N.C. mayors chart strategy in Asheville (Asheville Citizen Times)
Lt. Gov. Dalton touts education, transportation
ASHEVILLE — Mayors of the 26 largest cities in the state, including Mayor Terry Bellamy, plotted legislative strategy here Thursday and prodded Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton on their top issues.
Dalton addressed members of the N.C. Mayors’ Coalition, whose cities hold more than 3 million of the state’s residents, at a dinner meeting at Fiore’s Ristorante Toscana downtown. It was the first day of the coalition’s fall meeting, which is being held this year in Asheville.
Dalton highlighted his and Gov. Bev Perdue’s initiatives that he said would help the largest cities and the entire state.
They included a distance education system, www.eLearning NC.gov, that he said offers more online courses and degree programs than any other state; early college programs that allow high school students to earn an associate degree; and a move toward establishing inland “ports” to turn parts of the state into transportation hubs.
“You need a great road structure, you need good rail into it and you need a good airport to get in and out,” Dalton said in a separate interview.
A state-appointed Logistics Task Force was going to make recommendations on the inland ports and other issues before funding sources were identified, though one type of funding source the lieutenant governor mentioned was toll roads.
Mayors said transportation was one of their top issues.
“When companies come here they want to be able to move their goods, move people around and we want to make sure we are doing all the things that we can both with the state and locally in a partnership to make that happen,” said Durham Mayor Bill Bell, coalition chairman.
Bell also said he was looking for assurances the state would not withhold funds that normally go to cities as it has done in past years because of the difficult economy.
Bellamy also named transportation, saying the state needed to rethink a decision to push back construction of a new interstate route through Asheville six years to 2014.
“One of the major things that is important to the city of Asheville is the Interstate 26 connector and getting that increased on the prioritization list,” she said.
The state should also increase funding for courts, seen as a weak link in the local criminal justice system, she said, and help cities fund more energy-saving green initiatives.
Dalton talked about I-26 and the idea of creating a major corridor between the mountains and Charlotte and Atlanta, saying “major arteries that are overloaded for commerce” need to get priority.
But he also said that in some cases commerce travels around North Carolina to the west of the mountains.
“We have to accept the realities of commerce and address the realities of commerce,” Dalton said.
By Joel Burgess • September 24, 2010
