Tag Archive for: #wizsnews

TownTalk: Around Old Granville: Architects

/by

Lovers of historical architecture could come up with the analogy that if Old Granville County – what is now the four-county area that includes Vance, Warren, Franklin and Granville counties – were an art museum, then all the lovely homes that dot the towns, cities and countryside certainly are works of art to be admired and enjoyed.

Continuing that analogy, it was architects and craftsmen like Jacob Holt and Thomas Bragg and James Burgess who are just a few of the state’s premier artists whose creations still stand -and are still admired – today.

“They were able to express their aesthetic and the community’s idea of the aesthetic,” said Mark Pace, local historian and North Carolina Room Specialist at the Richard Thornton Library in Oxford.

Pace and WIZS’s Bill Harris talked about a number of homes, some standing and some long gone, that can be attributed to Holt, Bragg and Burgess in Thursday’s TownTalk segment of Around Old Granville.

Holt moved to Warren County in the 1840s, having worked with William Howard, an acolyte of Thomas Jefferson, in Prince Edward County, Va. He estimates that as many as 80 Holt houses still stand, a tribute to the craftsmanship Holt and his team of artisans poured into each build.

“If you’ve got a Holt house, it’s not a ramshackle mess,” Pace said.

He set up shop in Warren County and soon laid claim to having the second-largest non-agricultural work force around, Pace said.

Among his workers were enslaved persons as well as freedmen. “He had the talent and he had the crew,” he said.

And although it wasn’t his first build, the William Eaton House is what put Holt on the map.

With motifs of Greek Revival, complete with columns, cornices, elaborate mantelpieces and sidelights, the Eaton house remains “one of the showplaces of Warrenton,” Pace said.

Montmorenci is another well-known home in Warren County, and was built by James Burgess in 1822.

Much of the interior of Montmorenci was dismantled and sent to be part of the DuPont estate called Winterthur in Delaware, Pace said, including incredibly engineered spiral staircases and intricate mantelpieces.

Thomas Bragg was also a contractor and architect who worked in the area in the 1820’s through the 1840’s, Pace said. He did significant work in Wake County and designed the William Polk House there.

The home Bragg built for his family still stands in Warrenton. Some of Bragg’s children went on to achieve fame in their own right: Thomas, Jr. became a governor of North Carolina and Braxton was a general in the Civil War – it’s for him that Fort Bragg, now Fort Liberty, was named.

 

CLICK PLAY!

 

North Carolina Teacher Retention – NCAE

/by

Teacher pay and a moratorium on private school vouchers are two of the tangible issues that the president of the North Carolina Association of Educators has on her radar. But Tamika Walker-Kelly also is calling on legislators to join her as she and other public school advocates seek to restore a culture of respect for the thousands of teachers who work in public schools.

Yes, salaries have gone up – it’s about $41,000 for starting teachers, Walker-Kelly acknowledged on Thursday’s The Local Skinny! But North Carolina has lost ground to other states and now is ranked at 38th in the nation for teacher pay.

“We know our legislators in Raleigh could do more,” she said, adding that higher pay is a critical component when it comes to recruitment and retention, but teachers deserve to have respect restored to their profession – “they want to be valued and be heard, and their contributions… are respected and valued,” she said.

The 2024-25 school year marks the fifth year that Walker-Kelly has led the NCAE, which she said is the largest education advocacy group in the state.

She is a proud product of North Carolina public schools and has taught music all of her 18 years in Cumberland County.

“I was inspired by my high school chorus teacher,” she said. “I wanted to be a music teacher just like her.”

Public school teachers interact with more than 1.5 million students across the state’s public school districts – that number accounts for about 85 percent of all children in the state.

The legislature’s private school voucher program stands to siphon off upwards of $500 million dollars, a move the NCAE opposes.

“As an organization, the NCAE continues to be in opposition to vouchers,” she said, adding that taxpayers’ money should go to public schools.

Supporting universal breakfast and lunch programs, mental health programs for students and additional tutoring are other areas of interest for the NCAE, and Walker-Kelly said “education should be everybody’s issue. It should be a bipartisan effort, she said, adding that the NCAE would continue to be a voice for public schools in the General Assembly, across the state and in local communities.

She ranks visiting schools across the state as one of her favorite things to do in her role as NCAE president.
“We should never let people forget that great work goes on in public schools every single day.”

CLICK PLAY!

Cooperative Extension with Jamon Glover: Bedtime Problems, Pt. 3

/by

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!

 

Home And Garden Show

/by

On the Home and Garden Show with Vance Co. Cooperative Ext.

 Wayne Rowland of the Vance Co. Extension Service provides gardening tips.

Click Play!

 

TownTalk: Fire Association Advocates For Keeping 8.9-Cent Fire Tax Level

/by

Watkins Assistant Fire Chief Brandon Link, speaking to Vance County Commissioners during the Monday budget work session in his capacity as president of the county firefighters association, asked for the county’s fire tax to stay at its current level of 8.9 cents.

Commissioners are considering a $57 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year, which includes dropping the fire tax to a revenue-neutral rate of 5.9 cents per $100 valuation.

But Link said that amount simply won’t be enough.

“We’ve incurred a lot of costs…without an increase in funding, we’re going to sink,” Link told commissioners.

“Our number one goal is to provide the best service we can to all of our residents,” Link said on Tuesday’s TownTalk. He discussed in greater detail the challenges the county’s volunteer departments are facing.

Link said keeping the fire tax at its current level would generate roughly $2,634,000, which would allow for a boost in pay for part-time firefighters to $20 per hour and provide $165,000 per department to operate.

(In the recommended budget, the fire tax fund budget is $1,914,678 and proposes to take $79,392 from the fire tax fund balance. One penny = $296,933. The lower revenue-neutral rate of 5.94 cents would generate just more than $1.76 million. Three cents could mean an additional million dollars of fire tax revenue.)

With its current $15/hour part-time pay, Vance County is at the bottom of the market, Link said. Neighboring counties are offering more money and Link said Vance County is getting out-competed. Warren offers $16/hour, Franklin is between $15-$20/hour, Granville uses a tiered structure that offers between $16-$18/hour.

“Four departments are about to incur $3 million worth of debt from purchases that had to be made to sustain the service we provide,” Link said.

When you add up $30,000 in truck payments, along with $13,000 or more for financial audits and $15,000 for insurance – per department – and fire stations are facing some hefty debt. “…and we haven’t even paid the first light bill or put a gallon of $4 diesel in the tank,” he said.

 

WIZS News spoke with Board Chair Dan Brummitt earlier Tuesday, and he stated that he doesn’t think any changes in the fire tax will be made before the budget is adopted. He added, however, that he and fellow commissioners had not reached consensus.

The commissioners are scheduled to meet again on Thursday and Link said he is hopeful that there will be four commissioners that take his side to keep the fire tax rate at 8.9 cents.

“We know that 8.9 is not going to get us all the things we need, but it gets us close,” Link said.

He said firefighters appreciate the support they get from commissioners, but he would like to see a compromise reached.

 

CLICK PLAY!

 

TownTalk: Fentanyl Awareness Event This Saturday

/by

Forgotten Victims of North Carolina and New Beginnings Recovery of Grace Ministries are joining forces to host an event on Saturday in Henderson to promote fentanyl awareness.

Forgotten Victims founder Patricia Drewes invites the community to participate in the event, which will be held from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the parking lot outside the Vance County Courthouse, located at 156 Church St.

Drewes said guest speakers will come from across the state to talk about the dangers of fentanyl, which takes thousands of lives each year.

“Fentanyl affects us all,” Drewes said on Tuesday’s TownTalk. There will be more than 400 posters with the faces of young people who have died as a result of fentanyl.

“No one’s child is safe,” she said. Drewes’s daughter, Heaven, died from a fentanyl overdose.

She founded Forgotten Victims in 2021 after her daughter’s death so other parents wouldn’t have to face the same feeling of being alone. There are now eight chapters across the state, she said.

“Our motto is ‘No one stands alone in North Carolina,” she added.

Come out on Saturday and learn more about the dangers of illicit fentanyl, as well as information about recovery programs, area resources and get trained on how to administer naloxone, an antidote for opioid poisoning.

CLICK PLAY!