THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 10, 1995 TAG: 9510100369
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WILLIAMSTON LENGTH: Medium: 78 lines
After two years of pinching pennies, Northeastern North Carolina Economic Development Commission members late Monday agreed to let a panel of professional Raleigh planners help them spend more than $1million.
``We're finally doing something - we're moving now,'' said Jack Runion, a retired Roanoke Rapids power company executive, who for months has urged the commission to straighten up and do more pump-priming.
When the General Assembly created the economic panel in 1992, the legislators also gave the group more than $2million in startup and spending money for the Albemarle operations.
There is still $1.3million in the commission's cash drawer that may be spent during the fiscal year that ends July 1.
Newly elected Chairman Jimmy Dixon, an Elizabeth City bottling company owner, last month promised the commission a vigorous agenda when he called the special Monday session in the Williamston Holiday Inn.
They got it.
First, the commission signed a $126,000 contract with Leak-Goforth/Pace, Raleigh economic consultants, to put a six-month program in place that will give the commissioners guidelines for economic spending in the Albemarle.
Then the group ordered an unusually careful personal screening of half-a-dozen candidates for appointment to a $58,000-a-year job as paid executive director of the commission.
The group unanimously approved a plan offered by Commissioner Boyce Hudson that each of the candidates agree to a searching examination of their private lives.
``Including police records, if any,'' said Boyce.
Without debate, the panel approved.
Dixon has said that at least six candidates - three from out of state - have applied to fill the vacancy left by the firing in July of James Lancaster Jr., the former executive director. Also fired was Estelle ``Bunny'' Sanders, director of a tourist division of the economic commission.
The new executive director will probably run both the economic and the tourist activities of the commission, members said.
Dixon has promised that there will be a new paid director in place by Nov. 10, and at the Williamston meeting it was agreed to pay for visits to the Albemarle by candidates and their wives.
``We should let them see what we have here - and we'll have a chance to see them, too,'' said Charles Ward, a Hertford automobile supply store owner who directs the commission's personnel committee.
The Leak-Goforth/Pace contract was signed by Dixon and representatives of the Raleigh consulting firm before the commissioners sat down to a fish and chicken dinner-symposium with the hired planners to see what they were going to get for their $126,000.
The economic commissioners stipulated that the Leak-Goforth money be paid in increments, with a final payment next June at the completion of six months' work by the Raleigh planners.
In exchange, Leake-Goforth agreed to produce a 10-point plan that would analyze every aspect of economic development in northeastern North Carolina.
The consultants said they would study the labor market and the ability of workers to utilize existing transportation facilities to reach their jobs.
A study of foreign trade opportunities for northeastern North Carolina products was part of the program promised by Leak-Goforth.
Worker education, training, quality of life and the environmental problems of economic development will also be addressed, said Robert C. Leak Sr., one of the Raleigh consultants.
The hired planners also said that a study of the quality of local government would be a useful addition to the promised operational blueprint for the economic developers. Chairman Dixon is a Pasquotank county commissioner, and several other members of the commission are active in local government.
Half-a-dozen of the Raleigh consultants came to see the signing of the contract that will keep them busy for the next six months.
Dixon said the regular October meeting would be held in the Currituck County library at Barco on Oct. 25. Finalists among the candidates for paid director will be interviewed before the second October meeting, he said. by CNB