Wake Forest was the first town in Wake County to adopt a feeding plan, and since then the town has been recognized for leading the way in that effort, Drew Brown said Tuesday afternoon as he recounted the multitude of activities helping to feed the needy during the past year during the town board’s work session.
Brown, who doubles as the town’s customer service manager in the finance department and the chairman of the Northern Community Food Security Team, said the town has donated a truck to the team, and every Thursday a team member goes to the Eastern North Carolina Food Bank in Raleigh to get canned food, meats, vegetables and fruits for distribution at Hope House on North Allen Road.
NCFST had the largest summer feeding program in its short existence, 143-plus children.
Now member Joy Shillingsburg has come up with a new idea of family dinners every third Monday at the Alston-Massenburg Center to build community feeling. The dinners, where birthdays will be celebrated by My Birthday Too, is supported by the food security team, the Northeast Community Coalition, Olive Branch Baptist Church, The Forks Cafeteria and St. John’s Episcopal Church. The dinners will be from 5:30 to 6:30 on Jan. 27, Feb. 24, March 23 and April 27. The dinners will end in May, Brown said, and pick up again in October.
Meanwhile a team led by George Shaw is investigating a pay-what-you-can café similar to A Place at the Table in Raleigh. There are now four community gardens in town which need volunteers for everything from planting to harvesting.
Last Sunday, Brown said a cooking class at Alston-Massenburg involved 20 people from six families who learned how to prepare a nutritious and tasty meal for a family of four for $20.
The mayor and five commissioners then heard from Doug Taylor with the Stewart design group, which has nearly completed the design for one of the two final legs of the Smith Creek Greenway to the Neuse River and, as Suzette Morales, the town’s transportation planner, said, the ability to go by greenway from Wake Forest to Clayton.
Phase three will stretch 1.17 miles from Heritage High School, where it joins the Smith Creek and Sanford greenways, to Ligon Mill Road. Most of the trail will be 10-foot wide asphalt, but there will be two 40-foot boardwalk sections. The cost is estimated at $1.5 million and construction should take about a year.
The final connecting section between Ligon Mill Road and Burlington Mill Road is about the same length and is now in the design stage. The first segment, which reaches the Neuse River, was built in 2003, and the bridge across the river was built in 2012.
Finally, the board heard from Jiwan Fred Dian who owns the commercial office building at 500 Wait Avenue and wants that property removed from the Downtown Municipal Service District and its tax. After his presentation, Mayor Vivian Jones said the commissioners will discuss his request during their annual retreat in February.
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