THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 24, 1996 TAG: 9601240374
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: By MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: EDENTON LENGTH: Short : 42 lines
Naming a new director and discussing computer technology are on the schedule today when the Northeast North Carolina Economic Development Commission holds its first 1996 meeting.
The commission is expected to hire Richard Glen ``Rick'' Watson, a 44-year old management expert from Bladen County, as the panel's new $75,000-a-year executive director.
Members of the commission's executive committee have interviewed Watson, who has been director of the Bladen County Economic Development Commission in Elizabethtown.
Chairman Jimmy Dixon said earlier this month that Watson ``is the man we've been looking for.''
The commission was created by the last General Assembly and given more than $2 million to prime the Albemarle's economic pumps.
But during the panel's first full year of operation, in 1995, the members found it difficult to decide which projects to finance and, more importantly, how to manage a tourist division that operated separately from the main group.
The commissioners last summer fired both the tourist director and the executive director. Operations of the commission were consolidated and the search for a single new director is expected to culminate today with the hiring of Watson at the 1 p.m. meeting at the College of the Albemarle campus in Edenton.
The pump-primers also will hear a report on a proposed computer hookup that would connect the commission to a statewide information network.
The commission is currently the target of a lawsuit brought by Estelle ``Bunny'' Sanders of Roper and the former head of the Tourist Division.
Sanders has charged that the panel violated the state's open meetings law during the closed sessions that preceded her dismissal from her $58,000 a year job. by CNB