Cleanup committee to lobby legislature Tuesday


The Clean Up Henderson Committee will take its funding requests directly to the state legislature Tuesday when Chairwoman Lynn Harper leads a delegation to visit state Rep. Michael Wray.

Wray is a freshman Northampton County Democrat who represents Henderson and northern Vance County in the House and serves on the House Appropriations subcommittee on natural and economic resources, a possible source of funding for demolishing or renovating abandoned houses.

Henderson has as many as 200 abandoned, decaying structures, but Code Compliance Director Corey Williams has no money to tear them down. Each house can cost $2,000 to $6,000 to demolish.

Harper hopes to bring six to 12 people to Raleigh to attend the 11-person subcommittee’s regular 8:30 a.m. meeting Tuesday. The delegation will meet with Wray about 10:30 to make a half-hour presentation to the panel’s chairmen and vice chairmen as well as Wray.

“I think that will be a powerful statement about what’s going on here in Henderson and what our needs are,” Harper said Wednesday during the biweekly meeting of the cleanup committee at the police station.

She said the city cleanup effort has the strong support of Wray and Vance County’s senior representative in the General Assembly, Rep. Jim Crawford of Oxford, who is a co-chairman of the full Appropriations Committee. Freshman Sen. Doug Berger, the Franklin County Democrat who represents Vance County, has not taken the cleanup tour of Henderson.

The trip to Raleigh comes three weeks after Harper joined the city’s lobbying trip to Washington, where Alex Silbey, an aide to Rep. G.K. Butterfield, said Henderson’s $450,000 appropriations request for demolition, renovation and prevention of dilapidated houses wasn’t enough. Silbey suggested $1 million per year for four years as part of a comprehensive program to eliminate abandoned houses and overhaul neighborhoods.

One particular demolition likely to come up during next week’s trip to the legislature is the old South Henderson School.

Mayor Clem Seifert sent an e-mail letter to Wray last week in which he appealed for the legislator to find $25,000 in state money to close the deal for the demolition of the caved-in building and the sale of the cleared, fenced 2-acre lot on Old Epsom Road to the city.

“I want this property and I want it now so that we can show the citizens of this city that we are serious, determined and successful in our efforts,” Seifert wrote. “We need a visible victory! I want to make this victory a partnership between the Clean Up Henderson! Committee, private citizens, the City of Henderson and the State of North Carolina.”

As explained in previous meetings, the property’s owner, Stuart Clark, has removed most of the asbestos from the site, and an alumnus of the school, Allen Stallings of Enfield, has agreed to demolish the structure at no charge in return for salvage rights to the bricks. The obstacle to action is the expected $10,000 price of disposing of the remaining debris, much of it asbestos-tainted, in landfills.

Facing a general fund balance of less 4 percent, the City Council balked at appropriating $10,000 for demolition on private land without placing a lien on the property, as is done in standard abandoned-structure demolitions.

Seifert then negotiated the city’s post-demolition purchase of the property. If the city pays the landfill fees, Clark will sell the site for $35,000, and he’ll contribute $20,000 of that price in exchange for official recognition there as the city’s benefactor. That means the city needs a total of $25,000 to clear and buy the lot.

Federal and state officials have told Seifert $25,000 isn’t much to worry about, but they haven’t come through with the money.

“I have approached several state and federal agencies and their answer has always been the same,” Seifert wrote to Wray. “We can help if you give us a plan on what is to be done with the property. Our problem is that we don’t know yet.”

Possibilities include a community center and a park, but Seifert said the priority is eliminating an eyesore that is a drag on the neighborhood. “We don’t know what we want to do,” Seifert said Wednesday night. “All we know is we need the property.”

The mayor said the latest update is that Wray discussed the project with House Speaker Jim Black, who asked one of his aides, Rita Harris, to look for $25,000 for the project.

If the state could deliver the money now, the city probably could repay it with private donations, Seifert said. “I don’t want to wait.”