THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, March 26, 1996 TAG: 9603260359
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PERRY PARKS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ELIZABETH CITY LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
The city wants to swap some land with the Elizabeth City-Pasquotank School Board as a way to find a downtown site for a long-overdue second fire station, officials confirmed Monday.
The School Board delayed action on a request by the City Council to obtain property at the corner of Glade and Harney Streets, at the site of Sheep-Harney Elementary, in exchange for city-owned property on Martin Street, near the Middle School.
School Board Finance Committee Chairman Matt Wood recommended the delay until the board works out some unspecified ``other issues'' with the city.
School and city sources said privately that the city was seeking the Glade/Harney property as a site for a fire station. Mayor H. Rick Gardner declined to say how the property would be used.
``The city has discussed some property with the School Board,'' Gardner said. ``Purpose at this point in time - I can't say what it is.''
The City Council has tried for well over a year to find a suitable replacement site for its station on Elizabeth Street, which was ruled unsafe to occupy in summer 1994.
Officials last spring were near agreement on using city-owned property off Knobbs Creek Drive north of downtown, but several council members later changed their minds and insisted that the second station remain in the heart of the city.
Several downtown sites have since been raised and rejected, and the issue has not been openly discussed by the council for months. Until the matter is resolved, all the city's firefighters remain headquartered in a single station on Halstead Boulevard.
Also Monday night, the School Board agreed to ask a superior court judge for permission to use up to $200,000 from a private band trust fund to buy new buses.
The Miles Clark Band Trust Fund sets aside money for use by the Northeastern High School band and currently allows only 10 percent of the fund's principal to be used at a time. The fund is worth about $686,000, board Chairman Marion Harris said.
But the band's three buses, which date to the 1940s and 1950, have been taken out of service for safety reasons. Trust fund officials and the board agreed to go into the fund for new buses that will be used primarily by the band, Harris said.
Officials said the buses are a cherished institution in their own right, but that the primary concern is safety of the band members.
School Board members also learned Monday that Pasquotank County officials have raised some $55,000 in grant money to begin work on a large-scale park andplayground known as Fun Junktion at the site of the county's former landfill off Simpson Ditch Road.
Solid Waste Director Mike Etheridge told the board the playground would be the largest in the area, with the closest comparable site being in Virginia Beach.
``We're very excited about it, and so far it's gone very well,'' Etheridge said.
Board members also were treated to the reading of an essay by seventh-grader Kathryn Roebuck, whose writing on Sir Walter Raleigh and the colonization of Roanoke Island won first place in a statewide writing contest sponsored by the Daughters of the American Revolution. by CNB