Beacon Ridge is on the auction block.

Golf course broker Hilda W. Allen has the 18 hole course, clubhouse, and other amenities listed on her website with a bid deadline of Thursday, February 4.

Current club owner Don Billings told The Times that he hopes to have a deal closed by March 1, in plenty of time for the new owners to capitalize on the Spring season.

Billings notified the membership of the possible sale in a letter on Tuesday, December 8.

Billings and his wife Rhonda came out of retirement to run the club in 2013, after terminating a lease with Wingfield Properties, which had operated it for the past sixteen years. In his letter, Billings noted that Wingfield was not meeting the terms of the lease and was "continuing to let the club deteriorate."

Since then, the Billing's company, Beacon Ridge Investment Group, has made substantial upgrades, including remodeling portions of the clubhouse; adding a fitness center; reopening the pool; which had been closed by the county Health Department; and bringing on longtime Foxfire Golf manager Howard Cannon to manage day-to-day operations.

Those efforts were dealt a bit of a setback this past Summer, when over-fertilization severely damaged a number of greens. They have since been resodded with bent grass and are well on the way to recovery, Billings said.

The improvements helped reverse a decline in membership. Billings told The Times that the club currently has just under 200 memberships, with the majority of those including couples or families.

"We just felt like we had made an investment in having substantially rehabbed the club, and it holding its own for a couple of years," he said, "but realized that we didn't want to continue with the task of rebuilding it up."

In his letter to the membership, Billings wrote, "Given our ages, it is time for us to retire again." Billings is 81.

The club will continue to operate with no changes as the auction process proceeds. Billings told members that any dues prepaid for 2016 will be held in escrow and withdrawn on a monthly basis until closing, when they will be disbursed to the new owners, who will continue to honor memberships.

Moore County's Board of Commissioners is ready to fund the construction of four new schools — those at the top of the Schools Board's revised Master Facilities Plan.

That was the clear message from two meetings the Commissioners held on Tuesday, October 20: a Work Session to look at the options for financing school construction and a joint meeting with the School Board to hear about the revised priority list.

"I think our visions marry up very well," Chairman Nick Picerno said at the conclusion of those meetings.

"By having these joint meetings, I think we have shown something that should be a model for every county across our state," Picerno said. 

"Get in a room, lay it on the table, say the pros and cons, show where you disagree, try to work to a middle, and get things done."

Programming the Advanced Career Center

The meeting began with a review of facilities decisions the Board of Education made during their October 12 meeting, rearranging the previously approved Master Facilities Plan to give top priority to the construction of the Advanced Career Center [ACC], near Sandhills Community College, and the next three spots in the priority list to three new elementary schools.

The Commissioners appeared particularly impressed by a presentation of the proposed ACC curriculum by the three current principals of Moore County's high schools.

North Moore Principal Jenny Purvis said, "We want to make sure that, if we build this, we are going to have students there."

So the principals pulled together actual course requests submitted by students last year and compared those with the current offerings at the three high schools.

"We decided to focus on those areas where we have large overcrowding," Purvis said, "where we just can't serve the number of students who are requesting the course." 

An example would be nursing, where state law severely limits the number of students in the classroom, and the high schools can't meet the demand from students.

They also highlighted situations in which students requested a course — but not enough students to make it feasible to offer that course on an existing campus.

An example would be advanced auto technology courses, where there are not enough students on any one campus to warrant offering the courses, but combining all those requests at the ACC would allow those students to be served.

For the principals, the process means losing some courses on their home campuses, while gaining other advantages.

"I lose a lot of courses," Pinecrest Principal Bob Christina said. "But we are sharing, because we care about all the kids in Moore County."

He mentioned specifically the possibility of losing the ROTC program, which could become a part of the Global Leadership pathway at the ACC.

"What does that do for me? That frees up space," he said. "I'm not giving up practice fields for them to drill. I'm not giving up classroom space for four periods. That frees up opportunities for my teachers who don't have classrooms, and have to float, to have their own classroom."

"I have had students come up to me everyday," Union Pines Principal Andy McCormick said, "asking about what are the course offerings at the ACC . . . . I think it will be a tremendous opportunity for the students of Moore County — making them shine, making them more competitive across the state and across the country."

"Kudos to all of you," Commissioner Graham said. "We need those service jobs. We need those electricians. We need those plumbers. CNAs. They know then that they want that RN, so they don't waste two years and then decide, "Hey, this nursing's not for me.'"

"There are a lot of pathways to being successful," Commissioner Randy Saunders said. "I'm for anything we can do to give our kids a competitive advantage. I think this is a game changer for our kids."

Will Moore County taxpayers support a quarter-cent sales tax increase to help build new schools? 

That question will be answered on March 1, when the Presidential Primary ballot will also include an opportunity to vote for or against a "local sales and use tax at the rate of one-quarter percent (0.25%) in addition to all other state and local taxes."

If the voters approve, the new tax will add an estimated $2.2 million to County coffers in FY 2017.

The Moore County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved, during their regular Tuesday, October 20 meeting, a resolution asking Elections Director Glenda Clendenin to put the question on the March Primary ballot.

The referendum question, cannot, by law, include any statement about the intended use of the funds. But the Commissioners have made clear that they intend use most — if not all — of that new revenue to support the building of new schools.

The Commissioners and Board of Education held a joint meeting earlier in the day, and that conversation revealed a willingness on the Commissioners part to fund the first four projects on the School Board's priority list: the new Advanced Career Center near Sandhills Community College, a new elementary school in Area 1 (Carthage, Cameron, Whispering Pines, and Vass), and new elementary schools in Aberdeen and Southern Pines. [See story on page 7 for more details.]

The new voter-approved sales tax is allowed under Article 46 of Chapter 105 of the NC General Statutes. 

Unlike other local sales taxes authorized by the General Statutes, Article 46 taxes are distributed to the county alone, rather than being shared with the municipalities. The tax will not be applied to purchases of groceries or gasoline.

State law prohibits the County from advocating for or against the sales tax; however, the County can spend money to educate voters about the referendum. County Manager Wayne Vest said his leadership team would "immediately begin an initiative to educate and inform the voters."

Prior to the vote , Chairman Nick Picerno recalled that he was asked, in a candidates forum during his first campaign, whether he would support an increase in the sales tax. He was the lone candidate who said he would not support an increase.

"The reason I did not support it at that time was that they had no proven reason for additional revenue. There was no excuse to raise the tax. I think we have shown over and over through our discussions with the School Board and our educational construction needs — and the way we are getting rooked by the tier system not giving us our fair share — that this is the only way that we can supply the revenue we need."

On Thursday, October 8, Moore County's new Fire Commission will  review the final draft of a funding formula developed to drive budgeting for the County's seventeen fire and rescue departments.

The work of the Commission to standardize service across the County has already become controversial, at least in West End and Foxfire Village, as bits and pieces of the funding formula have appeared in the minutes of the Commission.

It appears inevitable that the funding model will recommend that the County pay for fewer paid firefighters at West End Fire and Rescue [WEFR] than that department's Board of Directors currently has on staff.

Both the WEFR Board and the Village of Foxfire, which is served by the West End department, have expressed concern that a reduction in paid personnel will undermine coverage.

The Times met with Fire Commission Chairman Mike Cameron; Rich Lambdin, President of the Moore County Fire Chief's Association; and County Fire Marshal Ken Skipper on Tuesday, September 22 to better understand the rationale behind the Commission's funding formula.  Cameron is Chief of Cypress Pointe Fire & Rescue; Lambdin is Chief at Whispering Pines Fire and Rescue.

The Board of Commissioners has tabled a request by Moore County Schools [MCS] to use $800,000 in NC Education Lottery funds to purchase the site for a new Aberdeen Elementary School and to pay for due diligence and design fees. The unanimous vote came during the Board’s Tuesday, August 4 meeting.

“Using lottery funds for furthering the capital needs of our schools is right on,” Commissioners’ Chairman Nick Picerno said during the meeting. “That’s what they are actually supposed to be used for — to build schools.”

“What my issue is, and has been all along,” Picerno continued, “I am not voting to spend one penny on any school construction of any kind until the Board of Education and the Board of Commissioners have met, got on the same page, and understand the beginning, the middle, and the end of what we are trying to accomplish, what the timeframe is to accomplish that, what the anticipated cost is going to be, and what problems we are actually solving as we go through each of these processes.”

MCS Administration and the Board of Education undertook a lengthy process of identifying and prioritizing the County’s needs for new and expanded school facilities in 2013 and 2014. That process included a projection of student population growth by a research firm affiliated with NC State University, evaluation of existing MCS campuses by Moseley Architects, community meetings and a survey to gather public input, the convening of a task force of community leaders to provide recommendations to the School Board, and significant debate by the School Board itself.

The result was a priority list of ten projects with an estimated total cost of $110 million, including the expansion of Pinecrest and Union Pines High Schools, the construction of a new specialty high school, three new elementary schools, expansions at Pinehurst and West Pine Elementary Schools, renovations at North Moore High School, and a new middle school.

What the process did not produce — and the Commissioners want — is a detailed projection of the timing of those projects, and the cash that will be required at each step of the process, so that the County can decide how best to come up with those funds.