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By Jefferson Weaver
Staff Writer
The Pender County Board of Health is scheduled to meet Aug. 25 to decide on an interim Health Department director. The closed session meeting is slated for 7 p.m.
The board appointed a committee last week to recommend an interim director. The committee reportedly will recommend outgoing director Dr. Jack Griffith remain as the interim after his retirement on Sept. 30 until a permanent replacement can be found.
Griffith offered to stay past his retirement date as interim. “I think they are going to find a director in less time than they think. It would seem to save a little money and less disruption if I stayed until they found that person,” Griffith said. Although the committee appointed by the Board of Health will recommend Griffith as the interim director, the Board of Health is apparently not unanimous in support for Griffith as interim – neither is the Pender County Board of Commissioners.
In an email to County Manager Rick Benton on Aug. 19, Commissioner David Williams asked Benton to ask the state to appoint an interim director, feeling the Board of Health had sidestepped its responsibility by appointing a committee to recommend an interim director. Williams said the County Attorney later told him this was not possible. “When you appoint a committee to tell you what to do with something such as an interim director, it appears to me you are trying to duck your responsibility,” Williams said. “You are on the Board of Health to do a job no matter how unpleasant. Personnel issues are most of the time unpleasant. I’ve been trying to sit back and hope things would work themselves out. It appears to me at this point some drastic changes are needed in the Health Department. Too much damage has been done. Some hard decisions need to be made.”
Williams went on to say in the email he felt the committee was “stacked and not being objective” in its recommendation of Dr. Griffith as interim director. Griffith sent an email to Rep. Carolyn Justice on Aug. 19 concerning allegations made against him by Williams, Commissioner George Brown, and former Health Department employee Shirley Steele. Griffith asked Justice to “ask your Republican colleagues to back off this attack on me until I retire.” In an interview with The Pender Post, Griffith said the Board of Health is set up as an independent body to keep politics out of its operation and decisions.
“These are good people serving on the board. All don’t agree with me, but they are good people and I hate to see them disparaged this way. That is why I wrote Carolyn Justice,” Griffith said. “They don’t get paid anything for this other than they want to help the people of Pender County.” Williams says an interim director needs to be hired until a permanent replacement for Dr. Griffith can be found. “I don’t think a good replacement is just around the corner. We need to hire an interim as soon as possible and go through the recruitment process for a suitable replacement,” Williams said. “Dr. Griffith has done many good things for this Health Department and this county. I’ve always been a supporter of him up until the last few weeks. Then he lost me.”
By Jefferson Weaver
Staff Writer
Island residents whose vehicles have been registered with their respective towns will be able to use either bridge to return after a major storm, according to Surf City Mayor Zander Guy.
The agreement was just one of several details worked out between the towns of Topsail Beach, Surf City and North Topsail recently, Guy said. “Anything that can be done to lessen the worries of our residents is good for all of us,” Guy said. Guy said the confusion that is often the rule after a major storm adds to tensions as well as slowing down the recovery process. “We know property owners are primarily concerned about reentry,” he said. “By working with each other, we hope this can be speeded up a bit.”
Safety is still going to be the priority during a cleanup, Guy said. “We had an incident after another storm where there was a live electric service wire in the street,” he explained. The problem was it was buried in a pile of debris. That could easily have killed someone. We can rebuild buildings, but we can’t replace human life.” Guy said property owners should make sure their authorized repairmen are on record with the towns, along with a description of the vehicle.
“We want to get things back to normal as soon as possible if something bad happens,” he said, “but we don’t want anyone endangered more than necessary.” Laying out plans even before a storm was predicted will lessen confusion if and when a storm strikes the island, Guy said. “We want things to move as expeditiously as possible,” he said, “but at the same time, everyone will have to have some patience. Anyone who has been through a storm before knows that even with the best organization, there will be some confusion while things are put into place. That can’t be avoided.
“With the new software the county is installing, and coordination between the county emergency services and the towns, we have all new levels of communication and cooperation,” Guy said. “Right now, we are as ready as we can ever be.” Guy did make one further request of property owners, residents and visitors. “If the order comes down for an evacuation,” he said, “please leave. People need to be monitoring the storm right now, and making plans in case they have to evacuate. You can’t delay when the call is made—you need to leave then.”
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By Andy Pettigrew
Post Editor
The Pender County Board of Health has decided to seek an interim director outside the health department.
Dr. Jack Griffith, the current director, will retire on Sept. 30. Griffith offered to stay on as the interim director until a permanent replacement could be found. The Board of Health said thanks, but no thanks.
“It appeared a minority on the board could not handle that,” Griffith said. “I told the board if they would rather have an interim, it would be fine with me. I think the consensus of the board was it will create less trouble and more harmony if they did that.” The board will meet on Wednesday, Sept. 1 to talk with Dennis Harrington, Deputy Director of Administration of the N.C. Division of Public Health. The board will reportedly seek guidence from Harrington concerning an interim director.
In the meantime, Griffith will finish his tenure as Health Department director this month. “I’m going to carry on with the personnel changes I’ve been making. I think they have been very effective and are making a difference in the Health Department,” Griffith said. “I think when the permanent director gets in here, he or she will find the department is back in trim and running the way it should be running.”
Griffith says the personnel changes are a “functional realignment.” Clerks have been moved in different departments to make things run more smoothly. “Nothing really of substance except for a couple of the nurses,” Griffith said. Harrington, who will meet with the Board of Health on Sept. 1, has responsibility of working with local health departments across the state. “Harrington is a nice fella,” Griffith said. “The last I heard the board was going to get advice on how to hire an interim director.”
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Residents are taking advantage of
education opportunities
By Andy Pettigrew
Post Editor
The unemployment rate for July remained unchanged at 10.2 percent for Pender County. Unemployment rates dipped in nearly all counties in Southeastern North Carolina, except for Pender.
“I was a little disappointed we didn’t follow the state average and drop a little bit,” said Rosemary Pittman of the Pender County ESC office. “We have a few businesses that have opened, and a few people hiring, but some are still laying off.” Pittman says job-training programs offered by the ESC have generated interest.
“Not only do we have classroom training, we can pay for people to gain about 400 hours of work experience to build their resumes and give them training on the job which will help them compete,” Pittman said. “We have a program that will reimburse the employer to help offset the cost of training an employee for a job. That way people can work, earn money and make a living, and the employer is investing in training people and it doesn’t cost them as much.”
ESC also has funds specifically for training workers age 55 and older.
Individuals interested in job training programs can contact the local ESC office at 259-0240.
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By Andy Pettigrew
Post Editor
After losing $1.7 million in state school funding this year, money from the federal government jobs bill is a welcome surprise to Pender County School officials. County schools will receive $1.6 million out of the $300 million coming to North Carolina. But as with most federal funds, there are stipulations on how the money can be spent. The federal funds have to be used for teacher salaries and must be spent by September, 2011. That means any teachers hired with the money could only be promised a job for a year.
Pender school administrators are looking at ways to use the money, satisfy the federal requirements, and meet the most pressing needs in the school system. “This money is to pay for positions, so we can pay for some of the positions we have in our low wealth and remediation line items. We can pay for those teaching positions and free up money for instructional supplies and textbooks,” said Pender School Superintendent Allison Sholar. “We have zero textbook money and a very small amount of instructional material money in the current budget. This will help a lot.”
Sholar says the additional federal money may help with additional tutoring after school remediation programs. “We really haven’t gotten that far with it. The state still has to advise us on exactly what we can use the money for. We are hoping we can pay for tutors,” Sholar said. “We are looking to see if we can use part of this money in the summertime. We know some of our students lose a lot in the summer. We are not clear on exactly how we can use the money, but we can put it to good use.”
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By Jefferson Weaver
Post Staff Writer
County and municipal emergency officials were meeting at the Topsail Island Welcome Center Monday, but not to discuss Hurricane Earl.
They were learning about a new computer program that improves localized hurricane tracking capabilities and speeds up response time. It isn’t the only cyber-leap being made by area emergency managers.
This year’s tropical season marks the first time the county is making full use of available technologies, including social media, to spread the word about potential storm conditions. Pender Emergency Management is using Twitter and Facebook.com to send out instant updates on Hurricane Earl and other storms, including the next potential problem, Tropical Storm Fiona. The updates are available for free and can be accessed via smart phones as well as regular internet connections.
By visiting the Pender EOM website, www.penderem.com, anyone can sign up for the updates. Monday, updates on the Pender EOM Facebook account went up literally seconds after the National Weather Service advisories on continued strengthening by Hurricane Earl. Government agencies are turning more and more to social media due to its ease of access and speed of distribution. Detailed messages are still available through other sources, including Pender EOM, and the emergency management office will still post information on its main website.
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By Jefferson Weaver
Post Staff Writer
I await her arrival every year, breathless as a bridegroom on the big day.
The closer the day comes for her arrival, the longer the days seem to be. The weather stifles. I get wretchedly costive, as a far greater writer than I will ever be once put it during his own wait for her favors. That love, of course, is September. Each August—how I loathe that month—I watch my friend Dean like a hawk watches a mousehole. When I see Dean or his father Ennis prowling around the combine, I know true summer is soon ending, and the start of Indian summer is nigh. Their days and evenings will be spent frantically cutting corn before the only really bad part of September—tropical weather—rolls in like a bad drunk to begin flooding and breaking things.
September is the promise fulfilled of a summer slowly slipping away. Soon the water will be too cool for swimming, and the leaves will begin their turn to fall’s colors from summer’s green. The fish will rise again, having spent a month in torpor below the cool line, only eating when they are hungry and being picky at that. There’s nothing like a dove shoot on a September afternoon, with one’s shoulder sore from the shotgun’s recoil, smoking hulls smelling of burnt powder and feathers, and a bucket of birds awaiting final rites in a pot half-filled with rice and mushrooms.
Those of us who stockpile boxes of seven-and-a-half shot have already noted the silver-gray rockets of September alighting on powerlines and pine trees. Plans will be made for times of food, fellowship and sharp, if good-natured, competition as we wait impatiently for shooting to begin. Although I appreciate the early goose season, and hope to take advantage of it this year, Canada geese are meant to be shot on frozen mid-winter mornings, not during painted sunsets. Dove provide practice, patience and humility to put the start of the hunting seasons in the right perspective.
I’ll soon have to double-check the fence, since we still have long-eared puppies descended from Dan’l Grunt, Persephone, and Ophelia. They’ll hear the clarion cries of their fellowhounds in training, and jump (or dig) at any chance to join them as the off-season’s kinks are worked out and noses are tuned for the serious hunting of winter. I saw one of the first true signs of September the other evening, when August got lazy and the air was cool. A cowhorn buck, antlers in velvet, contentedly munched the sweet grass beside the road.
As September’s moon rises he’ll find a tree to scrape and scratch the silken covering from his swords, unknowing as to why he feels the need to mark his territory, possibly for the first time. If he survives the bowhunters, the Walker hound-followers, the stillhunters and the coyotes, he’ll grow a bigger set of antlers, and come next September, have even more velvet to scrape away. September is the time when most folks leave the beaches, and the fishermen only have to be worried about hooking the stray surfer, rather than a desperately vacationing suburbanite. The spot will soon begin their own migration, just ahead of September’s predators. My old friends the bluefish start to make their toothy, oily-fleshed run toward a “hash skillet,” along with their comrades-in-arms, the Spanish.
But everything that is eaten in September doesn’t swim, walk, run or fly; the season’s last watermelons remain to be loved, and the pears, apples and late peaches will break their host limbs if not picked soon. Our grapevine is like unto the vines across the River Jordan right now, although unlike Moses, I don’t need a group of spies to fetch me proof of the promised land—the evidence is hanging in my yard, turning blue-black as the night sky when the air is cooling. The fall sassafras has already started turning yellow-orange, so I can soon yank the first of the licorice-smelling roots from the ground. Several of my persimmon trees will be mourned rather than gleaned this year, but I have spotted several more candidates, and they look like they can indeed provide enough for a two-legged aficionado as well as the four-legged fans.
Now, if the possums, coons, coyotes, foxes, deer, and bear will just wait until the luscious fruits turn pink and purple and prime. I don’t know if wild animals who eat unripe persimmons also suffer from a drawn-up mouth, but I doubt it. Critters are often smarter than humans when it comes to persimmons, or at least they’re more patient. September means the first of the family reunions and homecomings—yes, I avoid the former and occasionally crash the latter—when ladies will compete to see whose culinary expertise lasts longest on the long tables. September is a time of cooling mornings and evenings, either an apology by nature or a promise from God that the sweat and stink and stickiness of summer are soon to be but a memory.
One can still soak a shirt with an honest day’s work, of course, but the likelihood of doing so between the house and the truck is much slimmer. The porch is enjoyable again. I have to wonder if it’s a coincidence that ‘September’ rhymes with ‘remember.’ We all remember Sept. 11, of course; I have an extra reason for doing so, since 9/11 was the birthday of my greatest hero, my father. September was when I saw my first whale, a humpback, rolling through a shoal of spots less than a quarter-mile off the bows of Johnny Ritter’s charter boat. I can never forget my old friend Dolphus Thompson laughing over the VHF radio, his “downeast” brogue asking Johnny if he wanted to feed “the writer-fella” to the whale.
September was when I drew a bead on one of the biggest deer I’ve ever seen, even managing to hold my bow steady, only to have the buck snort and crash away through the woods, mere feet out of range. I’ve harbored a particular disgust for foxes ever since, since it was a fox’s bark that alerted the buck to the odd-shaped thing hanging from a tree that had whitetail homicide in mind. September was when I first laughed aloud at a yearling bear lolling in a patch of plum bushes. He rolled and wallowed like a big, smelly, happy dog until my rude interruption sent him scurrying into a convenient bay. My old friend Hugh Zachary, also a sailor lost to September’s siren song, had a book called “A Feast of Fat Things.”
The title comes from Isaiah 25:6 – “And in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow...” The passage is part of a song of gratitude, celebration and worship of God. Now that I think about it, that’s what September really is all about.
Weaver is a staff writer at The Pender Post. Contact him at 259-9111, email him at postnews@thependerpost.com or on Facebook.
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Jefferson Weaver