Havelock Scoop

The Havelock News reported this week that a highway enhancement group hopes to convert a 134-mile stretch of U.S. 70 into a freeway from Clayton to Morehead City. The Super 70 Corridor Commission’s plans include a nine-mile Havelock bypass and various projects to limit highway access.

City commissioners are critical of Super 70 and say it’s only beneficial for motorists traveling through Havelock — not those of us who live and work here. Super 70’s project manager and the state DOT district engineer told me last week that the plans mean a safer and swifter 70 for everyone.

So, what do you think? Would a streamlined Super 70 help or hurt us in Havelock?

I know it’s about as much of a “documentary” as any of Michael Moore’s slanted, stilted projects, but I still want to see “Maxed Out,” a 90-minute searing indictment of credit card companies for their predatory lending practices.

Problem is, I can’t find it for rent or sale anywhere in Havelock or New Bern. A friend tells me that Best Buy in Greenville has the docu-drama, but I hope that’s not the closest retailer.

Low-budget, limited-release movies are sometimes hard to find around eastern North Carolina, and “Maxed Out” is proving to be no exception. Anyone seen it around here?

UPDATE [July 2] - On Friday evening, I found two copies of “Maxed Out” at Hollywood Video in New Bern and rented one. I’ll share my thoughts on the credit documentary in a forthcoming post.

Check out former Sun Journal sports reporter Mandy Schulz’s stories for 90:00 soccer magazine here.

Mandy’s back in her old stomping ground of Maryland covering the DC United pro soccer team for 90:00, which I’d never heard of, but apparently is popular among soccer fans.

I don’t follow futbol, but I do wish Mandy — a talented writer and good friend — the best of luck in her new job.

WIKS-FM Kiss 101.9 will be at Smith Home Products in Havelock from 6 to 8 p.m. tomorrow (Thursday) night for the station’s Beyonce look-alike contest.

The best Beyonce impersonator will win two tickets to the pop singer’s July 28 show at the RBC Center in Raleigh, the radio station said in a recent news release. Times for the event weren’t known when the Havelock News went to press yesterday.

Smith Home Products is located at 252 U.S. 70 West in Havelock.

City leaders in New Bern have halted demolition in historic districts for 60 days while a new demolition ordinance is written, Francine Sawyer reported in today’s Sun Journal (read the story here).

Seems the city has charted a course toward greater protection of historic buildings from owners who’d rather demolish than rebuild. The recent demolition of the McLellan building pitted property owners’ rights against preserving downtown New Bern’s historic grandeur.

Maybe the ideal solution is some sort of compromise: Since the city has an interest in keeping the historic structures up, perhaps it could provide owners with incentives to restore rather than rebuild. New Bern could help bankroll a restoration effort under one condition — the property owner agrees to adopt deed restrictions that would prevent demolition.

It’s quite an investment for city taxpayers to make, but with each majestic brownstone beaten down by the wrecking ball, more of New Bern’s historic significance — and community character — dies a brutal death.

Public schools can stifle student speech that promotes drug use, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today in the case of a student suspended for hoisting a banner with the message “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.”

In Frederick v. Morse, the Supreme Court ruled that high school administrators didn’t violate Joseph Frederick’s rights when they suspended him for waving the banner at a Juneau, Alaska public assembly off school grounds in 2002. Read the Associated Press’ account of the case here.

This shortsighted ruling emphasizes the federal government’s fear of illegal drugs and its fervor to ban not only the substances themselves, but even favorable mention of what’s become a universal taboo. But it also sets a startling precedent — school administrators now have more authority than parents.

Joseph Frederick brought his handmade “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner to a public assembly when the Olympic torch was carried through Juneau in 2002. He didn’t attend school that day, presumably leaving his home with the banner and arriving at the torch ceremony. There, at the very same assembly, were Frederick’s classmates, teachers and principal, who were there on a school-sanctioned field trip.

Whether you agree with Frederick’s right to display his nonsensical message; whether you believe it was irresponsible, objectionable or just plain silly, suspend your judgment of his banner long enough to absorb the following facts:

1. Frederick, though a minor, was a public citizen in a public place
2. He had his parents’ permission to stay home from school, create and display the banner
3. His high school principal approached him, confiscated the banner and suspended him from school

Free speech concerns notwithstanding, the real jaw-dropper here is not that Frederick was censored, but that the principal of his high school exerted parental authority over a child not entrusted to her care that day.

Parents, you should be cringing. Shivering. Fuming.

Because the Supreme Court seems to think a school administrator is as good as better than a parent when it comes to regulating your children’s behavior.

If a high school principal can suppress your child’s expression at a public event where she happens to be present, what’s to stop her from approaching your son or daughter in a shopping mall and barking orders like a preening drill sergeant?

If the Supreme Court continues down its slippery slope of delegating parental authority to teachers and administrators off school grounds, we’re in for scary times.  Schools already are gleefully meting out punishment for taunts and jeers posted on MySpace; where is the next erosion in parental rights?

So, what’s to stop that overzealous administrator from acting less like a school principal and more like a parent?

Nothing, according to our Supreme Court.

The Havelock News isn’t just a newspaper, it’s a multimedia news source dedicated to documenting local life in words, sounds, images and video.

Helping us to do so is the new addition of a Samsung videophone that I’ll soon begin toting around town. The sleek, gray marvel has a 2-megapixel digital camera for video and still photography and is both GPS and Bluetooth-enabled.

Pretty high tech for someone whose personal cell phone is a stripped-down model whose main selling point is that it was free with a two-year contract renewal.

So, if you see me raising the videophone in your direction at a public function, check out havenews.com to view the results of our foray into this new technology. I’ll do my best to keep my thumb away from the lens.

Chasing a higher collection rate for emergency medical services, the city of Havelock will begin sending a past-due letter to residents who don’t pay for their ambulance rides. Unpaid accounts will be sent to the North Carolina Debt Setoff, which deducts the amount owed from a taxpayer’s state refund.

Previously, the city directed its billing company to give up after sending just two bills.

For now, the city’s current billing company will send the correspondence, but there’s been discussion of referring past-due accounts to a collection agency. These third-party debt collectors are becoming increasingly popular with city and county utility companies, but for the most part, it’s a grand ripoff.

Collection agencies get a list of past-due customers from the city or county that signed with the hired guns, then they send a bland form letter threatening adverse effects to your credit report. If you don’t pay, they keep sending the letters, and some will begin phoning you at home, but essentially all they do is pester you with paperwork and report the debt to the three major credit bureaus.

Collectors take a surprisingly high cut — approaching 50 percent or more of the past-due amount — under the dubious rationale that 100 percent of the balance would remain unpaid if it weren’t for the agencies’ diligent work.

There’s no investigative work involved in modern collections. The names, addresses, Social Security numbers and payment history are provided by the municipality that got stiffed in the first place. All the collectors do is mail form letters and report unpaid bills to the credit agencies — both of which could easily be done in-house.

And for this do-little-do-nothing job, the debt collectors get the lion’s share of what they recover…er, what the customers voluntarily pay.

I hope Havelock doesn’t make the mistake that other local municipalities have made. Send the letters and report to the credit bureaus yourselves, and you’ll keep 100 percent of the recoveries.

I’ll even write the form letter for you.

There’s at least one blog whose author opines on Havelock happenings, and I’m sure there are many more.

During Monday evening’s budget work session, Commissioner Danny Walsh said someone had called him to complain after reading a blog post about the Havelock veterans memorial. Walsh said his constituent groused about the monument being made from Chinese black granite instead of American granite.

If you live in Havelock and maintain a blog about local events, drop me a line or leave a comment. If you’d like, I can link to you on the Havelock Scoop’s blogroll.

The Havelock-Craven County Public Library may be forced to cut its hours of operation and send its staff home early to pinch pennies after city leaders slashed its budget.

Havelock commissioners said Monday they support the library, but believe Craven County should be contributing more because the impact on the county’s  budget is proportionally greater. A county commissioner told the Havelock News that city leaders should have budgeted at least the same amount for the library this year as last year.

Whose responsibility is it to keep the library doors open and the shelves stocked with new materials? Let me know what you think.