The student-produced Clean Up Henderson Committee video transfixes viewers including City Council member Mary Emma Evans, activist Andrea Harris, and state Reps. Lucy Allen and Michael Wray on Wednesday.
The Clean Up Henderson Committee went to Raleigh on Wednesday and found a friendly hearing from legislators.
Committee Chairwoman Lynn Harper led a delegation of seven Hendersonians, including City Council member Mary Emma Evans and Vice Chairman Frank Terry, to visit Vance County’s freshman representative in the state House, Michael Wray of Northampton County.
Wray reminded the visitors that he arranged for a Henderson delegation to visit Roanoke Rapids last fall to see how that city has redeveloped old mill houses and to save Henderson “from reinventing the wheel” with its attack on abandoned houses.
He also connected city leaders with Henderson native Allen Stallings of Enfield, who has done demolition and salvage work in Roanoke Rapids and has agreed to do the same for the old South Henderson School at no charge to the city or property owner. Wray said again Wednesday that the state probably can’t provide the $25,000 Henderson needs to pay for the disposal of asbestos-tainted debris and buy the 2-acre site.
A conference room on the fourth floor of the legislative office building in Raleigh became a temporary theater Wednesday morning for a showing of the video that Kerr-Vance Academy students prepared for the cleanup committee last year.
A crowded schedule of committee meetings kept the legislative audience small. But Andrea Harris, the Rockspring Street resident who runs a minority-business nonprofit group in Durham and who took time from her normal lobbying schedule to join the cleanup group, said the right lawmakers were there to learn about Henderson’s problems.
In addition to Wray, Reps. Lucy Allen of Louisburg and Howard Hunter Jr. of Ahoskie watched the entire video, and Sen. Doug Berger of Louisburg caught the end of the show and borrowed the tape for a full viewing later. Each legislator received a booklet detailing the cleanup committee’s accomplishments since May 2003 and the work it has yet to do.
While Wray, Allen and Berger already have a strong geographic interest in assisting Henderson — “We do work as a team on your behalf,” Berger said — Hunter may have been the most important audience member. He chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee on natural and economic resources, which handles funding for the Department of Commerce and its Division of Community Assistance. The DCA directs Community Development Block Grant projects and is planning to help Henderson produce its first new land-use plan in more than 30 years.
Wray and Allen chatted occasionally during the screening, as did Harris and Hunter.
Afterward, Hunter seemed impressed, although he warned that the legislature has no money to throw Henderson’s way right now.
“A lot of this can be done with local ordinances,” Hunter said. “I see you’ve done that.”
Harper recounted how Henderson cut its junk-car problem in half, from an inventory of 887 such vehicles in February 2004 to 420 a year later, and took such steps as creating the Code Compliance Department and authorizing civil penalties for code violators.
“I’m willing to do what I can to help,” Hunter said.
He had a specific suggestion for each of the 200 or more abandoned houses plaguing Henderson: “Tear it down or find a match.”
The Fire Department burns dilapidated structures for training purposes when it can, but because of the tiny lots in some of the older parts of the city, most of the condemned houses in Henderson are too close to other homes to risk burning them.
Harris suggested tapping a $50 million state trust fund to address Henderson’s housing problems. Hunter said that pot of money is no longer under his subcommittee, but he acknowledged that it could be a source of assistance.
In addition to Harper, Terry and Evans, Jackie Jackson, Diane Barberio, Sarala Reddy and Donald Green represented the Clean Up Henderson Committee at the Legislative Building on Wednesday.