Blog

By Linda Coleman

State Personnel Director

State employees give to their communities throughout the year.  

The NC Division of Aging and Adult Services’ (DAAS) mission to serve older and disabled adults guides not only the professional lives of the DAAS staff but it also plays a major role in their volunteer efforts.  For eight years, the division has maintained a weekly route with Wake County’s Meals-on-Wheels program, delivering meals to seniors in east Raleigh.  DAAS will continue to cover the route each Friday in 2012 – rain or shine.  On Veterans’ Day, volunteers from Correction Enterprises prepared a meal at the women’s and children’s shelter through the Salvation Army, serving 15 mothers and their children.

Others give regularly through community projects with the State Employees Association of NC. At this year’s SEANC convention alone, state employees contributed $8,000 and numerous baby shower items including: strollers, travel systems, pack-n-plays, diapers and clothing to benefit Operation Homefront of North Carolina.  And then there’s the State Employees Combined Campaign. For the 2011 Combined Campaign, state agency and university employees have contributed $4.1 million to charities across North Carolina that will benefit causes from homeless animals to Alzheimer’s disease.

During the holiday season, many state agencies conduct service projects. Employees in District 22 of the Division of Community Corrections co-sponsored a blood drive and served as bell-ringers for the Salvation Army. Correction Enterprises staff collected enough stocking fillers to fill 83 stockings for the Salvation Army of Wake County.

But at this time of year, our hearts go out, particularly, to fighting hunger.  The Office of State Personnel, the Division of Community Corrections, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and other state agencies and universities are collecting food for food banks and food pantries across the state, delivering thousands of pounds of holiday provisions for their neighbors in need.

State employees are proud to serve their fellow citizens, their communities and their state.

To find a volunteer opportunity in your community, contact www.unitedwaync.org.

During the recent trip that the Governor and I took to Asia, I visited with students at two middle schools in Tokyo. 

Akasaka Middle School is a public school with just 150 students in a downtown neighborhood. Hiroo Gakuen is a large combined private junior and senior high with a long history of hosting international students and visitors.

It’s easy to note the differences between Japanese and North Carolina schools. The classes were quite large with up to 40 students in some classrooms. At both the public and private schools, the students were neatly dressed in uniforms, including jackets and ties for many of the boys. There are no school buses in Tokyo so it’s common to see schoolchildren of all ages walking the streets of the city or riding on public transportation to and from school.

While the Japanese students seemed very serious and engaged, their curiosity and friendliness are just like what I experience whenever I visit a classroom here at home. At Hiroo Gakuen, I was asked to tell them about the typical day for a middle schooler in the United States. Fortunately, I knew in advance and was able to consult an expert source – my 12 year-old grandson – for the details. 

Very few of the students knew anything about North Carolina or even just where it was so I was able to include a brief geography lesson in my visit. Of course I let them know that if they learned anything that day I wanted it to be that North Carolina is the best state!

Trips like this are a way for us to work to link North Carolina with the rest of the world. While the primary goal was to further develop business opportunities with expanding economies abroad, it’s always important to remember that the human connections, such as making friends in a classroom 7,000 miles from home, have value also.

Congratulations to the Appalachian State University students whose work on a solar house was voted the "People's Choice" in the U.S. Department of Energy's 2011 Solar Decathlon.

I visited the students' Solar Homestead house in July. ASU is one of 20 competitors in the decathlon in which collegiate teams design, build and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient and attractive.

During my summer visit, I saw the energy and enthusiasm from the ASU students that resonated with voters in the "People's Choice" award.

"The team’s passion and enthusiasm were contagious," said Terri Jones, Solar Decathlon Communications Contest official. "The People’s Choice Award is a popular vote, and I believe the Solar Homestead house and team appealed to people on many levels."

The ASU students also won second place in the Communications Contest and third place in the Architecture Contest.

The project was funded through private donations.

Help me congratulate our ASU team. We are proud of them.

You can help students from Appalachian State win for their work on a solar-powered house.

Students from Appalachian State are competing against 20 teams from around the world in the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon.

The competition challenges collegiate teams to design, build and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient and attractive. The team from ASU is in the running for the contest's "People's Choice" award and voting will continue until Sept. 28.

Gov. Perdue and First Gentleman Bob Eaves visited the school's project in Boone in July.

Funding for ASU’s entry in the Solar Decathlon has come entirely from private donations from corporate sponsors and individuals. 

We ask a lot of our state employees.

It's been three years since they've had so much as a cost-of-living adjustment. In this recession, they continue to work under the constant threat of layoffs. They don't get a lot of respect for the hard work they do.

And that's why it's great when we have an opportunity to recognize the kind of dedication and selflessness that many of our employees exhibit every day. Last month, State Trooper Skye Stone was doing his job when he pulled behind a stranded motorist on U.S. 64 in Martin County. 

As The News & Observer's Bruce Siceloff tells it, Bob Inge, 54, and his mother were stuck waiting for a relative to come with a tow truck for Inge's disabled SUV and camper. While they waited for the next couple hours, Stone took care of them. Inge explained it to the newspaper:

"He went to a store, purchased water on his own, brought my mama a quart of water back, brought me a quart of water back, and said he would check on us," Inge said. "And he came back two or three more times. When the wrecker got there, he stopped traffic so they could get the vehicle off the road."

Stone would not accept reimbursement for the water. And he later told Siceloff that he didn't think what he had done was a big deal. 

"It happens a lot more than people realize," he told the newspaper. "We really do help people."

And by the way, for anyone who thinks Stone should have been more worried about speeders: He still managed to write nine tickets during his shift that day.

By NCDOT Deputy Secretary of Internal and External Affairs Ted Vaden

In the past year, @NCDOT, the N.C. Department of Transportation’s main Twitter feed, has grown from about 800 followers to more than 4,000. NCDOT uses this free tool to connect directly with citizens to share real-time travel information, important safety messages and transportation news. Hitting this benchmark is exciting, because it shows people value the information we’re providing in 140 characters or less.

Gov. Perdue has made transparency and accountability a priority in her administration and social media tools offer taxpayers more ways to connect with their state government.

We use Twitter to let citizens know about opportunities to get involved in transportation planning,  explain when construction projects may affect traffic, and offer ways to make travel by bike, plane, bus, ferry, or train more efficient and fun. We also used Twitter to connect with citizens after the destructive tornadoes ravaged parts of North Carolina this spring. With Twitter, we quickly passed on critical information on road conditions and closures.  We were, in effect, the public’s eyes on the interstates.  Twitter gave our citizens a simple way to “know before you go.” The strong increase in the number of people following us is due, in part, to the critical role Twitter played in those kinds of emergency response efforts. 

But, Twitter is more than just a way to send information. It is a conduit for conversation between the department and the public. It’s an easy way for citizens to ask questions and get answers. For instance, we’ve been able to better explain why we handle snow and ice the way we do as a direct result of those conversations. Our Twitter dialogue has led to improvements on our DMV website, and it even helped keep a group of pigs loose on I-540 in Durham from causing big traffic problems!

Connecting with NCDOT on Twitter is easy. Visit www.ncdot.gov/travel/twitter/ and click on the link for one of the department’s 21 different accounts, which include specific interstate routes, regional areas and the ferry division. You can also follow Gov. Perdue on Twitter. 

Over the past 18 years, North Carolina Bankers have provided a unique experience for more than 8,000 students.

Each summer they sponsor Camp Challenge, a financial literacy camp for high-achieving, at-risk middle school students. 

The camp is free to campers and provides a traditional camp experience – swimming, horseback riding, archery – along with basic etiquette guidance and practical financial education. This week I had the opportunity to visit with 100 campers.

While I was there to share my experiences and offer encouragement, most of our time was spent in questions and answers. The students were interested in all sorts of things about the Governor (Is it hard to be Governor?) and about what it means to be First Gentleman (What’s your day like?). I also had lots of questions for them about what they were learning.

Several of the campers talked about how they now understood what it is like for their parents to face a stack of bills and that is important to make good financial decisions. They also commented on the need to pay for credit card purchases rather than just piling up debt. Of course they also were excited about how “chill” the counselors were and all the new friends they were making.

The curriculum used, Life with Bills, is an interactive, computer-based simulation that allows the students to experience money management first-hand. These are important and valuable skills that every student should get the chance to develop.

By Betsy Kane, Senior Planner, Community Planning Division of the NC Department of Commerce

North Carolina’s downtowns are among the favorite places that Tarheels and visitors cherish in our state. A healthy, vibrant downtown promotes economic development as well as a community identity. Active downtowns create a more enjoyable place to live and do business.  

To help downtowns thrive, the Community Planning Division in the N.C. Department of Commerce is developing a new toolkit for “Downtown Zoning Repair.” The diagnostic tool will help Main Street communities align their zoning regulations to better support their economic goals for downtown.  

Sometimes zoning regulations can be at cross-purposes with downtown goals. In my work, I kept running into situations where a town had zoning regulations on the books that were more suited to a suburban setting. 

For example, some regulations prohibited the creation of housing in the upper floors of downtown commercial buildings. There’s a lot of demand for downtown lofts and apartments, even in smaller communities.  

I saw similar problems in multiple communities. So I began to think it would be helpful to catalog all the ways that zoning should be helping, not hindering, downtown goals, and refer to that list when we provide technical assistance to our communities.

Working with staff members in the Urban Development Division (North Carolina Main Street and Small Town Main Street programs) and other planners in the Community Planning Division, we created a diagnostic checklist that can be used to make sure towns are doing all they can to remove unnecessary regulatory barriers to downtown revitalization. 

In coming months, I’ll be working with Burnsville in the mountains, Waxhaw in the southern piedmont, and Goldsboro in the coastal plain as pilot communities. Their participation will help me refine and develop the advice we give to other towns that may use this toolkit in the future.

Downtown revitalization is a job-creator.  Downtown businesses are often family-owned, and they have strong local connections. When you create jobs in downtowns, they are ‘sticky’– they can’t be lured away, because they are so strongly linked to place. The money spent in downtown enterprises also re-circulates in the community at a higher rate, and this high multiplier effect tends to make the whole community more prosperous.

One of the features of ‘Zoning Repair’ for downtown is that it costs almost nothing, yet the upside can be huge.  In these budget times, we are always looking for ideas that have a good cost-benefit ratio.

Gov. Bev Perdue continues to fight for education despite the devastating cuts included in the Republican-backed budget.

“We must have a highly trained workforce for our state to be globally competitive, and that education begins in preschool classrooms and continues all the way through our community colleges and universities,” Gov. Perdue said. “They may have cut our pre-k programs and turned our education system backwards. But tomorrow, the citizens of North Carolina and I will resume the fight for what we believe in -- that education must be the one priority we never turn our backs on.”

When she vetoed the budget bill, Gov. Perdue said the budget would force local school systems to lay off educators. Since the General Assembly’s override of the budget veto, news headlines have confirmed this fear.

“To think that those cuts will not negatively impact our students, that’s not true,” Gaston County Schools Superintendent Reeves McGlohon told the Gaston Gazette. “The cuts will hurt. There will be individuals in our school system who have jobs this year that will not have jobs next year.”

Other systems have begun delivering pink slips.

Cumberland County: 179 teacher assistant jobs, 130 teachers, nine assistant principals

New Hanover County: 191 jobs

Harnett County: 88 jobs (mostly teacher assistants)

Union County: 100 jobs

Robeson County: 235 jobs

Statewide: Eliminating funding for Governor's school shuts out 600 students

Winston-Salem/Forsyth County: Considering a plan to eliminate 221 jobs, including 118 teaching positions

Wake County: Teacher Assistants pay is slashed

Columbus County: Layoffs have started

Johnston County: 123 positions, including 73 teacher assistants

Beaufort County: 110 jobs lost

Lee County: 50 teacher jobs, dozens of teacher assistants

Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools County: 460 jobs lost

Statewide: Gap between rich and poor schools growing

The General Assembly's budget is the "riskiest gamble ever perpetrated on the citizens of North Carolina," said Montgomery County Schools Superintendent Dr. Dale Ellis. "What's getting ready to happen should be a crime."

"5 Reasonable People": A Superintendent’s Response to the State Budget Crisis from Lindsay Whitley on Vimeo.

The image is not pretty. The examples may cause discomfort, and victims may not realize they need help. Elder abuse takes many forms and can sometimes be difficult to recognize.

Today is Elder Abuse Awareness Day around the world. In support of this day, Gov. Perdue proclaimed May 6 through June 20 as Vulnerable and Elder Abuse Awareness Month. This timeframe ties the awareness period to both the Mother’s Day and Father’s Day weekends, in the hopes of reinforcing the spirit of respecting and valuing not just parents, but all elders.     

Each year, more than two million vulnerable adults, age 18 and over, are victims of abuse, neglect and exploitation in the United States. Older adults are especially vulnerable. The National Center on Elder Abuse estimated that one elderly person is victimized every 2.7 minutes in the United States. 

According to national statistics, elder abuse is grossly under reported because vulnerable and older adults who are being abused find it difficult to tell anyone due to shame and fear. 

Elder abuse affects men and women of all ethnic backgrounds and social status; it occurs in private residences and in facilities.  The universal risk of elder abuse was acknowledged recently by actor Mickey Rooney, in his sharing of his personal suffering to the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging: “If elder abuse happened to me, Mickey Rooney, it can happen to anyone.”  

In 2010, North Carolina's 100 county departments of social services received more than 18,000 reports of abuse, neglect or exploitation of vulnerable and older adults. Reports are made by doctors and other health care professionals and by family members and concerned citizens in our communities. 

Most reported elder abuse in North Carolina (85 percent) happens to adults older than 59 who live alone or with family members, while the remainder happens in facilities or shelters. The most common form of mistreatment is neglect, with 69 percent of the cases involving self-neglect, where victims are unable to care for themselves adequately.

Anyone who suspects that a vulnerable or older adult is in need of protection is required by North Carolina General Statute (GS 108A-102) to report this information to the adult protective services intake unit at the department of social services in the county where the adult resides. 

What can you do to help raise awareness about elder abuse?

• Don’t ignore this problem. It’s not going away. 

• Report suspected abuse, neglect, or exploitation to the adult protective services intake unit in the North Carolina county where the adult lives. Contact information for county departments of social services is available at:  www.ncdhhs.gov/dss/local

• Volunteer in local programs that provide assistance and support for vulnerable and older adults in your community and at long-term care facilities.

• Educate yourself, family, and community about elder abuse by visiting our website at www.ncdhhs.gov/aging

We all have a responsibility to support the safety, welfare, and dignity of North Carolina’s vulnerable and older adults. We urge everyone to work together to help protect our fellow North Carolinians from abuse, neglect, and exploitation.