By By JONATHAN CLAYBORNE
Staff Writer
Seven of the eight candidates for Washington City Council staked out their territories Wednesday night at a forum presented by the Beaufort County Democratic Women.
Present were incumbents Doug Mercer, Gil Davis and Richard Brooks and challengers William Pitt, Bobby Roberson, Donna Lay and Ed Moultrie. Incumbent Darwin Woolard was absent.
The candidates’ comments frequently drew some form of low-key verbal reply from the responsive audience, though more enthusiastic responses were not uncommon.
Moderator Alice Mills Sadler asked the questions.
Sadler posed one query about senior citizens walking along busy Highland Drive to a grocery store or medical complexes. She asked what needed to be done to protect those seniors.
“You need to build a sidewalk,” Moultrie said, garnering applause.
Davis also addressed the sidewalk question, pointing out the fact that Highland Drive is a state-maintained street and that officials have had meetings to discuss plans for widening that thoroughfare.
Davis said he wrote the city’s pedestrian plan. Davis said he hopes that a sidewalk will be built along Highland Drive at some point, but he added that the city can’t do that.
“That’s not true,” Roberson responded quietly from his seat.
In her turn up, Lay reiterated that she’s running because she wants to lower the city’s utility rates.
“That is my primary objective for running in this race,” she said.
The rates can be lowered by cutting spending and introducing competition from other electric-utility providers, she said, evidently endorsing some form of electric deregulation.
Speaking of utility rates paid by residents, Pitt said, “Conservation is the key.”
He stressed home-improvement measures that could help individuals lower their utility costs, and he said the city is maintaining transformers and other equipment as best it can.
Pitt, a telecommunicator with the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, said the resources of the city’s police department need to be redirected in a “more community-oriented” fashion. He also said that gangs are infiltrating Washington.
Roberson spoke in favor public-private partnerships in the provision of city services. He mentioned garbage-collection services as an example.
“The private sector can do it as well as we can,” he said of trash collection.
He decried the city’s payment of about $250,000 for 2.5 acres of land for a fire department substation on 15th Street. The city spent about $60,000 to haul additional dirt onto the property, he said.
“Now folks, that’s not the way to do business,” Roberson commented.
Mercer came out in favor of implementing portions of a downtown revitalization plan quickly and in “small, incremental bits” that wouldn’t be too costly.
He said the city could easily begin work to redirect the traffic flow on Stewart Parkway by modifying the corner of Main and Gladden streets.
Asked about the fire department substation, he said, “I wouldn’t have put it there.”
He said the difficulty with locating the substation arose in response to the annexation of Flanders Filters, and that the substation push was part of an effort to hold down local fire insurance rates.
He said the city spent about $50,000 to haul dirt onto the property, countering Roberson’s quote of $60,000.
Brooks also responded to the substation issue. He noted that the city had benefited from the donation of land next to the Beaufort County Industrial Park, jointly owned by the city and Beaufort County. He said that land was deemed unsuitable for a substation.
He said the substation needed to be built within two miles of the fire department headquarters on Market Street to ensure coverage.
“So both fire departments interlock with each other so that you can cover the area,” he said.
The city council learned in January 2006 that a soils analysis showed the substation site next to the industrial park wouldn’t support a fire station, according to Daily News reports.
The city proceeded with preparing the site and building the substation out of fear it might lose a U.S. Department of Agriculture loan to help pay for the building, the Daily News reported.
None of the candidates engaged in debate with one another, opting instead to respond to the questions asked by Sadler.