Plans for veterans clinic get nod from council
By Ty Johnson
Published in News on September 7, 2011 1:46 PM
The Goldsboro City Council approved site and landscape plans for a proposed Veterans Affairs clinic at its meeting Tuesday.
Plans call for creating a VA clinic on the east side of Hospital Road between Medical Office Place and New Hope Road.
Construction of the new clinic in Goldsboro is expected to begin this fall.
Construction Managers of Goldsboro was awarded the bid earlier this summer.
The 10,000-square-foot clinic is expected to give area veterans better access to health care. The clinic will be an extension of the Fayetteville VA Medical Center. It is expected to provide primary care and mental health services to about 5,000 veterans.
In other business, the council also approved a conditional use permit for a trucking business on the east side of Cuyler Best Road that was first applied for more than four months ago.
Dale Benton will be granted a one-time expansion opportunity for his business between West New Hope Road and Oxford Boulevard.
Benton's quest to expand his business began more than a year ago with a rezoning request that drew the ire of neighbors who complained about the potential increase in noise pollution. After being denied the new zoning code, Benton modified his request to a conditional use permit with certain restrictions.
To address noise complaints, a 6-foot-8-inch wall will be built in the rear of the property and there are several stipulations concerning when and where his trucks may idle. There was still resistance by neighbors for a time, but according to Planning Director Randy Guthrie, the installation of an additional 50-foot "lip" to the wall met the standards of everyone involved.
Other items approved included a modification to the city's sign ordinance to allow the Country Skillet restaurant to keep its current sign at its new location on Eastgate Drive, as well as requests for rezoning of the east side of North Oak Forest Road between U.S. 70 East and Gateway Drive from shopping center to general business to allow for new automobile sales and rezoning of the south side of Waters Circle between Thoroughfare Road and National Drive from R-16 residential to R-12 residential to allow for the development of single-family homes.
The council also approved the addition of a walk-up Bank of America ATM kiosk on the north side of East Ash Street between Best and Taylor streets in the Wayne Plaza Shopping Center and site and landscape plans for Kornegay Office and Recycling on South George Street.
A request to approve the hanging of flower baskets downtown as discussed at the May 16 council meeting was pulled from the agenda.
Approval of the item would have resulted in the Downtown Goldsboro Development Corp. buying 24 hanging baskets to place downtown on Center Street to replace current flower baskets that resemble the city's trash cans. The cost for the new baskets would have been $5,634 and would have come from the municipal service district fund.
Also, council members expressed their thanks to the Public Works Department and Progress Energy for their work during and after Hurricane Irene as they helped to clean up the city.
"To the best of our knowledge, everything is up," Public Works Director Neil Bartlett told the council, adding the streets and storms crews would begin working with sanitation today to aid in the cleanup and collection of debris. He said he expects the full cleanup to be finished by the first of October, hopefully before leaf season begins.
Finance Director Kaye Scott reported that the city had incurred $63,000 worth of direct damage from the hurricanes and had paid only $6,000 for tree removal, with the public works department handling the rest.
"We're very lucky," she said, as Mayor Al King nodded in agreement and commented on how Wayne County had received far less damage than counties to the east.
Mrs. Scott said the city would learn if it was eligible for FEMA help later this week.
King ended the meeting with proclamations, including one he said may have been the longest he had ever read, though its importance was evident in the first words he spoke of it.
The proclamation signaled the city's joining in the National Moment of Remembrance of the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11 on Sunday at 1 p.m. with a one-minute moment of reflection.
King said he and members of the city's police and fire departments would be at the City Hall steps at that time to honor those lost during and since those terrorist attacks.