Tuesday evening, January 7, 2025, the Wake Forest town commissioners agreed to appoint the law firm Wyrick Robbins as the town’s interim attorney after the resignation of Hassan Kingsberry, who resigned on December 23. Kingsberry has been the Wake Forest town attorney for two years since the position was created. He left Wake Forest to take two positions in Henderson, NC where he will be the town manager with a salary of $161,906.40 and also the part-time town attorney at $40,000. Kingsberry grew up in Henderson.
Most of the short meeting was taken up by a review of the town’s capital improvement projects, the CIP, led by Michelle Daniels, the budget and performance manager.
The CIP is a five-year plan for the purchase, construction or acquisition of anything over $25,000. It has to take into account the town’s revenues, its capital reserve, the issuance of debt and its bond referendums requirements.
Commissioner Faith Cross had several questions about the number of license plate readers the police department has – 10 and hoping for more – the Purnell/Capital Boulevard intersection; the concrete truck; and stormwater.
Mayor Vivian Jones said she attends board meetings in other towns and sees they are always applying for project grants. “We should be doing more grant requests. There should be some concentration on getting grants or even hire someone to write grants.”
Someone asked about a traffic light coordination effort and a nameless voice said it was supposed to have been done two years ago and still is undone.
Later, after discussing the interim attorney, the mayor had a list of 16 possible goals for the League of municipalities. Cross and Commissioner Nick Sliwinski suggested diverse housing, property tax and roads as well as others. The mayor did not identify which ones Wake Forest prefers.
The meeting was adjourned after 40 minutes and praise for the Red Cross project of providing smoke detectors for local homes with several people volunteering to help Wake Forest firemen install them. The mayor said about 20 were installed.
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