New Hanover County — N.C. Rep. Danny McComas will resign from the state legislature on September 2 to become chairman of the N.C. State Ports Authority (SPA) Board of Directors, the governor’s office has announced.

In an August 29 press release, Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue said her appointment of McComas, a long-serving Republican, “demonstrates my commitment to the continued success and growth of the North Carolina State Ports Authority. I want the best person in the job, no matter what side of the aisle he or she sits on.”

McComas, the 59-year-old New Hanover County resident who has represented the state’s 19^th District for nine terms, or 18 years, announced long ago he would not seek re-election. In his new post, he will replace Gastonia’s Carl Stewart, a former N.C. House speaker, who left the SPA in August.

“I am honored to be given the opportunity to continue working to strengthen our state’s economy,” McComas is quoted as saying in the release from Perdue’s office. “The state ports service a vital economic need for all who choose to do business in North Carolina and it is imperative that we keep our state economically competitive.

“As chairman,” McComas continued, “I can continue my work in helping our state meet the demands of a global economy while improving the infrastructure needs of our state’s transportation systems.”

McComas, who currently chairs the House Committee on Commerce and Job Development, was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in finance from St. Bonaventure University in New York, according to the governor’s office.

He was the first Hispanic member of the N.C. General Assembly.

McComas, in light of his departure as a legislator and for his film industry support, received honors from the Wilmington City Council at its August 21 meeting.

In another recent change for the SPA, Thomas Bradshaw, a former Raleigh mayor and state transportation secretary, was named executive director this month while he continues his prior role as statewide logistics director.

A statement from SPA explained the appointment was part of the consolidation of transportation assets under one roof. “The ports and the N.C. Global TransPark were brought under the Department of Transportation in 2011,” the SPA said. “Bradshaw in January 2012 was named Statewide Logistics Director to manage the operation and development activities of those facilities in relation to other NCDOT transportation infrastructure.”

WILMINGTON – If the state has to take Greg Harts’ home to make way for a major road extension, he said he could lose a lot of invested money.

“The home was bought at the height of the market,” Harts told N.C. Department of Transportation (DOT) officials at an August 28 meeting packed with residents whose properties could be impacted by the project, a 3.5-mile extension of Military Cutoff Road from its current terminus at Market Street north to the U.S. 17 Wilmington Bypass.

Harts’ home is on Putnam Drive, in a residential area partly in the path of the proposed six-lane divided roadway. “The market has fallen,” he said, so the fair market value the state would offer him for his home could be considerably less than what he paid for it.

It would also cramp any attempt to sell his property, and he said he wondered about his remaining mortgage payments.

“Those are very good questions,” DOT Project Development and Environmental Analysis Division staffer Jamille Robbins told Harts before assuring that the state would address all questions from property owners affected by the project.

It would displace 13 residential properties, 27 commercial properties and two nonprofits, according to the DOT’s summary. Right-of-way acquisition is set to begin in 2014 and construction in 2017.

The project, expected to cost more than $113 million, would begin at Military Cutoff’s current intersection with Market Street and snake north through vacant county property between Ogden Park and residential areas. The road would turn northwest and end near Plantation Road and Crooked Pine Road at an interchange to be built at the John Jay Burney Jr. Freeway, also known as the U.S. 17 Wilmington Bypass.

With a “superstreet” configuration involved, cars would only be able to turn right onto the road from side streets and make U-turns at median breaks farther down the road in order to travel the opposite way, as opposed to simply making a left turn from the side street.

While members of the public snickered at the design as Robbins explained it Tuesday, he insisted it was in the interest of safety. “I know a lot of you think that that is you driving out of the way,” he said, “but one of the most dangerous moves you can make in a vehicle is a left-turn movement.”

He added that FedEx and UPS have eliminated such left-turn movements from routes for that reason.

Business owners aired their concerns, as well. Fred Johnson, who for the past 25 years has owned and operated the Cardinal Lanes bowling alley on Market Street just north of the Military Cutoff intersection, said he was “very much upset” about a potential reduction in customers due to new routes they might have to take to reach his business. “It’s going to be hard,” he said. “It’s going to hurt my business considerably.”

Eric Letendre, manager of the Mr. Store It mini-storage business on Market Street slightly south of the current Military Cutoff intersection, wanted the DOT to advise him on a time-frame for having to potentially relocate hundreds of tenants. “We also live above the office,” he added, “so there are a lot of variables there that affect us quite a bit.”

Robbins assured that the DOT’s right-of-way acquisition staffers would contact all affected property owners for guidance. “We will work with you, first, very early on, as soon as possible, to give you as much time as possible,” he said.

Gary Lovering of DOT’s Roadway Design Unit said the most frequent concerns he heard at Tuesday’s meeting with residents involved emergency response vehicles and access to businesses, and how the project could impede them. But he insisted the safety factors and the other point of the project—to reduce traffic congestion on U.S. 17/Market Street—would only help the area.

“Reduces congestion, it helps free up the flow in front of their business,” Lovering said. “A lot of the time you have people just sitting out there, stopped. It frees it up a little bit, and it’s safer.”

According to the DOT, 87 crashes occurred on Military Cutoff Road between Station Road and Market Street between Jan. 1, 2007 and Dec. 31, 2009. In the same period, 612 crashes, three of them fatal, occurred on Market Street between Station Road and the U.S. 17 Wilmington Bypass interchange at Market Street.

“Separating through traffic from the local traffic that is using the existing roadway to access schools, shopping and residential areas will enhance safety,” the project description states. It also notes the area’s continuing population growth that would only add to traffic danger and congestion.

DOT officials said they would work with public safety agencies to make sure ambulances, fire trucks and police cars would have clear and safe travel to emergencies after the redesign.

BOLIVIA – In what could be their last action as a board, members of the Brunswick County Board of Social Services fired the agency’s director Patty Connelly on Tuesday.

Board members Tina Jackson, Bernest Hewett and Fauna Schaub voted to fire Connelly, while Elsie Peterson and David Grimes voted against the move.

Sandy Jackson, a DSS supervisor who has worked for the department for 37 years, was appointed interim director after Connelly’s termination.

Ken Campbell, the board’s attorney, said Connelly’s firing was prompted by a recent meeting in which several DSS employees expressed concerns about Connelly and her policies.

“A lot of the concerns that they brought up at that meeting spoke to some of the problems they’ve been having in the department. A lot of it was general personnel issues and how she handled things with personnel,” Campbell said.

When asked for examples, Campbell said, “A little bit of everything really – how she spoke to employees, the policies to some degree, her [managerial] style—it just wasn’t working out.”

Though the board gave no reason for her termination at the meeting, Campbell said the board members acted within the law when they fired Connelly.

“The board’s primary function is the hiring and firing of the social services director. It’s not part of their duties to oversee day-to-day operations, so it’s within their duties to be able to hire and fire a director, which is what they did,” Campbell said.

Connelly was hired in March 2011. She replaced Neil Walters, who served as interim director since board members fired longtime director Jamie Orrock in October 2010.

The Brunswick County DSS board has been on the chopping block since the N.C. General Assembly approved legislation allowing counties to disband their DSS boards in favor of a consolidated human services board. The proposed human services board would be an advisory board similar in makeup to that of boards of health in North Carolina.

Brunswick County Commissioners will have a public hearing at their September 17 meeting. If commissioners approve the change, the DSS board could be dissolved as early as the following day.

The proposed dissolution of the board comes after a history of disarray on the DSS board. Since 2010, the board has violated the state’s open meetings and public records acts.

County commissioners removed former chairman Charles Warren from the board for, among other things, throwing former DSS board member Pat Sykes and a reporter out of a public meeting.

The board has been through several attorneys during this time, including a year-and-a-half time span in which they were unrepresented. They also tried to rehire Gary Shipman, an attorney who county commissioners fired, but DSS board members still attempted to have work for them.

Campbell didn’t know the timeline for hiring a permanent director to helm the department, citing the upcoming county commissioners’ public hearing that could dissolve the board.

Campbell said the DSS board’s decision to fire Connelly had nothing to do with the upcoming hearing to dissolve the board.

Connelly, who previously worked for both private- and public-sector social services agencies in New York and Los Angeles, could not be reached for comment.

Connelly is the second DSS director the board fired in less than two years. In October 2010, the board fired Orrock, who had been director for nearly 30 years, citing workplace sexual harassment.

After DSS board members fired Orrock, county commissioners approved a $190,000 lump-sum settlement with Orrock that allowed him to change his separation from terminated to retired.

The settlement included a provision that Orrock withdraw his termination appeal from the Office of Administrative Hearings, and prevented him from filing any other legal claims against Brunswick County.