Mayo to seek election to board of commissioners
By Steve Herring
Published in News on February 10, 2012 1:46 PM
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Ray Mayo
Ray Mayo, who was appointed in December to the District 1 seat on the Wayne County Board of Commissioners, has announced he will seek election to the office.
Filing for office begins at noon Monday and ends at noon on Wednesday, Feb. 29. The primary will be held May 8 and the general election on Nov. 6.
Mayo, 64, a Republican, was appointed to complete the unexpired term of Andy Anderson, who stepped down in December after 19 years on the board.
"I am not a politician," Mayo said. "I am a citizen servant. That is what I call myself. I am for the citizens of District 1 and the citizens of Wayne County as a whole.
"That is why I want to be elected to continue some of the things I have already started in the short period of time for the citizens of Wayne County. I want to stand in the gap for the citizens of Wayne County."
Mayo said he has already done that by standing up for District 1 residents who want to keep the Fremont library from closing.
Since he took office on Dec. 6, Mayo, president of North Carolina Manufacturing, a Goldsboro machine shop, has been serving on the Wayne County Development Alliance board.
"I volunteered for that because it has to do with industry," he said. "I have been working with the Alliance for many years."
Mayo said that as a conservative Christian he believes in what tea party supporters stand for.
He said that he had accepted the board appointment because he believes in conservative principles.
"I also think with my 33 years of business experience that I can offer county government some pointers to the budget and how we are spending money," he said. "The No. 1 issue as you know across this nation with the citizens is jobs.
"That is why I am honored to be on the board because I am in manufacturing which is a big pull for this area. I can be a big help and now that I am on the Alliance board to help get those people here. The only way that we are going to get out of this debt that we are in is for the private sector to work it out and we need jobs to do that."
Mayo said he would like to see commissioners more active and knowledgeable about businesses coming into the county and to be more proactive with the Alliance board to help get more businesses to move into the area. "Also funding to entice businesses to move into this area," he said. "The Wayne County commissioners are very involved in that funding process."
It is vital, too, that the county keep an eye on its existing businesses to help them create jobs, he said.
"I am against raising taxes, period," he said. "We cannot spend what we don't have. As a conservative I really believe there are some areas in our budget that we need to take a look at, not particularly the budget amount, but how we spend that money in the budget.
"With my years in business I am going to be suggesting some things that will cut our spending without cutting services to our citizens."
However, Mayo said he was not yet ready to publicize those ideas.
A native of the Nahunta community, Mayo is a 1965 graduate of Charles B. Aycock High School. He attended Mount Olive College on a baseball scholarship. He then left to attend the Newport News Ship Building School, where he went through a four-year apprenticeship as a machinist and in machining processes.
He stayed on for several more years after receiving his degree as an apprentice instructor in the machine shop division. He was teaching shop theory and training on the machines in the shop.
He returned to Wayne County to work at Acme United Corp. as a manufacturing engineer from 1976-79. At that point he decided to start his own machine shop. He has owned a couple of machine shops and has had his Goldsboro business for 30 years.