2006 Rural Partners Forum
Remarks by Sen. John Kerr III
Being here today somewhat reminds me of the book, A Tale of Two Cities. These are the best of times and the worst of times. And in eastern North Carolina, the small parts of the state are getting behind because we just don’t have the infrastructure.
We do have some good things that we’ve done with the legislature, but we are just trying to get into the world of good economy, and it takes money. And things really have turned a little bit, I think, against what we did earlier. People are now fighting for the few dollars that we have. But there is work to be done. The small towns in my district really can’t function very much because of the Electricities problem, which is now about $3 billion. Something has got to be done. I’ve got towns that haven’t had any repairs to their electric system in 25 years. Water and sewer has been my interest, and we’ve worked hard on that. And I think we’ve made a dent. But we got so many problems, particularly in eastern North Carolina. And now, they are telling us that we can’t use our water from the aquifer because it is drying up. And we are spending $40 million to have a system to change the way we get water in eastern North Carolina, to get away from wells and begin taking it from the Neuse River.
And so, there are a lot of things to do, but I think what we need to do is get organized. And I mean get organized in your local communities, make sure the people you send to the governor’s office, to the Council of State, and so on, are supportive of these issues and will make the appointments that need to be made. Our population is going up, and that’s what they need. They need to be able to flush. They need water. They need these things. And somehow, we’ve got to figure out a source of revenue. We tried to do something this year, but there are a whole lot of people that don’t want to do anything in the area of taxes. We cut taxes in the legislature, and we did some good things. But we also now have other groups that are trying to save the trees and everything like that, and all of this is good. It is not putting anybody against anybody else, but we got bogged down this year in a priority, I guess. And then, you’ve got a whole lot of the people in this state that believe in no new taxes, none of any kind. And so, they don’t seem to want the people to spread the bounty across the whole State of North Carolina.
So, it’s a lot to do. And I tell you, the Rural Center has been a bright light for eastern North Carolina. Billy Ray is actually from my county, or I moved to his county. But he and his staff have been fair across this state as they try to take the little money that we gave him. The center got $20 million this year as an appropriation. We need a bond issue. We need to attack these issues now as some kind of a stream of income that would allow us to fix this problem, because people are piling in here, and that’s going to mean more people, more water, more sewer, and something has got to be done about it. And I hope the governor and the Council of State and everyone will work with us next year in the legislature to come up with some way that we can move a lot of our towns from the first century into at least, you know, a century or two ago.
And it is not right and won’t be right until everybody, the weakest in our state included, has some enjoyment. Erskine Bowles did a study about five years ago about the east, and he came to Charlie Albertson’s home place in Duplin County and presented this. And everybody needs to get that study. He talked about the inequities of the state, and I’m sure he hasn’t changed his opinion. But I’m so excited that he’s going to be here to lead us as the universities increase opportunities for people to stay in this state. But we need water and sewer, and there’s no doubt about it. In my opinion, that’s way above any other priority. And we need the people to march on the governor, the lieutenant governor, the legislature, and let’s get a program worked out where we can bring these necessities to the people that need them. We are not talking about luxuries after all. And I think that will make us a better state, and it will prepare us to help these people that are now learning about our state in moving on.
So, we’ve got a lot of problems in this state. In the healthcare arena we’ve got unbelievable problems. And we are trying to attack these in the legislature, but to do all this, it takes what? Money. And some people think that it should not be any taxes, but they want all the services. I don’t like to pay taxes, but I think taxes are the price to live in freedom. And if you don’t want to pay taxes, go down and get on a boat and go to Russia. I don’t think they have any tax over there because they haven’t got anything. And I haven’t seen anybody loading up to get out of here. They are all loading up to come down. And so anyway, we are going to work together. I’ve said enough. These are my friends here. But we need y’all to get angry, and y’all to say to your representatives that we are going to do something about our infrastructure and water and sewer before we pollute the best state in America.
