By Bob Wachs

Chatham County’s board of education has a new chairman and vice chairman, thanks in part to a policy change but also to personal changes of its previous leadership.

Meeting Monday night in regular session, the board followed its policy of reorganizing at the first December meeting, at which current board chairman Allan Zimmerman and vice chairman Ron Collins were replaced by Norman Clark and Deb McManus, respectively.

Zimmerman, from the Harpers Crossroads community, had been chairman for a year. Under board policy, adopted in December, 2003, he could have succeeded himself for one more one-year term but instead chose not to seek another.

“I had talked with some of the members,” he said later in the week, “and told them that if they wanted me to stay (as chairman) I would but that it wouldn’t bother me not to.

“I’ve got other things I’m interested in,” Zimmerman said, referring to his announced intention to campaign for Sheriff of Chatham County after a career as a N.C. State Trooper.

  more- See Thursday, Dec 15 paper: Vol 85, No. 3

Counties dissolve library system

By Randall Rigsbee

Patrons of local libraries aren’t likely to notice the change, but Chatham County commissioners on Monday officially dissolved the Central North Carolina Regional Library, which had partnered Chatham and Alamance county libraries since the early 1960s.

That doesn’t mean the two counties are completely parting ways, however.

Chatham County will continue to contract with Alamance for shared library services, such as the processing and cataloging of books, and the two counties will continue to share library materials.

County commissioner Patrick Barnes likened the new arrangement to a marriage.

“You’re going to get a divorce,” Barnes said, “but you’re gong to continue to live together.”

Assistant county manager Renee Dickson used a similar analogy, likening Chatham County libraries to a child that has come of age after being under the tutelage of Alamance County’s professional library system since 1962.

Plan begins for naming new school

By Bob Wachs

The name of the new elementary school to be built in Siler City likely will be that of an education leader or a reference to its location.

That much is apparent after Monday night’s board of education meeting. School superintendent Ann Hart presented board members with results of a preliminary meeting of a committee created to develop criteria to name the school, which will house 700-800 students from kindergarten through the fifth grade.

 Hart said the committee, which included school administrative staff and community members, as well has herself, had determined those two broad areas. Hart said the first possibility was to name the school after “an education or community leader of prominence, someone who directly or indirectly had helped students succeed.”

The second consideration would be a name consistent with the location of the school, which is to be built on property the board of education already owns adjacent to Chatham Middle School on South Second Avenue Extension.

The new school will be a two-story brick structure with kindergarten and first-grade classrooms on the ground floor and higher grades on the top. 

“We’ll do lots of publicity and solicit names to bring back to you for a decision,” Hart told the board.

 more- See Thursday, Dec 15 paper: Vol 85, No. 3

Recent rains eliminate restrictions

By Joseph Pardington

Thanks to recent rainfall, water conservation and pumping from Dodson Lake, Siler City’s 2005 water woes are history.

The rains also prompted Chatham County utility officials to lift mandatory county restrictions.

On Dec. 8, Siler City Mayor Charles Turner lifted voluntary water conservation in Siler City.

“The Town’s watershed has received rainfall over the past two weeks, which has increased the level of the Town’s Rocky River Reservoir by nine feet,” the town announced in a press release.

The reservoir is at normal pool elevation, the release continued, and “water is topping the spillway. The Town is very appreciative to both its residential and corporate citizens whose water conservation efforts have resulted in a successful conclusion to this recent drought.”

Siler City was on voluntary restrictions from Sept. 22 to Nov. 7, 2005, when the town went to mandatory restrictions, as the water supply decreased dramatically. Mandatory restrictions were lifted Nov. 23, and voluntary restrictions were reinstated.

Siler City opened a pump from Dodson Lake in October to help bolster the Town’s water supply.

Area businesses hauled water from outside sources to the reservoir. Both efforts were discontinued as water levels rose. Siler City still lacks the final federal permit that would allow the Town to begin the Lower Rocky River Reservoir Expansion, Turner said during a Dec. 5 Town board meeting.

Meanwhile Pittsboro lifted its voluntary water restrictions Dec. 5, said David Hughes, Pittsboro’s town manager.

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