It’s time to catch up with some of the issues that we in the news business have been covering for much of this year, beginning with the dire state of Hatteras Inlet.
HATTERAS INLET
The county’s southernmost inlet took a back seat for much of this year as officials scrambled to find short- and long-term funding for the dredging at Oregon Inlet. Hatteras Inlet users watched and waited as the Coast Guard shut down Oregon Inlet to most vessels and county officials squabbled over where to get the money to fix the shoaling problem.
At one point earlier this year, the Dare Board of Commissioners wanted to merge its two advisory panels on inlet issues — The Oregon Inlet Task Force and the Oregon Inlet and Waterways Commission. That idea didn’t fly since the task force members made it clear they weren’t the least bit interested in Hatteras Inlet’s problems.
One commissioner warned at a board meeting that “We are all one Dare County…and we’d better start acting like it.”
However, Oregon Inlet Task Force members made it clear that Hatteras islanders could form their own task force to solve their own inlet problems. They said they were close to getting the funds they needed for Oregon Inlet, and basically, they didn’t want to waste time and energy on any other county waterways.
The Commissioners decided to keep both panels with the Oregon Inlet and Waterways Commission widening its mission to focus more on Hatteras Inlet.
As it turned out, that was a wise move because conditions at Hatteras Inlet have rapidly deteriorated over the summer — until the shoaling has become both dire and devastating for the economy and for public safety.
Local commercial and recreational watermen are having to carefully feel their way through a shoaled-up inlet, risking damage to their boats. Visiting boaters haven’t a clue as to how to get in and out of the inlet and are reduced to following the local boats. And the Coast Guard is barely able to get its boats out for search and rescue missions.
The Coast Guard seemed to throw in the towel on Tuesday when it issued a press release warning mariners not to use the inlet because shoaling had made it unsafe. Apparently, the aids to navigation team will be taking up the buoys that mark the channels — really leaving visiting mariners clueless.
With this as the backdrop, the Waterways Commission has met twice in two weeks time in Hatteras village — instead of its usual Manteo meeting place.
The dire state of the shoaling was pretty well laid out at the first meeting on Aug. 11, and the panel members were searching for solutions at the Aug. 18 meeting.
However, I would be surprised if many of the local watermen and citizens who attended the meeting left feeling better about their plight.
In fact, I am told that at the docks the next day, boat captains were seeking donations to buy their own buoys to mark the channel when the Coast Guard pulls theirs.
Six of the county’s seven commissioners attended the meeting, along with the county manager, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers chief of navigation, the deputy director of the state Ferry Division, Coast Guard officials, and many others.
Yet when they left, it didn’t seem that the folks who depend on the inlet were much better off. Three days later, they are still going out under the same dangerous conditions with no sure end in sight.
The Waterways Commission unanimously passed a resolution that Bob Woodard , chairman of the Board of Commissioners, will talk to Gov. Pat McCrory to ask that the state dredge, now working in Wanchese, be pulled off that job and sent to Hatteras Inlet to “punch through” the sand clogging the channel.
Getting dredging going isn’t easy these days, since the federal government has apparently totally given up on funding it. This situation is made worse by the fact that the shoaled-up section of the channel is in a “no man’s land” — an area that is outside the federally designated channel and that has apparently never been dredged before.
Trying to figure out who can dredge it, on what timetable, with which permits, and with whose money is a quagmire like you would not believe — one that leaves the watermen shaking their heads.
It should be clear that a state of emergency exists for Hatteras Inlet. A very short area needs to be dredged — perhaps as short as half a football field — and the whole job will likely cost less than $100,000 — not that much money in the overall scheme of things.
However, the current plan to make a “Hail, Mary” request to the governor for a state dredge leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
Exactly where would the dredge work — in the state’s south ferry channel, recently surveyed by the corps or in an area just north, or inshore, of that with deeper water that the boat captains prefer?
How long would the dynamic channel stay clear?
Is the state dredge up to the job? Where do the dredge spoils go? How long will it take the dredge to set up?
Who pays for this?
And, finally, who is working on a long-term solution to this problem — which involves a new Memo of Agreement between the state and the Army Corps to dredge in Hatteras Inlet?
SALES TAX REDISTRIBUTION
Opponents of the state Senate’s sales tax redistribution plan won a battle — and perhaps the war — this week in Raleigh.
At least for this year.
Yesterday, the House of Representatives voted 111-2 to reject the Senate’s version of the N.C. Competes Act, House Bill 117, which contains the plan to change to formula that the state uses to distribute the local option sales tax.
The bill has been sent to a conference committee, though it seems unlikely, at this point with a vote so lopsided, that the House will allow its economic development package to become law with the sales tax plan included.
Dare County leaders have fought tooth-and-nail to defeat the sales tax plan, including making a plea for all Dare County citizens and those who own investment or retirement property here to contact state lawmakers and take a stand against HB 117.
Senate leaders, mostly Republicans, who support the redistribution say it is a more fair and equitable way to distribute the local option part of the state sales tax — which is 2 cents on the dollar.
It is now distributed 75 percent based on point of sale and 25 percent on population. This, Republican leaders say — hurts smaller and poorer rural counties and benefits larger counties that are commercial centers.
They proposed — first in a Senate bill and then in the chamber’s budget — to change the formula to 80 percent distribution based on population and 20 percent on point of sale.
A compromise that the Senate inserted into the House bill would change the formula to a 50-50 spilt.
This was only slightly better news for Dare County. The plan still would inflict considerable financial damage on the county budget, starting next year.
According to the General Assembly’s fiscal research division, the first redistribution plan would have taken about $9 million from Dare County and additional money from its municipalities. The new 50-50 plan would take $4.6 million — 24 percent — from Dare and another 24 percent from the cities.
Dare County says the estimates ignore their projections for sales tax revenue growth and other details and that the actual amounts the county and its municipalities would lose is higher.
The Senate’s plan takes sales tax revenues not only from those large counties that we think of as hubs of business and commerce, such as Charlotte and Raleigh, but also counties, such as Dare, which have a small year-round population but a thriving tourism industry. Hosting about 300,000 additional people in the community in the summer requires more services, which cost more money.
Today, Dare County leaders are breathing somewhat easier.
“Local officials expressed optimism following the House vote,” the county said in a news release, “but realize there is still work to do as the plan moves to a joint conference committee for discussion and possible compromise.”
?This is good news for Dare County and we appreciate the strong support of House members and the Governor in opposing this bill,? said Bob Woodard, Chairman of the Dare County Board of Commissioners. ?We know that there are still ways for this legislation to pass as the joint conference committee meets and budget negotiations continue, so we remain vigilant and committed to working against it.?
Rep. Paul Tine, who represents Dare County, opposes the sales tax and warned at a county news conference earlier this month that the idea is not going to go away.
If it doesn’t pass in this legislative session, it will be back.
Helping poorer counties with funding for schools and infrastructure should be pursued by the General Assembly, but, as Tine has also noted, there are ways to get the funds that don’t involve taking sales tax revenues from counties that need them.
Next time around, we can hope that lawmakers will consider them.
OUTER BANKS GAS PRICES
At this week’s meeting of the Dare County Board of Commissioners, Chairman Bob Woodard gave an update on his request to the North Carolina Attorney General’s office to investigate gas prices on the Outer Banks.
Last Jan. 20, in response to requests from some county residents, Woodard wrote a letter to state Attorney General Roy Cooper, asking for an investigation into gas prices in the county.
“The prices that are being forced on our residents and visitors far exceed the prices elsewhere in our region and the average rate in North Carolina,” Woodard wrote in the letter.
“I am sure you agree that our unfair gasoline prices are not the type of welcome message we want to extend to those who are bringing their tourism dollars to North Carolina,” Woodard wrote.
On June 12, Phillip Woods, special deputy attorney general, e-mailed the commissioners that, while he was limited in what he could disclose, the attorney general?s office has sent letters on May 19 to “three major retailers in Dare County seeking information regarding costs and retail selling prices of gasoline.”
At Monday’s meeting,Woodard said he had talked to Woods last week. Woods told him that the consumer affairs division had received replies from the retailers and was analyzing the data.
The AG’s office ought to move along and wind up this investigation. Outer Banks gas dealers were charged with unethical, if not illegal, practices. They either need to be charged or exonerated.
OTHER COMMISSIONERS’ BUSINESS
On Monday, the board voted 6-1 to extend the public comment period at meetings from three to five minutes per person.
Allen Burrus cast the dissenting vote. He said during discussion that, while he didn’t necessarily oppose sitting through a longer public comment period, he thought it was asking too much of others who come to a meeting to sit through an hour or two of comment when there is a large turnout before they have a chance to speak.
Also on Monday, Woodard addressed two issues that were on his list of priorities when he was elected chairman last December — economic development and consolidation of services.
The chairman said that such pressing issues as inlet shoaling and sales tax redistribution have taken most of the boards’ time this year, but he now was ready to begin addressing other goals more directly.
He said Jack Shea will continue to lead a board effort to identify economic development opportunities and that he and Shea will lead an effort to identify opportunities to consolidate county services.
He said county manager Bobby Outten will invite leaders of the county’s municipalities to join in a committee that would meet monthly to begin a “long process” of addressing potential and possibilities for consolidating services in “areas they think this might work.”
