97.9 The Hill’s Andrew Stuckey spoke with Pittsboro Mayor Cindy Perry on Tuesday, May 24th. She discussed the town’s budget, wastewater and drinking water, and development news. This is a transcript. To listen to the full interview, click here.
Andrew Stuckey:
Thank you so much for joining us. Let’s get started with the weather that we had yesterday. When I got back home to Pittsboro yesterday (Monday), all my clocks were flashing, so it looked like we lost power down there. How was it down there for the big storm?
Cindy Perry:
Well, we emerged from the agriculture center at about a little after 9:00 p.m. and it was just torrents, sheets coming down of rain. We all ran to our cars and had concluded a wonderful meeting of the board in which we gave kudos to the Northwood high school women’s basketball team. They won the state championship for the first time in the history of the school. We had a wonderful board meeting last night, making presentations to the women’s basketball team and their coaches.
Stuckey:
Well, that’s great. I think that must have happened just prior to me moving there. I was not aware of that, but now I’m going to have a lot of Northwood pride for women’s basketball.
Perry:
Absolutely. My three kids went to Northwood and it’s a wonderful school. It’s just for some luck of the draw, they had just never gotten a state championship before. I guess it’s been 20, 25 years. And so we’re just very, very excited and we’ll have a roadside sign that will say that we’re celebrating the Northwood Lady Chargers in the first state championship.
Stuckey:
Excellent. Congratulations to them. So there was a budget meeting last night, correct?
Perry:
There was, there’s been a lot of work on the budget prior to this. We’ve had several sessions and then two public hearings, and last night was the final passage of the budget. We felt pleased that in these fairly expensive times, especially with regard to chemicals and utilities, we were able to keep the town tax rate almost the same. We’ve been going along at 43 cents with some decimal points and we round it up to 44 cents, and the budget went roughly from seven to nine million. We’re still a small town that depends mostly upon the property tax valuations and all of that, but we were distressed to have to raise water and sewer rates again, this time by 15%. Last year, it was 20%. There was dissatisfaction voiced on that, but we all understood why it had to be done.
Stuckey:
Yeah, it sounds like that’s kind of the case in most municipalities right now, too.
Perry:
It is.
Stuckey:
Right. I have a couple of questions if you’ll indulge me. We are on the radio, but this is more of an “I’m a guy that just moved to Pittsboro and I have a pressing radio question.” The first one’s pretty simple. Can I drink the water in Pittsboro?
Perry:
Yes, you can. The water in Pittsboro does meet all state and federal regulations. It exceeds most of them, but what we have been dealing with over the last couple of years is a series of unregulated chemicals. So that’s why we emphasize the fact that we do meet all the regulations because these unregulated chemicals, PFAS, and 1,4-dioxane are distributed into the water of lots of different jurisdictions. The PFAS is very common, unfortunately, but there is no regulated limit. Now with the 1,4-dioxane, that’s a chemical that has been coming downstream periodically from Greensboro’s industries. It is a suspected carcinogen and it has been the subject of a lawsuit that was brought by the hall river assembly. What we’re talking about is an increase in particular medical issues, but that’s over a lifetime of drinking. So, Andrew, I don’t know how old you are, but I’m going to assume that you’re in your thirties or forties, maybe?
Stuckey:
That’s right.
Perry:
So you have lived 30 or 40 years without intake of these chemicals. The people that I am concerned about and that I’m working very hard to protect are the young people, the children, the school children and the teenagers here in our county. Not that we don’t have concern about the older folks, because there are people who have great sensitivities on other medical issues, but what we’re doing is working very diligently to try to take the PFOS and PFOA out of the drinking water. And we will be installing a multimillion-dollar filtration system this summer that will take care of that. It will not take care of the 1,4-dioxane coming downstream, but we are meeting on Thursday with the Greensboro officials to try to continue to talk about the discharges that are coming downstream.
Stuckey:
Has there been any discussion of taking legal action from one town to another? I know that sounds kind of drastic, but when I talk to people, that’s one of the things that they always ask, it seems.
Perry:
Well, it is a good question. However, there is something in the nature of municipal immunity. And so it’s not an easy question to answer, but there are some remedies that I will not be surprised if we don’t seek in the future.
Stuckey:
Okay. Would that be like a non-litigious remedy?
Perry:
Well, we’d of course hope that we could do something in a non-litigious way. But this is a tricky question because all of these people—the state water quality people, the Greensboro individuals, the governance for the entire watershed area–really all of us need to come together for the safety and protection of small towns like ours. We are, of course, the first downstream water drinker downstream from these industries in Greensboro and Burlington area. But there are things that we could do just in the normal course of an agreement and I’m hoping that we can put those kinds of things forward on Thursday and continue to keep them highly regulated.
Stuckey:
Thank you. There’s one more thing I wanted to talk about, the Roberson Walk development. There is a News and Record story about how that’s running into some roadblocks and the reasons why. Is there anything you can share with us about that?
Perry:
Well, you know, that particular subdivision development issue was submitted in 2019, and it has somewhat languished with us. It’s 212 acres of what was intended to be mixed-use, but it’s primarily residential. Part of it is that this development and several other projects have gotten hung up over our lack of capacity for sewer. But there are also other complications. One of them is there are some wetlands on these 212 acres. And so one of the issues is how to deal with a bridge that needs to cross the property at Roberson Creek. And so at our most recent meeting, the board decided to put this on indefinite hold pending further investigations and further design changes and things like that.
Stuckey:
We’ve got about a minute left. Is there anything else that you wanted to highlight while we’re on the air?
Perry:
Well, I would like to highlight the idea that you know, municipal government moves very slowly sometimes, but it is getting ready to move very fast. One of the things that we are looking into is the regionalization of our water and sewer capacities and the city of Sanford, our board and to a certain extent, the county as well are going to be looking at joining together. It’s sort of an agreement to begin to look at an agreement. But that was also passed last night at the board meeting. And this merger, or regionalization of utilities, has become something of a hallmark now in North Carolina because of the expense involved in high-tech water and sewer plants. So we’re looking forward to our relationship with Sanford and to being able to offer more development opportunities for our people here in the Pittsboro area.
Stuckey:
Is there any kind of a timeline on that partnership or is it just kind of the opening dialogue?
Perry:
This is the opening dialogue. I think there’s been a treaty from Sanford to us, and we are responding with the resolution that we passed last night, and then there’ll be a series of meetings to begin to plan how it is that we could come together in a way. Sanford and Pittsboro have been well connected for years from the standpoint of talking about wastewater sharing and a forced main down to Sanford, which has not yet been built, but we’re hoping to speed things up considerably, especially with the new money coming in for the VIN fast electric car plant.
Stuckey:
Yes, I hope we’ll have a chance to visit again, and we can talk about that and all the other things going on around Chatham County. We’ve been joined by Pittsboro mayor, Cindy Perry. Cindy, thank you so much for joining us.
Perry:
Thank you.
Every Tuesday, learn what’s happening from around Chatham County during the Chatham County Roundup! Featuring local government representatives, the Chatham News + Record and other community members, the segment spotlights the latest news from around the region.
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