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Episode #1725
African American Mayors
Holloway: Jay Holloway,
host
Bell: William V. "Bill" Bell, Mayor of Durham
Davis: Don G. Davis, Mayor of Snow Hill
Pitts: Marshall B. Pitts, Jr., Mayor of Fayetteville of
Fayetteville
Holloway: Meet
three of North Carolina's African American mayors next on
Black Issues Forum.
[THEME MUSIC]
Voiceover: This program
was made possible by contributions to UNC-TV from viewers
like you. Thank you.
[THEME MUSIC]
Holloway: Good evening
and welcome to Black Issues Forum, I'm Jay Holloway.
Tonight we meet three mayors from three North Carolina cities,
two cities of which are for the first time being headed by
African Americans. Over the next half-hour we'll find out
what's their top list of concerns and how they plan to address
the issues confronting their citizens in their cities. I'd
like to first introduce Mayor William V. "Bill"
Bell of Durham who was elected in November of 2001 and took
office in December. Also from the eastern part of the state,
Mayor Don G. Davis of Snow Hill; he's also elected in November
and took office in December. And from the southeastern part
of our state, Mayor Marshall B. Pitts of Fayetteville. Thank
you gentlemen for being with us and congratulations to each
of you.
Smith: Glad to be here.
Pitts: Thank you so
much.
Bell: Thanks Jay.
Holloway: Let's take
the first few moments and just learn a little bit about you
guys as individuals-as mayors-but as individuals, who you
are and let's start off with you, Mayor Pitts, in Fayetteville.
What do you do and what brought you to this position?
Pitts: Well actually
I'm 37 years old, I'm a lawyer by trade, I've been practicing
law for about 12 years. I recently got involved in politics
about four years ago actually, and it was because I was involved
with a lot of civic organizations in the community as a lawyer:
a lot of people that I represent, a lot of people that I came
in contact with. And after that people said, well Marshall,
you're very much interested in the community, we think you'd
be a good leader, you need to get involved in politics. And
at that time I said, oh no, no politics for me, I don't want
anything to do with that. But after a while I realized that
pretty much everything we do is impacted by politics.
Holloway: Well great.
Mayor Davis?
Davis: Jay, I'm glad
to be here again and tell you a little bit about myself. I
was in the Air Force and served eight years in the Air Force,
and my last assignment was at East Carolina University working
in the Aerospace Studies department there; and then of course
I went into the reserve. And now I'm challenged and looking
forward to the challenges of leading the city. And kind of
what I do outside of that is I also teach part-time at Lenoir
Community College as a Sociology instructor and also serve
in the capacity of a lay minister in the Presbyterian denomination.
Holloway: And Mayor
Bell?
Bell: Well Jay, I guess
I'm the old man of the group, I'm 61 years old. I'm a retired
IBM electronic engineer/electrical engineer. Had the privilege
of serving on the Durham County Board of Commissioners for
26 years and served as chairman of that board for 12 years.
Presently I'm working with a non-profit UDI community development
corporation as the executive vice president/chief operating
officer. And as you indicated, I was just elected to the mayor's
office in Durham in November, after having retired from the
Board of County Commissioners in year 2000.
Holloway: I also have
to note that you acted with the Howard University Alumni Club,
so you went to-a graduate of Howard?
Bell: Very definitely.
Holloway: Where did
you guys get your academic training?
Pitts: Well actually
I was big in track and field, believe it or not, and I was
a high school All-American, and then I went to Appalachian
State where I got my degree in Criminal Justice and minor
in Political Science. And then I went on to the North Carolina
Central School of Law and got my law degree.
Holloway: Are you from
North Carolina?
Pitts: Well originally
I'm from Georgia, but we moved to North Carolina around 1970.
My dad was a college professor at Fayetteville State; that's
what originally brought us to North Carolina.
Holloway: How about
you, Don?
Davis: I graduated-my
undergraduate is from the Air Force Academy in Colorado, and
then I went on to the base extension program and a masters
in Administration through Central Michigan. And when I was
at East Carolina, I went ahead and took more classes and had
a second masters in Sociology.
Holloway: And actually,
Mayor Bell, you also went to New York University as well.
Bell: Yes, I received
my Masters in Science and Electrical Engineering from New
York University.
Holloway: Let's talk-we're
talking with just three-I say just three, but on the black
mayors' web site, the National Conference of Black Mayors,
they listed 31 but one of you said to me you were talking
to another mayor in North Carolina. There are as many as how
many, Mayor Davis?
Davis: As many as 55,
and that was after speaking with Mayor Alfred Dixon.
Holloway: And he's
the mayor of what city? Here's here in North Carolina?
Davis: Yes he is.
Holloway: There's a
list of 31 on the web site, if you look at our web site you
can see that. Let's talk about some of the important issues
that may be consistent amongst all of you and some that are
unique to your cities. One of the things that you all share
with me is-I don't know if mandates are correct-but to bring
your communities together, we see many of the communities
together on issues of the terrorist attack and the floods
and you mentioned, Mayor Davis. But there are other issues.
Let's start off with you, in a smaller rural area, perhaps
those issues of concern?
Davis: Absolutely.
I think one of the challenges that we're faced with, continuing
to bring the citizens together to collaborate, I think it's
even more important especially in the rural municipalities
to bring all the players to the table and that's one of the
biggest things that I like to do, to work through various
issues. And through that unity I think we can tackle issues
such as how we develop, as far as economic and community development,
growth. These are some of the fundamental things that we ran
on and that we're taking to the people; and also I think there
are some things that I've heard out of other mayors that's
here today, to kind of mention.
Holloway: Mayor Bell,
growth and development is a big concern there in Durham.
Bell: Very definitely
Jay. As you know we are in the Research Triangle and Research
Triangle Park has pretty much been the economic engine for
development in this area. What we are concerned about in Durham
is that we have more balance and inclusive growth in our community.
And when we speak about balance and inclusive growth, we are
talking about moving more into the inner city, revitalizing
our downtown area, revitalizing a lot of our poor inner-city
neighborhoods. Durham is a community that has a very rich
African American history, heritage. We are a very diverse
community, we have a growing Hispanic population. So it behooves
us to try to be as broadly encompassing in our governmental
endeavors, such as purchasing supplies that we put out to
community, development in the community and jobs in the community.
So we are trying very hard to reach out to all constituents
within the Durham community.
Holloway: Mayor Pitts,
you have quite a few constituents as well, and a very diverse
population in Fayetteville.
Pitts: Certainly, Fayetteville,
similar to Durham, is one of the most diverse cities in the
country, and we have one of the largest Hispanic populations,
one of the larger African American populations, Native American,
Asian American. So it behooves us to formulate plans and concepts
that will bring more people to the table. In fact, that was
one of my campaign things, is to open up the process to make
it more inclusive and bring more people to the table. Because
typically in Fayetteville, which I'm sure is no different
from a lot of other cities and towns that you go to, is that
a lot of times in the decision-making process or whether it
be regarding economic development or what-have-you, you only
have a small nucleus of folks that are actually involved in
that process. And we knew that in Fayetteville as diverse
as we are we can no longer continue to allow that to happen,
we had to open that up and get more people involved so we
had the different viewpoints, and make us more effective as
a community.
Holloway: So what about
some of the issues that we talked about of unifying the community
and growth? Is growth an issue in a small town like Snow Hill?
Davis: Growth is tremendously
an issue. I look at it this way: a lot of times we don't always
have the resources that some of our larger municipalities
might have, therefore we have to search for alternative means
of increasing our tax base to try to maintain the reasonable
tax base and rates for our residents. So growth becomes even
more of an importance, and especially rural municipalities.
Especially again, we're challenged to the, as far as our downtown
area, trying to help develop our downtown area and so forth.
But again, in general, it's very important to help maintain
some strain that residents might already feel.
Holloway: Share with
our state-wide viewers that may not be familiar-I know Snow
Hill is in Green County, but where exactly is that and tell
us about the size of your community.
Davis: Snow Hill of
course is my home, I was born and raised there, and it is
surrounded by Goldsboro, Kinston, Greenville, Wilson and even
leads to Jacksonville. So it's very centrally located, and
I think that's one of the strongholds of our community, because
we do get a lot of transient people that are passing through
and coming through, and when we're talking about growth and
development-going back for a second-that's important for us
to try to get more people stopping through and staying with
us. This is a smaller quiet town-
Holloway: The size
roughly?
Davis: Roughly, we
have about 1500, a little over 1500 within our city limits,
and then we pick up a little bit of course in our extra jurisdiction
right outside the city limits.
Holloway: Mayor Bell,
you talked about the benefits of the Research Triangle Park
and Durham being one of the three cities, and the Research
Triangle Park is actually in the county. Now, you're a former
commissioner so you had some jurisdiction, but how do you
work with the Research Triangle Park and how do you benefit
from the growth in the Triangle area?
Bell: Well, I think
we work very well, that's an important point that you made.
Research Triangle Park, the bulk of it, a little bit less
than 5000 square acres, is in, resides in the County of Durham.
However, because it is off-limits from the City of Durham
in terms of taxing-property taxes-the City of Durham actually
receives no benefits from its property tax base. But there
is spin-off of companies that come that aren't able to locate
in Research Triangle Park, they're on the periphery, certainly
provide jobs, a source of income and a source of revenue for
the City of Durham. I think we have a very good working relationship
with those companies that are in the Park and certainly we
try to make use of the resources and the skills that they
bring in our community.
Holloway: Mayor Pitts?
Pitts: I wanted to
say that that's very ironic because we have a similar situation
with Durham's relationship to the Research Triangle Park that
we have with our military community in Fayetteville, because
also in addition as far as contributing to the tax base there's
not a lot there, but they are certainly an attribute of our
community in that they-we get about 8000 soldiers that come
out of the military every year that are highly-trained, highly-qualified.
A lot of them retire in our community. So they are an attribute
that we definitely like to tap into, and no need to say that
as far as our local economy, the amount of money that they
contribute to our local economy helps us greatly in the City
of Fayetteville. And we now realize over the years that it's
important to cultivate and nurture that relationship with
the military that we have there in Fayetteville.
Holloway: One question
I want to throw out to all three of you that perhaps you may
all have in common, that each of your communities have struggled
with some issues in terms of image and so forth, or even economic
development. And how are you as mayors dealing with that in
Fayetteville and Snow Hill, with the eastern North Carolina,
there has been a report about all the issues in eastern North
Carolina and Durham as well. Let's start in eastern North
Carolina, Mayor Davis.
Davis: I'm sorry, what
was the.
Holloway: Tell me,
are you struggling with some of the issues of eastern North
Carolina, especially since the flood, has come out in recent
news there has been that of the funds haven't spent and so
forth, and some of them have been spent wrongly; eastern North
Carolina has been struggling in terms of growth and development,
versus the state. Are those issues of concern to you still
now?
Davis: Absolutely.
We're still at this point placing people, our residents, back
into homes from the flood. And not only that but again as
we look across the community, and this is the impact again
on a smaller community like Snow Hill when any factory closes
down, we're talking major jobs that are gone and major resources
from the community. And I think the biggest thing when we
start looking at how we've taken on growth-and coming back
to your original question is I think the biggest thing is
to try to allow the process, because some of the challenges
that we face especially in smaller communities are zoning
ordinance matters in allowing the residents that voice and
opportunity to come forth with their ideas and really take
an opportunity to listen to the residents so that we can grow
appropriately in the right areas and the right ways and so
forth.
Pitts: From the City
of Fayetteville, image has been one of my focal points and
I think the community as well is starting to focus more on
that particular issue. Fayetteville as you may know, we've
often been known throughout the state and across the country
as being Fayettenam, crime capital, those kinds of things,
those negative images that we don't think are appropriate
for us. And so a lot of the community leaders have gotten
together and have made it one of our number one goals is to
first of all increase our visibility across the state and
the nation, let people know about what goes on in Fayetteville,
let them know that we're not, no longer the town of the '60s
and '70s or the Vietnam era, that there are a lot of good
things happening in Fayetteville. Like I said, we are one
of the most diverse cities, it's an affordable cost of living
there, we have a lot of military personnel who are highly
qualified. Fayetteville State, Fayetteville Technical Community
College, Methodist College, a lot of graduating students coming
from that community. We've got the Cape Fear River that we
are just now starting to realize we need to tap into a great
waterway that runs through our city borders that can be used
for many different purposes.
Holloway: And you are
an All-American City?
Pitts: Right, All-American
City; we're in the middle of the eastern seaboard between
New York and Florida, just right off a major interstate, I-95.
So there are a lot of things that Fayetteville, positive attributes
that we have that we have not capitalized on. In the past
we have not seen that need to market our city, but you have
to market our city and let people know about the good attributes,
the assets that you have in that community and then that will
in turn, we believe, spark the economic growth and development
that we need. Because you have to convince people both internally,
within your community, and outside that you have a good product,
that you have a good community.
Holloway: Mayor Bell,
Durham has been struggling as well with some image problems;
are they still a concern?
Bell: Well they're
the type of image problems that I guess we like to have, in
a certain sense. We are fortunate that we are one of the three
or four major cities in the Research Triangle Park, and we
benefit from that. What we find that comes along with that
is that you are constantly being compared with the cities
that are close to you. It's not like if you were in Charlotte:
Charlotte's probably about the only city there. But when you're
in the Research Triangle Park, you're being compared with
Raleigh, Chapel Hill and Cary and Durham. What we in Durham
are trying to do is to make use of the resources that we have.
Durham is a community that is growing, transitioning from
a textile/tobacco community to a high-tech city of medicine,
county with merit, type of community. We're trying to capitalize
on that. Unlike Fayetteville, we don't have a river. What
we have is a railroad that's running down the middle of our
city, but we plan to capitalize on that because you may or
may not know that Triangle Transit Authority will be-and I
chair that board-is in the process of developing a regional
rail system which will connect the cities of Durham, Raleigh,
Chapel Hill and Cary, ultimately. And we have tobacco factories
in our downtown area that we are trying to revitalize. We're
looking at a complex, the American Tobacco, to try to revitalize
that, providing housing, and we just had opening this past
few weeks, probably one of the largest shopping centers, Southpoint
Mall, which is a very upscale, very well done shopping community.
So we try to capitalize on the resources that we have and
try to enhance that in our community and make Durham to be
a point of destination for people, for restaurants, entertainment,
living and jobs.
Holloway: You raise
a whole lot of issues. I just want to address one of them,
because your colleague in Raleigh, Mayor Meeker, was related
to this Transit Authority and the rail system, was a very
tough issue where some people tried to remove him from office
because he supposedly changed his position. What is your position
on this? You chair the rail authority?
Bell: It's called the
Triangle Transit Authority and it's the regional authority
which is responsible for bringing regional transportation
between the three counties: Durham, Orange, Wake, and the
cities within them. I chair that. We have a bus system that
is already existing and we're in the process now of planning
a rail system which will connect the three communities, and
we expect to have that rail system up and running during the
year 2007, early 2008. But again, that's a very important
commodity and what we feel is going to sort of transform how
growth and development takes place. What hopefully we would
see is more development taking place around the transit stops,
just like when you have highways and you have interchanges
people tend to develop around that.
Holloway: That was
the other issue around that, the Outer Loop, which may affect
all of you all because it's going toward eastern North Carolina.
Is that going to affect Durham and will that transportation
issue or highway affect the other areas that way?
Bell: Oh, we're trying
to find a balance. We don't expect that the regional rail
is going to cure the traffic problems. We think it's going
to help. But you still have to have a certain amount of highways
and roadways to complement what we already have now.
Holloway: Mayor Davis,
what is the major industry there in Snow Hill and-go right
ahead.
Davis: Well right now
we've a very agricultural base and of course we're looking
at how do we continue to embrace other industries. And I think
we're going to have to be proactive in going out and searching.
One of the things that was important is-especially in I think
rural areas also, the importance of small businesses in helping
small businesses to survive and make it, along with, obviously,
more larger industry. And right now we're searching for other
alternatives. And not only that but just the basic concept
of ways that we can capitalize on our strength, which is being
centrally located to get people to stop and stay with us.
Another thing that we're actually looking at is more tourism,
trying to get more tourism-type efforts.
Pitts: In Fayetteville
we have what, as you will find much the same in most other
eastern communities, when you get past, when you get east
of Raleigh you have a similar pattern that we are primarily
a manufacturing-retail based type of economy currently. A
Kelly-Springfield tire plant is our largest employer. And
we, if you didn't know it, along Scarborough Rd. in Fayetteville,
that's one of the busiest retail strips in the entire state
of North Carolina. So retail and manufacturing have been our
base. But we are in the process now, as I said before, of
trying to diversify our economy, move adjacent down to alongside
the river also, to revitalize as they doing in Durham, our
downtown area. So that would give us a better balance of what
we want in our community, because typically communities in
the East have been left off the Gold Coast, so to speak. When
you go from Asheville to Raleigh, then everything's kind of
comes to a standstill as far as that diversifying, high-tech,
types of living wage jobs, and we want to tap into that. We
talked about the rail. There is a proposal to have an across-the-state
rail which one of the routes proposed from Raleigh to Wilmington
and currently we're kind of in competition with Goldsboro
and some areas around his way to make sure that rail runs
through Fayetteville, because we are a large metropolitan
area. The city itself is about 125,000 but Cumberland County
which is where Fayetteville sits is about 300,000 people and
we don't want the same thing to happen that happened with
I-40. I-40 runs from east to west-I mean, west to east, from
the mountains to the coast. All of the metro areas are on
the I-40 route with the exception of Fayetteville. We were
left off. And like I said, it goes back to us being more visible
and making sure those kinds of things don't happen again,
that we are included, that we become a part of the network
that helps make us viable.
Holloway: Mayor Pitts
talked briefly about the high-tech industry, dropping off
here, but Durham certainly benefits from the Research Triangle
Park and high-tech and I want to ask also Mayor Davis to talk
about the high-tech possibilities, but what about technology
in your community and how is that benefiting or.
Bell: Well again, and
it's been sort of the source of growth and development in
our community, but like other places around the country, when
the economy hit some of the high-tech industries tend to suffer.
But fortunately we've had a balance. We have not only the
high-tech and the electronics, we have high-tech and pharmaceutical
companies, and biotech which is a growing industry. So we've
been able to fare fairly well during this recession period.
It doesn't mean people haven't lost jobs and some companies
have closed down, but by and large I think we've been able
to weather the storm and I'm convinced that we're going to
come back.
Holloway: Mayor Davis,
high-tech?
Davis: High-tech, some
of the efforts we're making, we're working with the e-community
to again, get even high speed internet into the rural areas.
These are some of the challenges, which our challenges are
slightly unique to us, but we're making very much the efforts
to educate our residents and to make the right connections
to give us the infrastructure to continue on with high-tech.
Holloway: As we end
here, could I ask you all to maybe give me about a 10-second
statement on what kind of legacy of what you would like to
leave in office?
Bell: Well, I would
certainly hope that the residents of Durham will feel that
they are better off than they were when I came in office,
and I would hope that the community would find that it is
better off, that it has made improvements, over than when
I first came into office.
Holloway: Mayor Davis?
Davis: I would like
to continue to promote and get Snow Hill out there, and to
connect with communities across county lines throughout the
state, and to let people know about Snow Hill and to keep
the door open.
Holloway: Mayor Pitts?
Pitts: I would like
to leave my office in Fayetteville as being a place where
you know it's a diversified community, it's a diversified
economy, it's a warm and friendly environment, and there is
a lot of culture, arts and entertainment that you can partake
in; it's a good place to be.
Holloway: All right,
well thank you all for being in this place to be and we appreciate
you sharing your information with our audience.
All: Thank you.
Holloway: And thank
you for joining us on Black Issues Forum tonight for an introduction
to North Carolina's black mayors, at least three of them out
of the possible 55. If you'd like to contact any of our guests
or send us your comments on tonight's program, please visit
us online at www.unctv.org or call us at 919-549-7167. For
Black Issues Forum, I'm Jay Holloway, join us every Friday
night at 9:30 right here on UNC-TV. You have a blessed evening.
Good night.
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