On the Home and Garden Show with Vance Co. Cooperative Ext.
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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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SportsTalk on WIZS 12:30 p.m. M-Th
Doc Ayscue and Scout Hughes recap Vance County’s win this past Friday against Warren County.
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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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Funding improvements to the regional water system are being approved at a steady trickle, and city leaders are managing the various projects that could ultimately have a price tag twice the size as was originally quoted, pre-COVID.
The Henderson City Council approved a couple of resolutions at its Aug. 19 meeting that will bring $16.5 million to keep working on the Kerr Lake Regional Water System to bring its production to 20 million gallons of water a day as well as other related infrastructure projects.
Council member Garry Daeke told WIZS News in a telephone interview that the city has the money necessary to complete the regional water system expansion, having received $10.8 million from the N.C. Dept. of Environmental Quality for the water project and $5 million in grant funding with support in July 2022 from State Sen. Lisa Barnes.
An additional $1 million is being allocated to address lead mitigation in the city’s water lines from the state’s drinking water revolving fund.
Water Resources Director Christy Lipscomb continues to manage the projects and keeps city leaders informed about progress.
As spelled out in the City Council’s agenda package, the city was originally approved for a state revolving loan of more than $31.8 million for the water system upgrade project, but NCDEQ has kicked in another $10,890,172 to help the system reach its full capacity of 20 million gallons per day. This addition brings the total thus far to $50,783,172.
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When a fire call comes in, time is of the essence. And if Steve Falkner is around, you can bet that he knows the quickest route to get from the firehouse to the scene.
Falkner began his 40th year with the Henderson Fire Department last week, and his colleagues celebrated the milestone with the person they affectionately know as “Chicken.”
A social media post shows Falkner sitting behind a big cake and fellow firefighters surrounding him, along with text which reads, in part, “…we all know him as someone who is full of great experience and knowledge…”
In a phone conversation with WIZS News Monday, Falkner said he wasn’t really sure of the origin of his nickname, but it may have come from the mid-to late 1980’s when he was a fire dispatcher – before the days of the 911 call center.
He may or may not have been known to run around the fire department like a chicken with its head cut off, he said.
The first to add his comments to the post was Fire Chief Tim Twisdale, who said Falkner was the source of advice, humor and help to all. “He is like a walking encyclopedia of history and knowledge of our area,” Twisdale continued. “He definitely keeps things going at the fire station.”
For his part, Falkner said the celebration was “a very, very nice thing they did for me.” He’s worked with some good leaders in the fire department since he first came on the scene in 1984.
By 10 a.m. Monday, the post had 76 comments, and by 3 p.m. Monday, the number of reactions to the post had swelled to 353.
In the words of Chief Twisdale, Falkner is “a joy to have around. Here’s to 40 and many more!”
Congratulations to Steve Falkner for his four decades of service to the community.
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