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Shital Patel has never been a confrontational person.
But in the dental office lobby in Leland that day, she felt in her gut that something was off.
It was a Thursday afternoon in summer 2020, at the height of pandemic precautions, and her husband was undergoing a routine dental procedure. Hemant “Henry” Patel, himself a well-respected cardiologist, trusted his dentist, Mark C. Austin, and had no concerns about the procedure–a dental implant where a tooth had been extracted several months before.
The procedure was supposed to take 20 minutes. After 30 minutes, his wife checked in with the front office staff, who told her they got a late start. Ten minutes later, the staff reiterated the same message.
After another 15 minutes passed, Shital Patel dropped all pretense. “Totally out of character for me, I said, ‘I want to see my husband now.’”
Another staffer emerged and told everyone else in the waiting room to go home. “Nobody’s telling me anything,” Patel said. “I just knew.”
She ran to the door that led to the dental suites, but staffers blocked her from going farther.
Police arrived first, then paramedics. For 21 minutes, paramedics gave her husband CPR before he regained a pulse. But all that time without oxygen had taken its toll. Three days later, he was taken off life support. The 53-year-old left behind his wife, two adult children, and hundreds of patients, friends, and colleagues who revered him. His COVID-era funeral was so well-attended online that it hit the livestream’s 3,000-viewer cap.
It took a week for Shital Patel’s anger to set in. At first, she assumed her husband’s death was an accident–not something preventable.
“When you go to a place, you just assume everything is in order,” she said. “You don’t walk into a building and say, ‘Do you think the ceiling is going to fall down on us?’”How a Widow’s Appointment to the State Dental Board Got Spiked
Shital Patel’s husband died while undergoing a routine dental procedure. After she advocated for safety reforms, the governor’s office told her it had named her to the state dental board–then dentists intervened. Johanna F. Still reports for The Assembly.
Chainsaws and Consolidations?
Government efficiency is having a renaissance, if an uneven one. While there’s been plenty of pushback on Elon Musk’s chainsaw-wielding DOGE, the idea of trimming governmental fat remains popular across the political spectrum.
Democratic Governor Josh Stein proposed a new “Impact Center” during his inaugural State of the State speech; Stein championed the protection of taxpayer dollars, adding quickly that he’d use a “scalpel, not a chainsaw.” And here in the Cape Fear region, influential conservative Woody White had his own suggestion, asking his followers on X to “imagine the DOGE possibilities in finding efficiencies in two large local governments.”
White, who recently moved into Wilmington’s city limits and has been polling his social media followers on the upcoming mayoral race, asked if it was time for the city and New Hanover County to consolidate. He suggested combining law enforcement, parks and rec, fire, and planning departments could lower taxes and reduce the overall size of government (which has long been White’s stated preference).
It’s not a new idea. In fact, it’s been officially put to a vote four times with a little more support each time: 1933 (22%), 1973 (24%), 1987 (41%), and 1995 (42%).
The most recent official attempt had considerable backing, according to a 1996 UNC School of Government study. Supporters included the majority of Wilmington residents (about 54%), the Black population (who had opposed earlier attempts), the economic development establishment, the Chamber of Commerce, and the League of Women voters, who cited improved government services and a reduction in the “us vs. them” attitude that prevailed between Wilmington and New Hanover County at the time.
Consolidating law enforcement can be one of the most difficult parts of merging city and county governments. In 1987, Sheriff Joseph McQueen, Jr., the county’s first Black Sheriff, opposed a consolidation plan because it would have expanded city police powers and largely sidelined his office. The 1995 plan was restructured to propose a single law-enforcement agency with McQueen as the initial police chief and subsequent chiefs appointed by a new council government. McQueen approved, which helped sway the Black population.
Pushback came from city employees worried about job security, unincorporated county residents eying increased tax rates, and beach towns concerned about how they fit in. The Morning Star, which had supported earlier attempts, criticized the 1995 proposal for being hastily drafted and lacking details, calling it a “pig in a poke.”
As White noted on X, there were two additional informal attempts, one in 2001 when mayoral candidate Bill Caster ran (and lost) on a consolidation platform, and another in 2013. White said he and Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo presided over several meetings and “got close” with fire and parks departments, but “despite much effort, it went nowhere.”
Saffo recalled that the plan was limited to finding departmental merger opportunities, with the city taking over fire and the county taking over parks, but stopping well short of full consolidation. He said while the city and county fire departments had a good relationship, the differing levels of service at the time made a merger complicated.
Saffo hasn’t announced whether or not he’ll run for mayor again this year (he promised an announcement “soon”), but said he thinks city leaders could definitely revive the conversation, at least on a limited scale.
“If you can find better ways to deliver services and make government more efficient, we ought to,” Saffo said.
Both Saffo and White agreed that full consolidation is trickier when elected officials get involved.
White said in 2013, “Career politicians resisted the concept of giving up their seats (you can probably guess which ones).” Saffo said, more generally, “There’s always going to be a certain amount of elected leaders that would say, ‘No, we want to keep it as a city and as a city, and we want to continue to manage our own area, and you guys manage your own area.’”
–Benjamin Schachtman
