N.C. Transportation Issues Discussed

A large crowd turned out Thursday night, Jan. 22, for the weekly meeting of the Sanford Lions Club at the Lee County Fairgrounds. Members dug into a delicious country meal of pork, collards, blackeyed peas with onions, cornbread, biscuits and apple cobbler prepared by the club’s food committee.

President John Walden, Jr. called upon Roy Jernigan for the opening prayer and Billy Miller led the Pledge of Allegiance. Ticket sales for a Jan. 31 pancake breakfast fundraiser were discussed emphasizing the need to sell as many as possible. Proceeds will go to the charitable works supported by the Lions. The breakfast will take place at Andy’s restaurant in the Super-Walmart Shopping Center on Saturday, Jan. 31 from 7 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Andy’s of Sanford is providing all supplies, thus all proceeds go to charity.

Lion Richard Holshouser introduced guest speaker Donnie Oldham, president of Sanford Contractors, Inc., who delivered an interesting program on transportation issues facing North Carolina. A major highway contracting firm, Sanford Contractors and others are experiencing the impact of the nation’s economic crisis, Oldham said.

Declining tax revenues and the overall state budget deficit has brought the N.C. Department of Transportation to a practical standstill in terms of letting bids on new highway projects. Many projects have completed the planning and design phases, but can’t move forward with actual construction. The Sanford U.S. 421 by-pass delay is an example of that. “The money ran out before the work did,” Oldham said.

Oldham showed a slide presentation with charts and graphs indicating the problems and proposed spending if the new federal economic stimulus package passes in Congress. While the program was promoted as an infrastructure and public works plan to create jobs, much of the proposed funding would go to non-construction programs, the contractor said.

Oldham said the economic crisis is most unfortunate for both the construction industry and state highway officials who generally do a good job in managing North Carolina’s roadways—the second largest highway system in the nation. While the DOT gets a lot of bad publicity for mistakes that are made, it must be said that most of what they do is done properly and professionally and we don’t see the good things played up in the media. One of their biggest problems is poor public relations, Oldham said.