RAEFORD – The Hoke County Board of Commissioners is continuing to work toward improving its water availability.
At its Sept. 30 meeting, the board approved a two-year contract with the NC Department of Adult Correction to lease the McCain Water Treatment Plant at the cost of $1.
Currently, the NCDAC owns the land where the water treatment plant is and while the county has been using the water from there for a while now, per Commissioner Tony Hunt, the plan is for the county to eventually own the plant themselves.
“Our intentions and the state’s intentions is that we will eventually own McCain water,” Hunt said. “There’s just things we need to go ahead and get to doing now. The red tape has just been crazy with trying to get everybody to sign what needs to be signed. We’ve actually got some of our representatives involved trying to move it along, but long story short, we want to go ahead and get the lease agreement signed so it protects us.”
According to Hunt, the county wants to go ahead and lease the plant so they can drill more wells and so that when they finish upgrading the water lines, the county is able to start moving water immediately.
Hunt also articulated that while the county is working towards expanding their available water supply and that there is no shortage for Hoke County residents.
“We don’t have a water issue with any of our residents now,” Hunt said. “I want everyone to understand that. The only issue we have is that developers are wanting to develop quicker than we can supply the water for them, therefore we need to put in some more wells. But we’re going to do that at the pace we want to do that and not at the pace they want to do it at. We want everybody to understand that there is not a water shortage for our folks that have homes now.
The board also held a public hearing for submission of the Hoke County Transportation Program application.
The application seeks federal and state dollars from the NC Department of Transportation for administrative and capital costs totaling $510,703. Of that, $58,760 would need to be provided from local funding.
The funding would provide for two raised-roof vans, a 22-foot light transit vehicle, vehicle lettering and vinyl safety decals for the new vehicles, salary and benefits for the transit director and admin expenses such drug and alcohol testing, DOT physicals, uniforms, marketing fees, advertising fees, office supplies, travel, telephone services, scheduling software and printer maintenance contracts.
Following the hearing, the board approved the application.
The board then approved authorizing county staff to submit a request for proposals in order to investigate the potential costs for solar power systems in the county.
“When we had our board retreat, we had a group that came and gave us a presentation to let us know the potential savings [of solar panels],” said Vice Chair Harry Southerland. “As America goes green, we’re all trying to go green, but this could be a good way to save money and go green at the same time.”
Finally, a $408,304 budget increase was approved by the board for the multi-use building/fire tower center project due to a change order request to increase the size to 3,000 square feet in order to add showers and a kitchen.
The Hoke County Board of Commissioners will next meet Oct. 14.