Spring has sprung in our town. Each spring, perhaps it is part of getting older, seems more beautiful than the last. As the weather warms however, the work of running the city increases as well. The Street Department, in particular, feels the brunt of the increased activity that comes with warmer weather, as they try to keep the physical elements of the city from growing out of control. This year, we are trying some new ways of doing street maintenance and ‘beautification’, with an added emphasis on creating more ‘curb appeal’ on the major thoroughfares through town. I hope the citizens will notice and join in continuing to improve the look of the city because, I believe, it gives even the most cynical of citizens a better feeling about life to live in a well-kept town.

Okay, enough about the weather. Several major issues arose in the past weeks that I want to discuss.

The biggest newsmaker of course has been the landfill. Many people have asked what the City of Laurinburg’s position on this is and will the City take an official position on it, similar to what the Town of Maxton did last week. The County Commissioners have said, repeatedly, that they are early on in the process and are far from making a decision, and I believe them at their word. However, the heat has been turned up by people opposed to the landfill. This issue is becoming too divisive and too widely discussed to let it linger any longer. There are many positive things on the horizon for our community’s growth with BRAC, the airport, green industries, agricultural initiatives etc. As we try to position ourselves for maximal growth in these areas, the specter of a mega-landfill being built right in the middle of things would hardly seem to be a good idea. I attended the town hall meeting in Maxton and heard our county manager’s presentation about the landfill. The 2 million dollars a year revenue that this proposed landfill would bring (or roughly $55 dollars per citizen per year) is simply not worth the psychological and physical damage to our county or Maxton. I understand the county’s need for more revenue and I believe the citizens understand that garbage fees may go up in the future if we don’t begin building a mega-landfill now. Nevertheless, I still believe no one wants this. Contrary to the last landfill proposal in 2006 in the Sandhills, which myself and many others were strongly in favor of, I have not heard a single citizen in this county (other than several county commissioners) who think this current landfill proposal may be an idea worthy of further consideration. As the Mayor of Laurinburg, I respectfully ask the commissioners to act quickly and either take the issue off the table completely or agree to a 6 month moratorium and form a solid waste committee made up of citizens and officials to examine all the challenges and opportunities that exist in handling our county’s waste in the future. I do not know whether Laurinburg City Council will take a position on this issue as it has not yet been discussed. But my feeling on it will not change, this site is just the wrong place for a mega-landfill and letting the issue linger any longer will be damaging for our community.

Now, on a happier note, the biggest and best news of the past weeks has been out at St Andrews. With relentless political pressure from Senators Hagan and Burr, Congressman Kissel and Governor Purdue and former Governor Hunt, and with a lot of hard work from College President Paul Baldesare and his staff and the Board of Trustees, our dear old St Andrews will survive. This is truly great news and the City of Laurinburg sends its heartfelt congratulations to all involved. But the work is not over. While it is clear now that St Andrews is out of danger, we must, as a community, continue to show our support and make sure St Andrews’s never finds itself in this situation again. I ask all citizens to dig deep into their pockets and make as generous a contribution as possible to this year’s Laurinburg Area Campaign. As fate would have it, this year’s fundraising campaign is being chaired by Hew and Martha Fulton, who, as many know, lost their dearly beloved paterfamilias Reginald ‘Mutt’ McCoy just two weeks ago. Mr. McCoy was, I believe, St Andrews most generous living donor and we, as a community, will have to work hard to make up for his absence. To show just how much St Andrews meant to Mr. McCoy, I share with you this anecdote. When the college’s President Baldesare visited Mr. McCoy in the hospital just before he died, he asked Mr. McCoy if there was anything he could get for him. Mr. McCoy, still razor sharp at 94, answered simply, ‘yes, accreditation’. So, somewhere up in heaven, Mr. McCoy may now truly rest in peace that his beloved St Andrews, an institution that might not still be here but for his generosity, will live on.