Local elected officials shared their thoughts on the topics impacting Wayne County during Tuesday’s Eggs and Issues event hosted by the Wayne County Chamber of Commerce at the Maxwell Center. 

A panel comprised of Goldsboro City Council members Chris Boyette and Beverly Weeks, Wayne County Board of Education members Craig Foucht and Tommy Sanders, and Wayne County Commissioners Chris Gurley and Wayne Aycock, fielded questions from Wayne County Chamber of Commerce president Scott Satterfield. 

Following a brief update from each of the panel members on their recent efforts to improve Goldsboro and Wayne County, Satterfield’s first question centered around what local officials learned during the potential divestment of F-15E Strike Eagle Aircraft and from Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, and how local officials plan to navigate these issues in the future. 

In June, Senator Ted Budd (R-NC), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, voted to advance the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to the Senate floor.

Senator Budd secured a provision that fully prohibits the Air Force from divesting F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base through 2029. 

The NDAA must still pass the Senate, conference with the House, and be passed by both chambers again in its final form before the president signs it into law. 

“We hit this head-on when we found out about it,” Gurley said. “We hired Crossroads Strategies with the City and the County, and Friends of Seymour. Crossroads Strategies has people on Capital Hill that have been there a long time through the military and legislature. Our biggest thing is to maintain our mission and look for our next mission. We want to be proactive instead of reactive.”

Satterfield’s next question focused on regional infrastructure and the collaboration between the City and the County on a regional sewer system. 

“We are still in the process on a regional sewer plan,” Gurley said. “Eureka is going to be the start of the new regional sewer system. (Eureka) has had an issue with their sewer for years. They’ve gotten a $15 million loan, $3 million is a grant, $3 million is forgivable. Rep. John Bell, and Senator (Jim) Perry at the time, Senator (Jimmy) Dixon, and Senator (Buck) Newton has gotten (Eureka) $20 million to fix the sewer system. We don’t think it’s going to cost that much to fix it, so we’re planning to utilize the remaining money to enhance the sections as we go forward and design it as a regional system.”

Councilman Boyette answered the question from the City of Goldsboro’s perspective saying, “The City is in the process right now of a three-and-a-half million gallon expansion to our treatment plant. Things are going well moving forward with that, and that additional capacity will allow us to have this conversation that’s being referred to now with a regional merged system.”

The next topic of conversation was the improvement in performance by Wayne County Public Schools during the 2023-24 school year and the reasons for the dramatic improvement. 

Twelve schools in the Wayne County Public Schools system exceeded growth during the previous school year, 10 schools met growth and nine schools did not meet growth.

Ten schools improved their academic performance by a full letter grade, and only one school dropped a letter grade. 

“If you go back just a few years and try to look at that in comparison and that is absolutely unbelievable,” Foucht said. “If you look back at this in 2021-22 coming out of the pandemic we had nine schools that dropped a letter grade. To me that really screams what our public school educators are doing, what the students are doing, what are central office staff are doing. I want to first make sure you know we are not happy with where we are. We have started a process that’s going to take a long time to be able to get where we want to go. We hired a leader (Dr. Marc Whichard) that knows how to come inside of here, he set the expectations and he held accountability for those educators.”

Satterfield’s fourth question touched on the importance of accessible and affordable childcare and its impact on the community and the workforce. 

“I’m not sure if in the past (Wayne County Public Schools) has ever had this but I can tell you right now, one thing we do have this year, is we have a Pre-K at every single one of our elementary schools,” Foucht said. “We did not have that last year. I hear a problem with the business model of childcare. People can’t afford to run the business, they can’t afford to pay the people that they want to pay. Somehow we’ve got to figure this out. We’ve got the Edgewood School, a facility in the heart of Goldsboro, but could we creatively as a community come together, can we get some grant dollars, or work with the state, and have a good childcare center right in the heart of Goldsboro?”

The final question involved the previous efforts to pursue a sales tax increase in Wayne County, why it has been unsuccessful, and how to get voters to approve a sales tax to alleviate the burden on property owners in Wayne County. 

“The County Commissioners do not have the authority to raise sales tax,” Aycock said. “The citizens and the voters of the county have to vote on it. We’ve had it on the ballot I think four or five times since I’ve been on the board. The problem is only about 40% or 42% of the people in Wayne County pay property tax. Even some of those don’t support the quarter of a cent increase in sales tax, and we had earmarked that quarter of a cent for the school system. If you’ve got 40% or 42% of the people paying property tax the rest of the citizens have the same right to vote just like everybody, and the people who don’t pay property tax, the word “tax,” scares them to death.”