CMYK Donations sought to help with burial of man shot on city street From Page One, Page 3A
N.C. terrorist suspect said dad sold guns Local & State, Page 4A Good Taste, Page 1C
KJCC celebrates 45th anniversary with various projects Community News, Page 11A
Design of King memorial tweaked to add security Nation, Page 11A
Northern’s Emily Ellington spikes the ball in Vikings 3-0 win over KVA.
Sports, 1B
WEDNESDAY, August 26, 2009
Volume XCV, No. 199
(252) 436-2700
www.hendersondispatch.com
50 cents
Scooter rider injured
Rezone request denied
By AL WHELESS Daily Dispatch Writer
Council agrees with planners on future bank
A scooter operator was injured shortly after noon on Monday when he reportedly fell off the vehicle before it struck a car on Old Epsom Road near Mason Street. The victim, Trayshard Henderson, 19, of 65 N. Pinehill St., was taken to Maria Parham Medical Center. No one was said to have been seriously hurt in the eastbound 2005 Buick which was driven by Frances Dillard Gibson, 74, of 1441 Epsom Road. According to Officer K.L. Gregory of the Henderson Police Department, the front end of the Buick was hit by the side of the scooter which was traveling west. Gibson said she was coming into the curve when she noticed the scooter coming towards her. She swerved to miss the scooter, Gibson added. Gregory quoted Henderson as saying the “Driver of Vehicle 1 (Buick) was in his lane and he hit the wrong brake and swerved, causing his bike to slide.” Please see SCOOTER, page 3A
Index Our Hometown . . . . . 2A Business & Farm. . . . 5A Opinion . . . . . . . . . . 12A Light Side . . . . . . . . 13A Sports. . . . . . . . . . 1-5B Comics . . . . . . . . . . . 2C Classifieds. . . . . . . 3-7C
Weather Today P.M. storm High: 92 Low: 66
Thursday Warm
High: 92 Low: 69
Details, 3A
Deaths Franklin County Cora R. Bullock, 78 Oxford Faye W. Clark, 62
Obituaries, 4A
By WILLIAM F. WEST Daily Dispatch Writer Daily Dispatch/ASHLEY STEVEN AYSCUE
Getting down to business Lori Kirkland, above, goes over a worksheet with students in her first grade class at E.O. Young Elementary Tuesday morning. Tuesday was the first day of school for public schools. At right, students in Christi Welch’s class wait to enter the classroom.
Henderson covers budget gap $50,000 pulled from sales of equipment to cover lost state revenues By WILLIAM F. WEST Daily Dispatch Writer
The Henderson City Council earlier this week quickly and unanimously voted to amend the municipal budget to cover a $50,000 shortfall from the state. City Manager Ray Griffin said that, approximately a week ago, North Carolina’s budget resolution resulted in additional cuts to counties and municipalities, with revenues from sales of beer and wine to be reduced by more than 66 percent. That lowered the amount of projected income for Henderson via Raleigh from $76,000 to $26,000. And, as a result, one of the small
cushions the city was hoping for, from the sale of motor vehicles, is already being tapped, Griffin told the council on Monday evening. And the city will have to tap into anticipated revenues from the sale of equipment in the next couple of months, Griffin added. Henderson is operating with a tight budget. The council majority on June 22 agreed to raise the property tax rate by two cents instead of the one-cent increase the council majority agreed on at the June 9 budget session. The vote meant that, effective at the July 1 start of this current budget year, the rate would be set at 58.5 cents per $100 of assessed valuation.
And the extra cent in tax hike is being put into the fund balance, that is, the municipal piggy bank. The council majority on June 9 agreed to put revenues from the other one cent into the fund balance and to close a $16,200 gap because a debt refinancing plan for the new police station and the Aycock Recreation Center turned out not to be as optimistic as anticipated. State lawmakers did not pass North Carolina’s budget until Aug. 5, with a package of higher taxes and reduced services reluctantly signed by Gov. Beverly Perdue.
new feature is a completely redesigned e-Edition. We’re excited about photo slideshows that will give you the option to look at more photos. And we’ve also added a news business directory — in addition to so much more. You are certainly going to see some bugs for the next several days, so we apologize in advance. We rushed to get up and going as quickly as we could and we’re still fine-tuning some features. We hope you enjoy the new look.
Please see REZONE, page 3A
Contact the writer at bwest@hendersondispatch.com.
Daily Dispatch launches DMV office to close half its redesigned e-Edition a day to change system The address is still the same — www.HendersonDispatch.com — but what’s online has changed — significantly. When you point your web browser to the Dispatch this morning, you’ll want to make sure you are going to our long-standing address: www.HendersonDispatch. com. We’ve changed hosts and we’ve improved the site to make it easier to navigate. If you bookmarked the SouthernHeadlines.com hosted site, you will want to update your bookmarks. The most noticeable
The Henderson City Council earlier this week unanimously voted to uphold the Planning Board majority’s recommendation earlier this month to deny a woman’s request to rezone her family’s deteriorating, empty residential property at the northwest corner of Parker Lane and Dabney Drive to allow for a future bank. Opposing residents, expressing the “not in my backyard” opinion, cited several concerns, namely decreases in property values and traffic along an already busy Dabney and at the already congested intersection of Dabney, Parker and Parham Street. And opponents additionally noted rezoning the property from the present moderate-to-low-density residential to an office and institutional classification would allow more than just the proposed unnamed bank. The Planning Board voted 4-1 on Aug. 3 to advise denying rezoning the property, which is located at 1408 Parker. During Monday evening’s council meeting, local real estate agent
From STAFF REPORTS
The Henderson office of the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles will be closed for half a day next week so the location can change over from issuing drivers’ licenses on the spot to the “central issuance” system in which the new license will be mailed to the applicant. The office at the DMV Building, 1080 Eastern Blvd., will close at 8 a.m. on Monday and reopen at 1 p.m. Photos will still be taken
at the local office, but the license will not be prepared there. The DMV office will issue a 20-day permit to drive that should be more than enough, the state says, to cover the estimated week to 10 days it will take for the new license to be received in the mail. Only 12 offices in the state remain to be converted to the system, and the Henderson office is the only such location in the Tri-County area. Send comments to news@ hendersondispatch.com.
Submitted photo
Wanted
The Oxford Police Department needs the public’s help finding the suspect shown in this still shot from a surveillance video in the storage area of the Walmart at Granville Corners in Oxford. Police said that on July 20 the suspect took a large flat screen television and exited via the back door. Anyone with any information is urged to phone Detective Shelly Chauvaux at (919) 603-1212.