Mayo will run for seat on board
By Steve Herring
Published in News on November 27, 2015 1:46 PM
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Ray Mayo
Ray Mayo of Pikeville has announced he will seek a second term as the District I member on the Wayne County Board of Commissioners.
Mayo, owner of North Carolina Manufacturing, a Goldsboro machine shop, first joined the board in December of 2011 following the retirement of Andy Anderson, who recommended Mayo as his replacement.
Mayo, 68, a native of the Pinkney community, was elected to his first full term in 2012 and has served as board vice chairman.
All seven seats on the commission are up for election next November.
The candidate filing period for the 2016 primary and general election begins at noon on Tuesday, Dec. 1, and ends at noon on Monday, Dec. 21.
The 2016 statewide primary, including the presidential preference primary, is Tuesday, March 15.
"The reason I am running is because, and I have said this in the past, this county has been good to me and my family," Mayo said. "They have helped my businesses maintain and grow and in the process of doing that I feel like God has called me to do this. I am going to run the same campaign that I ran in 2012. I am going to represent the citizens of my district first and the citizens of Wayne County second.
"Overall the new commission board has accomplished a lot. But in my particular district, I will never forget the first (issue). When I took over for Andy Anderson, the first project that I was called to do was to keep the Fremont Library open. It was scheduled to be closed."
Mayo was successful in securing the funding to keep the library open.
Mayo said he wants to continue the conversation about building a centrally located library in the northern part of the county.
Also, the northern part of the county also needs natural gas to spur economic development, he said.
By serving on the commission's Facilities Committee for two years, Mayo said he was involved with the new jail now under construction and the new Steele Memorial Library in Mount Olive.
Mayo said that in his district he has been involved with addressing sewer issues in Fremont and Eureka area. That work is ongoing but "tremendous progress" has been made, he said.
More recently, Mayo took a lead role in helping get the street lights turned back on in the deannexed areas just north of Goldsboro.
He also championed the county's recent adoption of a policy to provide a way to repair subdivision streets so that they can be accepted into the state's road maintenance program.
Mayo is on the Wayne Community College steering committee for its Advanced Manufacturing Center.
"That is one of the best things that has happened in this county," Mayo said. "Once we get it up and going, we will be able to serve not only Wayne County as far as training people, but the whole region. I am really excited about that."
Mayo said he also is proud of helping organize the Wayne Jetport Advisory Committee because the jetport is vital to economic development in the county.
The Wayne County Veterans Advisory Board is another project that Mayo said he is proud to have been a part of.
"I supported as you know the nonprofits in Wayne County," he said. "Whenever you look at some nonprofits they are doing things cheaper than the county can do it. So I am in support of nonprofits. What is going to happen next budget year, I don't have any idea.
"There are several nonprofits that are really saving the county money. When you look at all the nonprofits in Wayne County, which includes some of the county committees like the Development Alliance. When you took all of those out of that list you are only looking at, and this is a ballpark figure, about $300,000 for funding of the other nonprofits. So it is not a budget buster."
Mayo said he does not support eliminating funding nonprofits completely. Instead he said he supports having County Manager George Wood send the same message to nonprofits that he sends to county departments when he asks for specific percentages to be cut from their budgets.
Mayo said he would not support any tax increase.
Mayo is a 1965 graduate of Charles B. Aycock High School, Pikeville, and completed a four-year program at Newport News (Va.) Shipbuilding apprentice school earning a degree in machining and machining technology.
He became an instructor at the school.
Mayo moved back to North Carolina in 1976 taking a job as a manufacturing engineer at Acme United in Fremont.
In 1979, he became a partner in a machine shop in Dunn. In 1982, he sold out of that venture and moved back to Goldsboro to start North Carolina Manufacturing.
In 1996, Mayo and Chuck Merritt opened M&M Supply, an industrial supply house.
As a commissioner, Mayo currently serves on the Health Department and Animal Control boards and is chairman of the Department of Social Services board.
Mayo is a senior member of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers and of the state Department of Commerce's Apprenticeship Council.
He serves as well on the N.C. East Alliance, the former Eastern Region. While serving on the Eastern Region board Mayo led the effort for the county to borrow $3 million at a low interest rate to use for economic development projects across the county.