THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 7, 1995 TAG: 9508070045
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY BETTY MITCHELL GRAY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 75 lines
Before they adjourned, state lawmakers primed the pump in North Carolina's least populous county, providing Tyrrell County with $3.1 million for the next two fiscal years.
The money will be used to staff a new visitor's center on U.S. Route 64, help pay for an entrepreneurial education center in Tyrrell County through the Partnership for the Sounds and help build a 4-H Environmental Education Center on the banks of the Scuppernong River across from Columbia.
``We are blessed by having the best senator in the entire state representing us and a lot of other friends in the General Assembly,'' J.D. Brickhouse, Tyrrell County finance officer, said from his Columbia office.
The money will boost the eco-tourism project, the Partnership for the Sounds, a 3-year-old effort to bring economic development to a four-county region in eastern North Carolina through environmental tourism.
``I feel so good that I'm beginning to see things happen - especially some of the things that we have worked so hard and so long for,'' he said.
Brickhouse is just one of many community leaders in northeastern North Carolina whose towns, agencies or projects will share in $41.38 million in the state's 1995-97 expansion and capital budget approved in the closing days of the 1995 General Assembly session.
Besides Tyrrell County, the big winners in the region are the Elizabeth II State Historic Site in Dare County, the area's universities and an agriculture center in Williamston. The expansion and capital budget for 1995-96 contains money for these programs and construction projects:
$5 million for construction projects at the Elizabeth II State Historic Site.
$2.7 million for a life sciences building at East Carolina University.
$2 million for construction at the eastern agriculture center in Williamston.
$1.3 million for Department of Transportation construction projects in Washington and Williamston.
$1.3 million for planning at the three state aquariums.
$500,000 for the Partnership for the Sounds to develop a business incubator support system and training center to help expand and create locally owned businesses in the Albemarle-Pamlico region.
$500,000 for a University of North Carolina marine science center.
$500,000 for repairs to the University of North Carolina television tower in Columbia.
$125,000 for the Department of Crime Control and Public Safety for Project Blue Sky.
$125,000 for the Department of Transportation for projects atthe Northeastern Regional Airport in Edenton.
$100,000 for the First Flight Centennial Commission.
$100,000 to the Lake Gaston Economic Development Corp. for planning and preliminary development of a conference center for the Lake Gaston area.
$75,000 for operations of a new Department of Transportation's visitor center on U.S. 64 in Tyrrell County.
$25,000 to the Roanoke-Chowan Community College for its sheltered workshop program.
Several construction projects of regional interest are slated for additional and new funding in the second year of the biennial budget.
The University of North Carolina will receive an additional $7.3 million for its marine science center; East Carolina University will receive an additional $4.4 million for its life sciences building; the agriculture center in Williamston will receive an additional $4 million.
N.C. State University will receive $2.5 million for a 4-H environmental education center in Tyrrell County; Elizabeth City State University is slated to receive $2.1 million for construction of the Vaughn Center, and the Division of Marine Fisheries will receive $300,000 for an ocean-going enforcement vessel.
KEYWORDS: BUDGET by CNB