Washington City Manager Speaks to Down East Republicans

by Bill Tarpenning

Washington, NC 10/26/07

Al Klemm, president of the Down East Republican Club welcomed Washington City Manager, Jim Smith as the featured speaker at the club’s monthly meeting Thursday night at Franks Pizza. City Manager here for two years, Smith characterized himself as “a quarterback on a football team, only your teammates get to tackle you as well.”  He said that his job consisted of conducting all contracting, hiring, supervising all city departments, helping the council make decisions and then carrying them out. “We’ve made some difficult decisions,” he said. “We had to raise taxes and utility rates. Utility rates are something everyone is concerned about, but there is little we can do. Two thirds of the water rate is debt service and 81% of your electric bill is debt service. We’ll not be out from under our electric indebtedness until 2024. On the plus side, our electricity comes from nuclear power so our fuel prices will remain fairly constant, while costs for those whose electric generation is powered by coal, oil and gas will continue to go up.

Smith told the group that the new highway 17 bypass, costing $129 million will employ some 200 locals. Old 17 will become business 17. “The council is working on guidelines and zoning,” he said.  “The down side is that the state is charging us $1.7 million to relocate water and sewer lines for highway 17. A statute makes it impossible for us to borrow that money in the private market. The state will loan us the money at 8% but that amounts to usury.

“A lot of utility work is underway. We have a program to run sewer out River Road and from that we’ll see environmentally sound growth. Of course we’ll need the cooperation of the county and they want to extend service to trailer parks along the route.  At $50 per month per hookup, the cost will be too high for most park residents. We’re working on grants to help make this workable.

“I can tell you that the13 story project at Wichard’s Beach is dead, and that the area will become single family housing. We’ll need to run sewer to them creating new customers.

“Washington has three economic bases,” he said. “The medical system revolving around the hospital is the biggest followed by tourism bringing in $85 million last year. The third is light manufacturing, with new companies coming into the industrial park. We’re working to recycle the Hamilton Beach building to bring in 300 new jobs next year.”

Smith spoke of another problem area, the Greenville/Washington corridor. US 264 between Greenville and Washington currently handles 16,000 cars, and has a capacity of 35,000 . Studies show that planned development will lead to a projected 90,000 cars.

“The good news,” he said, is that a lot of good stuff is happening. The bad news is that we need to plan for it.

Klemm then introduced City Council candidates; Tom Atkins, Richard Brooks, Archie Jennings, Dot Moate and John Tate III, who all spoke of the need to plan for the future which was considered to be bright, and the need to consider all the city in plans for the future.

Also speaking were John Weeks, running for commissioner in Aurora and Greg Dority, running for North Carolina Lieutenant Governor.

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