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Bringing Cumberland County's Essential Issues into View
The Cumberland County commissioners voted on Monday night to spend more than $12.85 million on 10 projects and programs. These include medical school scholarships, opioid addiction programs, construction of two drinking water wells and land for industry.
The commissioners also approved a pay raise and bonus for the county manager.
Monday’s meeting was the last for Commissioners Toni Stewart, Michael Boose and Jimmy Keefe, who will leave office after their successors Kirk deViere, Pavan Patel and most likely Henry Tyson take office in December. (Tyson’s election is awaiting the results of a recount requested by candidate Peter Pappas.)
Stewart, Boose and Keefe each took a few minutes to say farewell.
Then they and the rest of the board voted on the following items:
The commissioners decided to provide $1 million to Cape Fear Valley Health System for a financial aid program to provide scholarships for students at the new medical school that Cape Fear is building with Methodist University. The financial aid will be for Cumberland County residents who commit to practicing medicine in Cumberland County.
The commissioners voted to pay $660,000 to East Point Contracting LLC to build two drinking water wells in Gray’s Creek to supply drinking water to residents across the river from Gray’s Creek in Cedar Creek, where people’s drinking water wells have been contaminated with PFAS.
This is separate from an ongoing plan to help people in Gray’s Creek who also have PFAS in their drinking water wells. The county is in a partnership with the Fayetteville Public Works Commission to bring drinking water to Gray’s Creek residents.
The county will spend just over $8 million on programs to address and prevent opioid addiction.
The money is part of a $31.6 million allocation that Cumberland County is getting from a $50 billion lawsuit settlement between the states and opioid manufacturers and distributors following the rise of opioid addiction in the United States.
The commissioners voted to offer $1.85 million to buy two tracts of land, totaling 71.4 acres, on Doc Bennett Road.
A memo says the properties are “to be held for future development as industrial sites.” The tax value for the two tracts totals about $490,000, county tax records say. However, one of the tracts was listed for sale recently for just over $2 million.
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In other projects, the commissioners:
The commissioners also approved a pay raise and a bonus for County Manager Clarence Grier.
Grier’s salary was boosted to $325,000 per year from about $298,000. They also gave him a merit bonus of $10,000.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at 910-261-4710 and pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
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Paul Woolverton comes to CityView from The Fayetteville Observer, where he worked for more than 30 years and covered crime, the justice system, the legislature, agriculture, local and state politics, and numerous other subjects, and also was a photographer. He previously was with the StarNews in Wilmington, and while in college at NC State worked at Technician (the campus newspaper), WKNC radio, WPTF radio, and The News & Observer. In his free time, Paul performs and volunteers with the Sweet Tea Shakespeare community theater troupe in Fayetteville.
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November 2024
2919 Breezewood Ave.
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