On the ballot, District 6: Gene Aycock
By News-Argus Staff
Published in News on October 25, 2015 1:50 AM
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Gene Aycock
Q: Why do you want to be on the Goldsboro City Council?
A: Number one, I enjoy serving the sixth district, and I enjoy the people who live in the sixth district. In the past, I feel that the sixth district has come up short on expenditures that the city makes. You know, we aren't getting our share of street repaving or other infrastructure. We have no park -- the only thing we have is part of a greenway. I've started some things that I'd like to see finished. One of them is (the) Berkeley Boulevard (widening project.) Although that was started before I came on board, I'd like to see it finished. That's going to enhance our area immensely. I don't know how it's going to be affected by the 70 bypass. I'm on the Transportation Advisory Committee, and therefore I have some say in what future highway projects are going to be. I think that's important for our district.
Q: What government experience do you have? If you don't have government experience, what are your qualifications?
A: I have three years on the city council, and that's basically it. You learn a lot in three years, though. That first year I was in there, I was lost whenever it came to different things with so many different acronyms and so many things like that, I didn't have any idea sometimes and had to ask. I taught school for 12 years at Goldsboro High School and then for the last 31 years now I've owned my own insurance agency. While I'm slowing down now, it's something where I've had to manage my dollars because I was the one that made the money, so I was the one who could spend the money, and I knew how to run a budget. You know, I've got a B.S. and an NAED but I don't think that gives me any more qualifications. It's not always formal education.
Q: The City Council has designated four major issues it intends to tackle in the coming years. Where do you stand on these issues?
* Greenways and pathways around the city, both maintenance of existing systems and bringing new ones to Goldsboro.
We started the greenway years ago on New Hope Road and it ended right there at Hare Road, and we have the funds now to complete it down to Stoney Creek and connect it to the greenway behind the community college and the hospital. Most of this is being done with grant money, but we've got to continue to pursue those grants. But grant money is also tax dollars and it doesn't make any difference which pocket it comes out of, it's coming out of the taxpayers' pocket. And I just want to make sure whatever we spend, we spend judiciously.
* Continue to invest in downtown.
Well, you want an honest answer so I've got to give it to you. At the present time, we have spent all the money we need to until we can step back and take a look and see what private investment is going to do. We can spend all the tax dollars we have, but if private investment is not going to come downtown then we can't spend enough. We can't spend ourselves into prosperity downtown.
* Develop the city's parks and recreation department.
Well, you know, long term plans are the athletic park and W.A. Foster. Now, I was all in favor of W.A. Foster when I first came on the board, and I still am in favor of W.A. Foster. I just have a whole lot of problems with the magnitude. Once something is envisioned to the time it is bid out, it goes from -- that project to when I first came on the board was said to be a $2.5 million to $3 million project. Now it's a $6 million project. And I'm all in favor, but they want to do grandiose, and I don't think a rec center has to be grandiose. I think it has to be functional.
* Combat blight throughout the city.
Money we were spending downtown, now that Streetscape is coming to a close, the TIGER grant to the train station and the transfer station are complete, we need to take some of that money and start improving our infrastructure. There are a lot of streets in Goldsboro that need paving. We aren't going to catch up at the current allocation of a half million dollars a year for street paving. We're going to have to start allocating a million and a half to two million, in my opinion. And then hopefully we can get the worst streets up to par and begin then maintaining what we've got. There's a lot of abandoned and dilapidated houses. We're tearing down 20 or so a year, but I think there's 120 that have been identified as needing to be torn down, and I think we've got to move forward with that. We can do all we want to downtown, but when you drive from any direction to downtown you go through a blighted area. That's why I question a lot of the money (the council spends). We have to have an attractive corridor coming into downtown in order to draw visitors and customers to downtown.
Q: As for the budget, are there things you would like to see cut, increased or added?
You know, I made the motion in the budget meeting not to raise taxes two cents. I think we could tighten our belts in some of these departments, and save at least 5 percent. We probably could save much more. But let's put it at a realistic goal for the first year and say, 'Let's see if we can't come up with these department heads how we can save 5 percent this year.' The reason I say that is, we don't need to add any extra responsibilities. We've got to take care of what we've got, and take that 5 percent and improve the infrastructure, improve the police department -- provide them with equipment. You're still seeing (Ford) Crown Victorias being driven around that are hitting 10, 12 years old. We're funding eight to 10 new police cars per year. But if we have to increase the police force, then we take those and -- this is tough to say -- but if we can't get enough money from that 5 percent, if it takes a tax increase of one cents or two cents in order to provide safety to our citizens, I don't think most citizens would mind paying it. But I'm not willing to increase taxes for things that we don't need.
Q: What do you think the city needs to do to help curb the violence, particularly shootings, that seems to be escalating?
Those identified areas -- and most people know where they are, I don't have to mention them, the police know where they are -- we're going to have to start putting constant patrols in those areas. When I say constant patrols, they just work that one area. I don't care how many hours a shift it is, whether it be an 8-hour shift or whatever. We're going to have to have enough police officers. What it might do is move them (criminals) somewhere else. But if you do, you move the police officers also. We have started the initiative of that joint crime force that we used three or four weeks ago (Operation Team Effort), and I rode with Chief (Mike) West, and we rode into Day Circle and all that, but you could tell that they (criminals) knew that the sweep was going on. I rode with him from 7 p.m. to 12 a.m. and we got one call, and that was to the trailer park out here off of Central Heights Road for shots fired. We've got to work with the citizens to let them know the police officers are there for their protection. They are not the enemy. Cooperation is the only way we're going to get this crime problem solved.