Tag Archive for: #wizsnews

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TownTalk: VGCC Truck Driver Program & National Truck Driver Appreciation Week

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This week is National Truck Driver Appreciation Week and Vance-Granville Community College joins the nation’s trucking industry in a weeklong celebration of the millions of professional truck drivers who deliver America’s freight safely and securely every day.

Established by the American Trucking Associations in 1988 to recognize the vital contributions of truck drivers to our daily lives and to the economy, the national observance highlights the contributions of the nation’s 3.5 million truck drivers who deliver 70 percent of the country’s total freight to communities large and small.

Vance-Granville Community College has actively supported trucking in its four-county service area since launching a commercial driver’s license program in 2020. Originally offered in collaboration with Caldwell Community College & Technical Institute, VGCC’s program achieved the criteria to run independently late last year. To date, 290 VGCC students have graduated from the nine-week program, many of whom have been hired immediately or gone on to open their own trucking business.

“Kelvin Sharpe, our truck driver training coordinator, says, ‘Give us nine weeks and we’ll change your life,’” said Kyle Burwell, VGCC dean of Business & Industry Solutions. Since 2020, the program has graduated close to 300 individuals

Vance-Granville’s next Truck Driver Training course begins Oct. 21. There’s still time to register, and Burwell said there is a mandatory orientation that will take place on Tuesday, Sept. 24 at the Henderson campus. The session will conclude on Dec. 20.

To view participant requirements and register, please visit www.vgcc.edu/cdl.

Burwell and lead instructor Georgie Bullock were guests on Tuesday’s TownTalk and provided more details about the program.

As with driving any vehicle, Bullock said the top priority to convey to students is safety. Safety and patience.

“Take your time, watch everything moving around you,” Bullock said. “Always be prepared to stop,” he said. Driving on the open road is one thing, but driving a big rig through town can be unnerving at first, Bullock acknowledged.

“They can get kinda nervous driving through town,” he said. But city streets are part of the everyday training routes, as well as the testing route.

“If you can’t drive in town, you don’t need to be a driver,” he said.

Burwell calls the VGCC program “turnkey,” meaning that once the students complete the course, any one of three licensed examiners are on campus to administer the CDL test. The only thing left to do after a student passes the examination is go to the DMV to get their photo taken and get their CDL.

Burwell said she is thankful that the program’s instructors and coordinators stress safety, whether they’re on the driving range or on the road. There is no room for error or distraction when you’ve got 80,000 pounds of truck and cargo behind you.

Bullock tells students, “When you’re on the road, be 100 percent focused on what you’re doing.”

Learn more at www.vgcc.edu/cdl.

 

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Families Living Violence Free

FLVF Hosts Quarter Auction Friday, Oct. 4

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Families Living Violence Free is having a Quarter Auction on Friday, Oct. 4 at Carlee Farms in Granville County.

The doors open at 5:30 p.m., dinner begins at 6:15 p.m. and the auction begins at 7 p.m., according to information from FLVF Executive Director Amy Langston.

Tickets are $25 and include dinner and bidding paddle. All proceeds go to direct services for victims and survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.

Don’t forget to bring your rolls of quarters for bidding and some extra “folding money” to purchase products from vendors that will be on site for the event. For a $50 ticket price, bidders can upgrade their paddles to have unlimited bids on items during the auction. There will be a 50/50 raffle and silent auction held as well.

Carlee Farms is located at 1003 Carlee Farms Rd. in Granville County.

Purchase tickets by calling 919.693.3579.

Langston said businesses, organizations and others can provide extra support by becoming sponsors of the event. The sponsorship levels are Bronze: $50; Silver: $100; and Gold: $200.

Checks, payable to FLVF, can be sent to:

P.O. Box 1632

Oxford, NC 27565

The FLVF Crisis Line operates 24 hours a day. Call 919.693.5700; Spanish speakers can call 919.690.0888.

For more information, contact FLVF at 919.693.3579 or email info@flvf.org.

 

 

Cooperative Extension With Michael Ellington: Plants and Nutrients

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Listen live at 100.1 FM / 1450 AM / or on the live stream at WIZS.com at 11:50 a.m. Mon, Tues & Thurs.

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Dale Folwell

TownTalk: State Treasurer Folwell On Upcoming Open Enrollment And More

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There may be departments, offices and agencies within state government that hog the spotlight and get attention in any number of ways, but few affect the everyday goings-on of residents of North Carolina like the office of the state treasurer.

Treasurer Dale Folwell, closing out his second term as the state’s chief financial officer, wears a variety of hats, from chairing the Local Government Commission and connecting people to “lost” cash, to advocating for the state retirees’ pension and state employees’ health insurance.

This year’s open enrollment period for state employees and retirees runs from Sept. 30 – Oct. 25. “It’s the longest open enrollment period we ever had,” Folwell said, “and that’s by design.”

This is an important time because the state is transitioning to a new third-party administrator. In January, Aetna will take over from Blue Cross, and Folwell said folks will need to make some choices during open enrollment.

“Pay attention to your emails, don’t procrastinate, and read what it says,” Folwell said on Monday’s TownTalk.

If you’re among 150,000 or so state retirees on Humana’s Basic Plan, you should be all set – no action necessary. But the 600,000 or so other state employees and retirees will need to make sure they choose from their options during open enrollment.

There’s a bus tour happening now to bring information about the transition to residents across the state and McGregor Hall in Henderson will host a stop on Wednesday, Oct. 2 from 3-5 p.m. Visit https://www.shpnc.org/ and follow the links to register for this or other dates.

Folwell will be retiring at the end of this term – an unsuccessful bid for governor meant he was not eligible to file for re-election as treasurer, but he’s been no lame duck during his last months as treasurer.

Just last week, the LGC approved two key projects with local ties – a $400,000 for the City of Henderson to address lead pipe mitigation and a multi-million-dollar project to lay 23+ miles of water lines in the Kittrell area and to make improvements to that town’s 100,000-gallon water tank.

Henderson and Vance County are just two of the approximately 1,200 units that report to the LGC, which Folwell said was established 75 years or so ago as a measure to protect municipalities and county governments from insolvency.

Once Folwell hangs up all the hats associated with his current office, he said he’ll have plenty to keep him busy.

“I love fixing and I love saving,” he explained. As for the fixing part, he ticked off three things that will get his attention: his relationship with God, his family and motorcycles.

“I think I ‘m going to be very happy doing that,” he said.

 

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Vance County High School

SportsTalk: Vance County Vs. Northern Durham Recap

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A look back at Friday night’s game between Vance County and Northern Durham.

(Our coverage for this story is available by clicking play.)

 

Cooperative Extension with Wayne Rowland: Fire Ants

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Listen live at 100.1 FM / 1450 AM / or on the live stream at WIZS.com at 11:50 a.m. Mon, Tues & Thurs.

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Vance County High School

SportsTalk: Vipers Ready For Homecoming Against Northern Durham

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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.

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TownTalk: Property Tax in Vance County

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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.

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