1,000 tickets, People said. ACTS board members have tickets for sale. Board members, in addition to Peoples, are: Hope Breedlove, Gwenn Bridges, Ulice Hill Evans, Pam Jackson, Candy Moore, Connie L. Markham, Jack Richardson, Abidan Paul Shah, CeCe Tucker, Linda Weaver, Argatha White-Vass and Rev. Johnny Yount.
ACTS is very fortunate to have such a dedicated board, she said. “They really care about their community,” said Peoples. “It’s so important to have people like that in a leadership role,” she added.
To learn more, call ACTS at 252.492.8231 or email Peoples lapeoples@actsofhenderson.org.
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A local manufacturing company is teaming up with NCWorks for a virtual hiring event scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday, Jan. 26.
Desiree Brooks, business services manager for the local workforce development board of Kerr-Tar Regional Council of Governments, said Henderson manufacturer Versatrim is hiring for about 30 positions. Anyone interested in learning more about the available job opportunities should register for the event via a link on the Kerr-Tar Works Facebook page, Brooks said Monday during Town Talk. Find the link to the event at facebook.com/NCWorksKT. Participants can register up until 11 a.m., when the event begins.
Although this is a virtual event via Zoom, people without access to a computer may register to listen via telephone, Brooks said.
“It’s just like a job fair, but you’re sitting in the comfort of your home or wherever you are,” Brooks said. Some of the job openings include machine operators, packagers and customer services representatives, among others, she said. Versatrim, makers of laminate flooring and moldings, among other products, is located at 101 Eastern Minerals Road in Henderson.
Brooks and Jamie Cunningham shared details of the virtual event with Town Talk host John C. Rose. Previously known as the Employment Security Commission, Cunningham described NCWorks as “a one-stop shop for North Carolina’s work force system.” Job-hunters can search for jobs, create résumés and find education and training, but it’s also a resource for employers to search for candidates and post job openings as well. Check it out online at www.NCWorks.gov.
Cunningham is operations manager for the Workforce Innovation Opportunity Act, a federally funded program that helps people who need to go back to school to upgrade their skills, or help them with find employment. “We have a lot of training opportunities that help people upgrade their skills,” she noted.
A Versatrim representative will inform the participants about what the company does, the jobs that are available, and the pay associated with those jobs. Participants also will have the chance to ask questions.
“This is the perfect opportunity for people to learn and hopefully be able to start their career with Versatrim,” Brooks said. Cunningham said a business service representative with NCWorks will also be taking part in the event and can answer questions about what NCWorks does. She said the possibility to partner with businesses allows NCWorks to help fund any additional training needed for an employee “to become that great employee.”
Each NCWorks career center is under the direction of a local workforce board, Cunningham said, and Kerr-Tar (Council of Governments) serves Franklin, Granville, Person, Vance and Warren counties. The NCWorks Career Center offers job search support and assistance, including a computer resource center with copier, printer and faxing capabilities; career counseling and coaching; virtual job search workshops and scholarships for short-term training.
Contact the NCWorks career at 919-693-2686 for more information or to get help registering for the event.
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The Henderson City Council at its Jan. 11 meeting approved a request from the Kerr Lake Regional Water System to accept a revised project cost of $57 million for regional water system upgrades. This action, along with approval to purchase a new pump, is the latest in a years-long effort to supply water to the 15 municipalities in the region.
Construction costs have risen significantly from earlier estimates, and KLWRS advisory board chair Garry Daeke said Thursday that the council’s approval will allow for the project to continue, but if grants or other types of funding can’t be found to pay for the shortfall, customers could see a rise in water rates.
“If we can’t find anything (in grants or loans), we’d be talking rate increases,” Daeke said in an interview on Thursday. “We could see some rate increases, but we’re trying to stay away from that,” he said. “We’re all on board with it,” he said, referring to the other partners in the regional water system. “We’re just trying to figure out how to pay for it.”
The new pump will cost about $3 million, Daeke said, and it can still be used in the new construction project. The money will come from the KLWRS fund balance, he said.
Originally, the project cost came in close to $40 million, but in the fall of 2020, the company undertaking the project reported that costs had risen and it would cost significantly more to complete the project.
After reviewing several options to lower the price tag, the KLWRS advisory board chose to reduce the amount of water the new system will be able to process, for the time being. “The 15 (million gallons a day) should be fine because we don’t have that demand yet,” Daeke said, adding that the regional water system needs to make sure it can meet increased demands in the future.
Henderson is the majority partner in the regional water system at 60 percent, with the cities of Oxford and Warren County rounding out the balance with 20 percent each. Oxford recently requested, and received approval for, a $6 million grant, which would reduce the overall shortfall to just more than $11 million.
All three partners are still in favor of the project, Daeke noted. “We want to do it, obviously,” he said of the construction upgrades, “but the longer we wait, the more it’s going to cost, I think.”
Preparing for future needs with infrastructure upgrades now can be challenging, he said.
“We don’t know what our customer base will be in the future, so it’s kind of unpredictable as to how much we want to go to,” Daeke said, of the water system’s capacity. We can draw 20 million (gallons a day), so we want to be able to process that much if we can,” he added.
The project will rehabilitate aging facilities, replace old equipment and expand facilities to bring the treatment capacity to, ultimately, a reliable 20 million gallons a day. The City Council must approve any additional requests for funding, in the event that loans or grants are not secured to cover the shortfall.
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