This week, the Wilmington City Council, New Hanover County Board of Education, and the New Hanover Board of Commissioners will hold regular meetings. On the agendas: the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for Project Grace, the county's redevelopment plan for the downtown library block, a school district's long-planned Title IX survey for students, renaming school facilities, the latest on the school's plans to return students to full-time, in-class instruction, and more.
Below: Details on the upcoming meetings and WHQR’s Ken Campbell and Ben Schachtman preview the week ahead.
Due to Covid-19 restrictions, in-person attendance to these meetings is still limited, but you find the meeting agendas and watch the meetings live using the links below:
New Hanover County Board of Commissioners agenda -- Watch live, Monday, March 15, 9 a.m.
New Hanover County Board of Education Title IX committee agenda -- Watch live, Monday, March 15, 3 p.m.
New Hanover County Board of Education Interim Meeting agenda- Watch live, Tuesday, March 16, 5:30 p.m.
City of Wilmington agenda -- Watch live, Tuesday, March 16 at 6:30 p.m.
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Ken Campbell: Things are ramping up today in local government for this week. And joining me now is WHQR managing editor Ben Schachtman. Good morning, Ben.
BS: Good morning, Ken.
KC: Just a few minutes from the time of this conversation, which is 8:45 on Monday, the New Hanover County Commissioners will be meeting -- that's at nine. The big agenda Item is the memorandum of understanding for Project Grace, which involves the redevelopment of the library block in downtown Wilmington, Ben, what's the latest on that?
BS: So this morning's meeting, we'll see probably some questions from commissioners, the way this is set up, they can actually amend this MOU the memorandum of understanding this morning and vote on it. So we can see some substantial changes. The big issue is really who pays for this and how it gets paid for it. So without getting too into the weeds, basically, the county can pay for itself, by taking out the money itself and paying it back or it can let the developer do the financing, the difference is about $24 million. So that's not a small amount of money.
KC: But if that's $24 million out of how much?
BS: Out of a total of over $90 million.
KC: So it's a large chunk, it's a large chunk of it.
BS: And basically, if the county goes it alone, and pays for the new library building and a new Cape Fear Museum building, the developer might walk away so we wouldn't get the private development and the tax revenue that comes with that. So we're going to see questions about that. There's also some smaller questions about whether or not the city of Wilmington will be involved in renting some office space, which has complicated the deal a little bit. But by the end of this morning's meeting, we should have a sort of final version of what that agreement looks like if it's going to go forward.
KC: And is the MOU the official go ahead for the project?
BS: Sort of. It definitely moves the ball forward and the county would have to pay around $800,000 -- up to around $800,000 -- to get out of it after this is signed, unless state officials don't approve of the financing model, which is also a possibility.
KC: Okay. The New Hanover County Board of Education meets this afternoon and tomorrow is well today includes an update on the long awaited student survey. What can you tell us about that?
BS: This is an idea that's been around since at least 2018. In various different forms. The basic idea is to survey students about a number of issues, but particularly about Title Nine issues. So that includes discrimination based on gender, and also sexual harassment or other kinds of sexual misconduct. One of the big questions is whether or not to tackle that issue directly with students how far back the survey should reference incidents. And the final form hasn't really evolved yet, but we're expecting to hear at least a little bit of forward progress on that today.
KC: Alright, so we'll be getting an update and then tomorrow. The board is scheduled for an interim meeting to discuss the recently passed school reopening bill. Is this just a logistical discussion? Or what might it be?
BS: So the district has already committed to reopen K through five classes in Plan A so that's, you know, full-time, in-class instruction. But the question is now sort of on the table what will happen for middle school and high school students? The reopening bill signed by Cooper on Friday leaves that open but it's certainly going to be a conversation and definitely there are parents who are invested in seeing an answer to that question because it's been an unknown for some time. Another smaller thing that they're going to do is talk about facility naming. This has been an issue. Things like the Walter Parsley elementary school was renamed and there's been repeated calls to rename the Rick Holliday stadium at Laney High School, after Rick Holliday was accused in two civil lawsuits of various forms of negligence or misconduct. So we may get a little update on that. But that's part of a much longer process. So probably nothing official from that.
KC: Okay. And it was a busy week for Wilmington city council last time around but this is a little quiet road, but they will hold a vote related to development in the north Riverfront area. What can you tell us there?
BS: Yeah, they're just going to look at sort of updating that agreement. There were some density caps that limited How much could be built there about 10 years ago. So this will basically allow more to be built there. And if you've been on the North Waterfront you've seen it's really growing really quickly. So this is sort of to keep that ball rolling.
KC: I walked by there and it looked very sort of packed in whereas the new amphitheater is going up and the park area.
BS: Very much so yeah, that amphitheater space is basically going to be ringed with developments.
KC: All right. Well, that is managing editor Ben Schachtman, thank you very much for joining us this morning.
BS: Happy to be here.