BY JUNIOUS SMITH III
Staff Writer
On Dec. 2, the three winners of Kinston’s Election Day races will be sworn in during the last city council meeting of 2013.
B.J. Murphy will serve his second term as mayor, with Robbie Swinson and Wynn Whittington on the city council. While Swinson is serving his third term on the board, Whittington will be a councilman for the first time.
After the coronation, the three — along with city council members Sammy Aiken and Kelly Jarman, Mayor Pro Tem Joe Tyson and city manager Tony Sears — are looking to find solutions in the upcoming year.
Each member of the city council gave insight on the biggest issues facing Kinston in 2014.
Aiken
“Crime is always an issue, and the perception that comes with it,” Aiken said. “We also need to do something about repairing roads. Overall, we need more citizens to be involved. People complain about issues, but we need them to serve on the boards and voice their opinions. We need to have a couple more town hall meetings so we can talk to the people, see what they want and get feedback from the citizens. The appearance of the city with dilapidated buildings is an issue as well. One thing I’d like to see come out of the human relations council is a landlord-tenant association. It’s deplorable how some people are living, and we should have more employees in the planning department. I’m going to work with the mayor and the council to get some of these things going and make some type of impact to benefit citizens. We have to be more proactive than reactive.”
Jarman
“One of the issues we’re dealing with is continuing to reduce the crime rate,” Jarman said. “KPDS has done a good job the last couple years working toward that but area, but we need to continue to focus on crime. We need to look at our infrastructure, see where we’re going with that and what we might need to do to improve that. The city needs to focus on economic development to help increase the tax base. Another issue would be the Highway 70 corridor, and seeing what we could do to be a part of that process with transportation. We have a need in resurfacing roads, but we currently have a plan, and we’re setting priorities in dealing with it.”
Murphy
“I think the first thing is to build on our successes,” Murphy said. “For example, after nearly two decades of decline in population, we’re working on an environment of success to help small businesses grow and bring young people home. Part of it is what can be seen in the arts and culture district and the phases of the MLK corridor phases. We’re starting and completing large portions of the Riverwalk on the Neuse River. Continuing to tackle crime will be a high priority for the city of Kinston. We need to continue to create an atmosphere where citizens are comfortable reaching out to our police officers. Citizens are our number one solution to deterring crime and even solving crime. The elected body could give our officers as much technology, backup and hours as possible, but unless people are willing to snitch to help solve cases, senseless crime will continue. Technology will be something we’ll continue to invest in whether it’s water meters — and hopefully electric meters — to give customers more real time data and control over usage. We’re streamlining human resourcing efforts so we can fill vacancies with qualified professionals as quickly as possible. We are implementing customer service kiosks at City Hall to give customers a better experience in paying utility bills. With streets, our professional staff said we should be spending half a million a year to keep a 25-year life cycle on resurfacing efforts. We’ve averaged around $235,000 in the past four years. We still have work to do in that regard, and although we do have street priority listing made available to public on website, we hear the most about Herritage Street. We will still find ways to bundle and save to funnel as many streets as we can to save on manpower and material cost. Fiscal accountability is also important, as well as an open government. This is a public building, and the people running our city government — from utilities to streets, the recreation department and administration itself — are doing the best they can every day to be more efficient, cut costs, give better value to service and be accountable to the people.”
Sears
“We have to be vigilant about crime, as it’s necessary to control criminal and gang activity,” Sears said. “It’s been a point of the council to pave Herritage St. and to continue the demolition work over the last two years. We’re also trying to encourage growth in the downtown district. I also want to find a way to incorporate Smartgrid technology. I think there’s a way to help people manage electric costs. This could be the next legitimate product to help citizens manage progress, and smart meters may help.
“At the same time, you never know how things can change from year to year, and other issues may take importance. It’s all about timing.”
Swinson
“We still need more jobs for residents in Lenoir County,” Swinson said. “We also need to try to address gang awareness. We should try to have a forum to ease some of the tension and citizen backlash that the police department isn’t doing anything when they are. Crime and negative public perception needs to be subdued. We need to work on vacant properties in the city whether they can be demolished, rehabbed or try to get them energy efficient to help residents. Of course we’re looking at infrastructure improvements and our roads, along with finding ways to increase the tax dollars in our budget. We have a hard time managing and balancing the budget without cuts. People don’t want to see services cut like trash pickups, library, police, Pride and the Gate. These are all things we support and the community uses, as well as other entities. We need to keep things at a minimum so we don’t have to raise taxes for the citizens.”
Tyson
“The number one issue is always development and how we can grow Kinston,” Tyson said. “We’re also working on improving roads and maintaining and upgrading the infrastructure. We’re also constantly looking on how to improve public safety and monitoring the budget. We’re not just looking on how to improve the budget, but how to maintain and save where we can. We’re always focused on how to improve things in east Kinston, as well as the human relations within the city. Getting the community more involved in city government has always been a priority of mine, because there are a lot of misconceptions as to why we do things. We need to continue to demolish some of these dilapidated homes and improve the city and its image. These are the issues pertinent to me and the ones I get the most comments about with the citizens of Kinston.”
Whittington
“The first thing is we’ve got to get our crime rate down,” Whittington said. “We need to take a look at the violence in the city and get a handle on that before doing other things we need to do. We’ve got to increase our tax base without increasing taxes. We certainly need to improve our economic development, and take a look at the infrastructure and roads. One of our challenges is finding the money to improve our infrastructure and getting more people involved in investing in Kinston. You’ve got Stephen Hill, Vivian Howard and Ben Knight, who have been making strong investments downtown. We’ve got to get others to make the same kinds of investments in other parts of the city, which goes hand in hand with increasing the tax base.”
Junious Smith III can be reached at 252-559-1077 and Junious.Smith@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JuniousSmithIII.