By Randall Rigsbee

Fire officials in Chatham County are concerned about a number of recent school-related fire incidents and encourage anyone with knowledge about any of them to come forward.

“It’s just getting to be too much,” county fire marshal Tom Bender said in an interview on Monday. “We’ve got to do something.”

The most recent incidents – the burning of two PTA Thrift Shop drop boxes at two separate locations - occurred over the weekend.

The PTA boxes, one each at Perry Harrison Elementary School and Pittsboro Elementary School, were damaged by fires apparently intentionally set over the weekend, Bender said.

“Any help we can get is appreciated,” said Bender, who noted the most recent fire incidents may be related.

“We obviously have someone out there who’s doing some malicious burning,” he said.

When the PTA boxes were damaged, also destroyed were goods donated for sale at the county’s PTA Thrift Shops.

“Our citizens are giving to help the schools and to help other people,” said Bender. “And yet someone is vicious enough to destroy that. To me, it’s incomprehensible. Setting any fire is incomprehensible to me. People need to realize that arson is as serious a crime as manslaughter or murder. By setting these fires, they’re endangering lives.”

more- See Thursday, June 3 paper: Vol 84, No. 27

By Bob Wachs

A memorial service is scheduled at Northwood High School Friday morning at 11:00 for principal Michael (Mike) Trifaro, who died at his Raleigh home Saturday.

Raleigh police officers and detectives were called to his home soon after 7:00 Saturday evening after a family member discovered his body. A police department spokesman said the body was taken to the office of the State Medical Examiner in Chapel Hill where, after an autopsy was performed, it was determined his death was self-inflicted.

Trifaro, who was 37, had been principal at Northwood since 2001. Prior to that, he was the assistant principal at the school for two years. He joined the faculty at the high school just north of Pittsboro as a U.S. history and social studies teacher at the start of the 1993 school year, a post he held six years before becoming assistant principal at the school in September, 1999.

An openly distraught school superintendent Larry Mabe called Trifaro “a super guy.”

“We’ve lost a real public servant,” Mabe said, “a person who deeply cared for the students first, then the faculty and staff and community. He had a genuine love for the kids and was a whale of a teacher. Anybody who knew him knew that.”

more- See Thursday, June 10 paper: Vol 84, No. 28

By Randall Rigsbee

Chatham County commissioner Margaret Pollard, who decided in a controversial move not to re-appoint county Planning Board chairman George Lucier to a second term, says she will have a new appointment to the advisory board by the end of this month.

Pollard was to make a new appointment to the Planning Board on Monday, but said she needed more time to find a suitable candidate.

Pollard’s initial plan was to appoint Eric Jeffries, a financial advisor who grew up in Siler City and currently lives in Pittsboro, to the board, but Jeffries declined to accept the offer in the wake of the controversy surrounding Pollard’s decision not to reappoint Lucier.

Pollard praised Lucier’s service.

“I think he did an excellent job,” Pollard said in an interview last week.

Pollard said her motivation not to reappoint Lucier was an effort to bring more “diversity” to the board.

“I believe in diversity,” Pollard said. “I believe that’s a vital part of our democracy. We’ve had George as chairman and he was great. But now I think it’s time to get someone else.”

more- See Thursday, June 10 paper: Vol 84, No. 28