Spot Fest this weekend The 51st annual Spot Festival is this Saturday and Sunday in Hampstead. The official guide to the festival is in this week’s Pender-Topsail Post & Voice.
Volume 43, No.52
Candidates forum is planned for October 16
POST Voice The Pender-Topsail
&
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Pender gets first win The Pender Patriots picked up their first win since 2012. County teams will be at home this week with tough games. Read more on page 1B.
The Media of Record for the People of Pender County
Getting ready for the grill
Open invitation to all candidates to participate From Staff Reports A c a n d i d at e s fo r u m i s planned for Oct. 16 at Topsail High School for candidates on the ballot in the Nov. 4 general election. The forum is sponsored by the Pender-Topsail Post & Voice, along with the Greater Hampstead Civic Association and the Topsail Area Chamber of Commerce. The forum will be held in the school auditorium beginning at 7 p.m. All candidates on the November ballot are invited to participate. Candidates will be given the opportunity to speak, and then answer questions submitted by the audience. Candidates wishing to participate need to sign up the night of the forum beginning at 6:30 p.m. in the auditorium lobby. Hampstead Civic Association president Jack Swan will moderate the forum. “All candidates on the November ballot are invited to participate in this political forum. We won’t be issuing individual invitations – everyone is invited,” said Post & Voice publisher Andy Pettigrew. “If you are running for office, this is your opportunity to stand before the people and tell them what you stand for. It is an evening for campaigning. For voters, it is the chance to meet the candidates face-toface and talk with them. Most candidates are available before and after the forum to talk with the voters. It’s important to know who you are voting for and where they stand on the important issues we face.” For more infor mation, contact the Post & Voice at 259.9111 or posteditor@postvoice.com.
50 Cents
LGCgives nod to plan to fix county finances By Andy Pettigrew Post & Voice Publisher
Roper says the third cate gory is communication, w i t h vo l u n t e e r s working to publicise the school bond on social media such as Facebook, websites and the media. “We are working on flyers and handouts for the Spot Festival and things such as that. Monday night was the organization for those committees. They have all challenged to go out and promote the school bond,” Roper said. School board members will be available to meet with civic, church groups, and other organizations to provide information and answer questions about the school bond. “We will make ourselves available to get into the details of the financing of the bond and the building plans for the schools,” said Roper. “This is a grass-roots effort and we have less than 45 days before the election.” Roper says the group will be meeting regularly to make sure the message is getting out. “We don’t want to just assume everything is going well,” Roper said. A group PTO meeting is planned for Oct. 8 at Topsail High School with a similar meeting planned for schools in western Pender County. A date has not been set for the west meeting. “The Oct. 8 meeting is a combination of all the PTAs, PTOs, and parent advisory boards from the east side,” said Roper. “There will be an equal effort for the schools on the west side.” Volunteers attending the meeting included parents as well as those who do not have children in the Pender School system.
The Local Gover nment Commission has approved Pender County’s plan to fix the problems that led to late audits and a number of financial problems. Sharon G. Edmundson, Director of Fiscal Management at the LGC in the state treasurer’s office, said in a letter to county commission chairman David Williams last week the plan is “satisfactory...to address the challenges noted in our Aug. 12 letter that are facing Pender County. Please kee p us infor med of any significant changes in your work to eliminate the internal control weaknesses and other operational issues. We understand that addressing these issues takes time and we appreciate the efforts the Board has made to do so.” “We are addressing things in a methodical, through manner. We have chosen to do this right rather than fast and the LGC agrees,” Williams said. The plan to improve the county’s financial accountability which was submitted to the LGC includes the following: •Bank statements are being reconciled by Finance Department staff, with the help of part-time personnel. Formal training of selected staf f members has begun to ensure that timely reconciliations are done in the future. •Create standard financial reports that will be reviewed by staff as well as the governing board that will clearly indicate if transactions are not being recorded as they should. •Identifying transactions recorded in the wrong funds (e.g., proprietary fund transactions in capital project funds) for FY 2013-14 to reclassify and correcting procedures so that does not happen in the future. •Finance staff will require financial reports detailing financial activity will be distributed to departments, management and the Board of Commissioners. •Steps have already been taken to insure that budget over-expenditures will not happen in the future. The importance of hiring a competent finance officer who knows the requirements of the Budget and Fiscal Control Act and who fully appreciates the consequences of not strictly adhering to the law is noted. •Current liabilities exceed liquid assets in the Water and Sewer Fund. This is primarily due to the fact that funds have been advanced to capital construction projects from
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Staff photo by Andy Pettigrew
Atkinson Volunteer Fire Department Assistant Chief Jason Turner slices chicken and other volunteers season the tasty bird in preparation for the department’s 49th biannual barbecue fundraiser Sept. 20. The Atkinson Fire Department will celebrate 50 years of service to western Pender County in October.
Grass-roots effort planned to build support
School officials organize for bond push By Andy Pettigrew Post & Voice Publisher Pender County school officials have begun organizing local groups to help promote the upcoming school bond vote in November. A meeting Monday night at Trask High School drew about 25 people to begin the process of getting the word out to the community to support the school bond. “We are off and running. We had a brainstorming session with those in attendance and worked in three different categories. We want to working within the schools with the PTAs and PTOs, booster clubs to get them involved. We can’t use school resources to promote the bond, but the parents are there to help get the message out. Finance is another area we are working on. We need to raise money by going to businesses that have a vested interest in school growth such as real estate companies and builders.”
Staff photo by Andy Pettigrew
Barry Wilson shines his 1936 Plymouth P2 Deluxe sedan at Adam’s Tire in Burgaw last week. Wilson, who has owned the car for 15 years, says it has been in five movies filmed in the area and has only 73,000 original miles on it.
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