BY MILES LAYTON
New glasses… Thx to our readers, subscribers and donors, I can see again.
Received a tip that when Elizabeth City Council approved its annual budget in June, there was a line item for $3,500 to be spent for the inauguration of whoever is elected mayor and council.
When all public officials need is a Bible and to hold up their right hand to recite an oath, spending $3,500 for an inauguration ceremony seems excessive. If the new mayor and council need to borrow a Bible, I’ve got one you can use.
Another thing – Council’s travel budget for 2025-26 has nearly doubled since last year – from $8,100 to around $13,500 – I wonder what taxpayer-funded junket they are planning.
Long ago, I remember reporting about local West Virginia lawmakers attending a convention in Puerto Rico – trip wasn’t cheap. In recent years, I wrote extensively about two Hertford Town Council members’ trip to Texas and Georgia – that was a fun story to write. They weren’t reelected…
And see how City Manager’s Office plans to spend more for office supplies — $7,000 for FY 2025-26, up from $679 appropriated last year — see page 38 of the budget.
Where is all this money coming from? Answer, the taxpayers…
I forgot who originally said this quote, but if you pay attention to the pennies, the dollars are sure to follow.
Moving on, the NC Board of Elections sent a notice of noncompliance to Chowan County’s Democratic Executive Committee on June 19, saying that the local Democrats had not filed their third quarter report (July 1-Sept. 30) for 2024 — three important months leading into the November election.
“If the report is not filed within 30 days of the date of the official notice (June 19), the State Board shall consider an order requiring the committee to file the missing report and to cease receiving contributions and making expenditures if the missing report is not filed within 30 days of the order,” the letter from the State Board says.
Moreover, the BOE stated that the penalty for filing a late report is $50 per day, up to a maximum of $500.
As of August 3, about six weeks after Chowan’s Democratic Executive was notified on June 19, there’s nothing else posted to the State Board’s site that suggests the issue/report has been amended, remedied or resolved, but I’m sure that’s because of bureaucratic inertia or the mail.
The reason I’m cautiously optimistic about the Democrats’ paperwork is that they submitted their mid-year report that appears to be up to date so far in 2025. Democrats filed the proper paperwork July 22 that chronicles everything – spending, donations – between Jan. 1-June 30. Nothing from this expense portion of the Democrats’ budget suggests that they paid the state any fines for the late report, so there’s that.
And if you study the Democrats’ budget disclosure, – $1,254 balance during this time period so far this year. These kinds of figures and totals — we’re not talking ActBlue kind of problems that may force some Democratic leader to make a speech on national television, but small potatoes, clean and clear.
Why is transparency important when it comes to a political party’s finances? Google Nixon, Watergate, maybe the Checkers speech. For the record, I’m glad Nixon got to keep the little dog.
In other business, during a recent trip to Plymouth, I took some time to study 108 W. Washington Street – a downtown building that is in major disrepair. Although the Town Council has temporarily tabled the matter of the property’s demolition, Council had discussed whether to spend $200,000 of taxpayer dollars to tear down the building or use that money to invest in restoring the historic structure – possibly using those funds as seed money to attract state grants. No matter what Council decides, it’s going to cost a lot of money to demolish or restore that building.
With a probable tax increase looming to pay for a rescue vehicle, Plymouth’s mayoral race will be one to watch between Council member Crystal Davis, Mayor Brian Roth and Benjamin Sexton. More on that later.
Elizabeth City mayoral candidates are Christina Williams, Kirk Rivers who is running for reelection and Jamie Noble. Most folks know who Williams is and certainly about Rivers, but who the hell is Jamie Noble? More on that election later.
Greenville news, sort of … while vacationing in Hawaii, former Mayor Allen Thomas was marked as safe by the media in the wake of a tsunami that sort of not really threatened that faraway Pacific island last week. I’m not sure why the Greenville television stations considered that as news – must’ve been a slow news day.
Speaking of Greenville, that city’s mayoral race between incumbent PJ Connelly and former Council member Mildred Atkinson Council caught my eye.
Connelly ran for and was elected as mayor in 2017, after Allen Thomas, the previous mayor, resigned to become executive director of the Global Transpark in Kinston.
Anyway, Council served on Council from 1987 through 2009 and as Mayor Pro Tem three times. Later, Council was a member of the Pitt County Board of Education – serving as chair.
Council ran for election to the NC House, but she lost in the Democratic primary in May of 2018.
Greenville’s mainstream media won’t say this, probably because they lack institutional memory about Mildred Council’s name recognition and her skills as a community organizer, nor know much about Connelly’s across-the-board appeal to voters, but I suspect this mayor’s race may be one to watch.
One more thing — no, we did not do a follow-up story naming the ECPD officer involved in the shooting incident in July, nor any of the law officers involved in other recent Elizabeth City-related shootings. Yes, the ECPD officer’s name is public record, after all, the NC State Bureau of Investigation released the man’s name to the media last week.
Unlike the other media, we didn’t think it right to name the ECPD officer — a 20-year veteran of law enforcement. Why? That officer doesn’t need the attention nor the grief just to satisfy a few half-wit journalists who are driven to publicize an event that is probably one of the worst days of this lawman’s life. When the shift starts, no law officer ever plans to harm someone but instead help people, keep them safe.
And then, to add insult to injury, one media outlet regurgitated old info about shootings in April at ECSU and at Albemarle Sentara Hospital. OK, yes, the SBI is investigating the campus shooting and the hospital incident with the sheriff’s deputies — with the July 20 shooting marking the third Elizabeth-City related investigation this year. And with the media framing it like that, rather than insisting that people with guns may be to blame rather than law officers doing their duty, then it leaves a bad taste in folks’ minds.
And then to follow up the absurd way the media framed the story, this same media outlet cited statistics that suggest that the SBI is projected to investigate upwards of 5,000 cases by the end of the year — that again is a misleading statistic that doesn’t tell the whole story.
News flash — after an officer fires a weapon, an investigation is standard protocol whether conducted by internal or an outside law enforcement agency such as the SBI. If an officer fires a service revolver at an injured deer that he/she accidentally hit while driving home, that incident would be under investigation.
Applied further, tragic story that I had to cover: if you are a new officer, you open a door and some meth head shoots-kills you instantly, then assisting officers start blazing away at him — there will be an investigation. There should be an investigation, but the fact that there is an investigation doesn’t mean that the officers who fired their weapons did anything wrong as long as they followed accepted protocols and exercised sound judgment.
I’ll say again — reporters and editors have not been trained to analyze and think critically, they just project what’s in front of them.
Moreover, will these same media outlets that named the law officers — will they report on outcome of SBI investigations? Or will the initial reporting naming names be the only thing that appears on the Internet, forever following these officers’ careers.
Thus, unlike other media outlets who were hyperventilating to publicize all these officers names in these incidents, we opted to stand down because it is the right thing to do to protect the officer’s privacy.
Last thing…
All of a sudden, dead people are being removed from the voter rolls across the state in greater numbers than in previous years; some would say they’re being disenfranchised. Those high percentages posted to the State BOE could be for numerous reasons – maybe more people are opting to die so they don’t have to cope with another campaign cycle that promises to be the election of the century.
Or perhaps now that State Auditor Dave Boliek is responsible for appointing and overseeing the State Board of Elections, there’s a little more “chop-chop” when it comes to auditing, then updating voter rolls by striking the names of dead people. And it’s state law that dead can’t vote, though I don’t have a problem with these folks voting as long as they show the proper ID at the polling sites. Because the voter rolls are being purged of possible zombies, several dead people will not be registered to vote in the Elizabeth City Municipal Election on Oct. 7 nor the November election elsewhere.
Check out your county’s list/percentages:
Pasquotank County
| Month Name | Current YR Removals | Previous YR Removals | Percent Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 94 | 30 | 213.3% |
| February | 35 | 29 | 20.7% |
| March | 83 | 13 | 538.5% |
| April | 32 | 16 | 100.0% |
| May | 24 | 3 | 700% |
| June | 10 | 5 | -80% |
Bertie County
| Month Name | Current YR Removals | Previous YR Removals | Percent Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 39 | 12 | 225.0% |
| February | 6 | 14 | -57.1% |
| March | 35 | 43 | -18.6% |
| April | 18 | 21 | -14.3% |
| May | 11 | 19 | -42.1% |
| June | 17 | 10 | 70.0% |
Chowan County
| Month Name | Current YR Removals | Previous YR Removals | Percent Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 18 | 14 | 28.613% |
| February | 13 | 0 | – |
| March | 53 | 12 | 341.7% |
| April | 14 | 12 | 16.7% |
| May | 15 | 15 | 0% |
| June | 9 | 8 | 12.5% |
Gates County
| Month Name | Current YR Removals | Previous YR Removals | Percent Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | – | – | – |
| February | 22 | 9 | 144.4% |
| March | 10 | 9 | 11.1% |
| April | 77 | 2 | 3750.0% |
| May | 22 | 2 | 1000.0% |
| June | 3 | 13 | -76.9% |
Hyde County
| Month Name | Current YR Removals | Previous YR Removals | Percent Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 5 | 0 | – |
| February | 2 | 1 | 100.0% |
| March | 6 | 1 | 500.0% |
| April | 10 | 12 | -16.7% |
| May | 12 | 2 | 500.0% |
| June | 2 | 7 | -71.4% |
Perquimans County
| Month Name | Current YR Removals | Previous YR Removals | Percent Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 53 | 10 | 430.0% |
| February | 9 | 13 | -30.8% |
| March | 14 | 0 | – |
| April | 14 | 22 | -36.4% |
| May | 10 | 11 | -9.1% |
| June | 9 | 11 | -18.2% |
Tyrrell County
| Month Name | Current YR Removals | Previous YR Removals | Percent Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 0 | 0 | NA |
| February | 0 | 0 | NA |
| March | 0 | 0 | NA |
| April | 31 | 9 | 244.4% |
| May | 0 | 0 | NA |
| June | 0 | 0 | NA |
Washington County
| Month Name | Current YR Removals | Previous YR Removals | Percent Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 22 | 14 | 57.1% |
| February | 8 | 14 | -42.9% |
| March | 16 | 0 | – |
| April | 12 | 29 | -58.6% |
| May | 16 | 8 | 100.0% |
| June | 5 | 4 | 25.0% |
