Youngsters, teenagers, parents, siblings and coaches – all part of the town’s All-Start basketball teams who competed statewide during March – filled three-fourths of the seats in the Wake Forest Town Hall meeting chamber Tuesday night.
“This is a special night,” Ruben Wall, the Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources director, said, standing with Assistant Director Ed Austin and Recreation Specialist Meghan Hawkins. “These young men and women did an outstanding job for us in basketball as they traveled throughout the state to represent the town. They represented us very well.” Wall said he wanted residents and the commissioners to know the youth and their families made so that the town’s seven all-star basketball teams could get to the different Statewide Athletic Committee (SWAC) sectional and then statewide contests.
The boys’ under-18 team won the state championship in their age group. The boys’ under-12 team took a second place, losing to Wendell in the championship game. The boys’ under-14 East team finished third in the state tournament. The girls’ under-10 also advanced to the championship game but fell to Person County.
“They all exhibited good sportsmanship, bringing pride and recognition to the Wake Forest Community,” Mayor Vivian Jones said.
The proclamation included the names of each team member and their coaches.
Three girls from Girl Scout Troop #4 led the Pledge of Allegiance.
Then Assistant Engineer Holly Miller introduced Yousef Abdel-Rahman, an 11th-grade student at Franklin Academy who had chosen repairing the stream banks in Miller Park for his Eagle Scout project. With a PowerPoint show, he described how he worked with Miller, examining the stream banks, deciding on the materials needed, obtaining them and plotting how to use them on the ground. His planning went on for several months, but the onsite work took two weeks, about 105 hours, he said. “It went very smoothly.”
The commissioners agreed to reimburse Yousef for most of the $264 net cost – Jarco donated the matting, his troop donated $100 – after Miller explained the plants and seeds had come from materials left over from the Richland Creek stream stabilization project.
The board also heard from Scott Lyon with CAMPO (Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization) about the nearly complete Northeast Study Project. The project looked at all transportation in the large area involved and identified “hot spots” where future changes are needed. Two of those spots are the U.S. 401-N.C. 98 intersection and the intersection at Burlington Mills Road and Ligon Mill Road.
The commissioners voted unanimously for the town to purchase $2.5 million in revenue bonds with financing at 2.24 percent for 10 years from BB&T. The money will be used to rebuild the John B. Cole substation on West Cedar Avenue and to provide new lighting and underground utility wiring on North Main Street.
After the business part of the meeting, Jones said she had been asked to intervene in a problem encountered by the Fourth of July Committee over the use of Wake Forest High School grounds for the Fourth of July stadium program and fireworks show. “Every year there’s a problem (with using a school),” Jones said. After speaking to schools Superintendent Dr. Jim Merrill, who agreed that there should not be a problem in using the school since the event had been held there since 1973 except for the two years it was at Heritage High, Jones said Assistant Superintendent Andre Smith, formerly principal at Wake Forest, called her back. Smith told her they had worked it out and the Fourth of July Committee could use the grounds “this year and as long as we wanted to have it there.”
