A full house greeted speakers at Monday, October 20’s Pamlico County Commissioners meeting. The meeting opened with a presentation from Lorraine Yeager of The INN and also featured an annual report from the county health department.

Lorraine Yeager made a presentation to the commissioners about progress on The INN at Pamlico. The INN will be a place where women can live temporarily after leaving the Pamlico County jail.

The INN will be located across the street from the courthouse. The organization spent 20 months raising the $50,000 needed to purchase the property. 

Yeager relayed comments from Sheriff Chris Davis’s letter of support for The INN. He’d said that that in Pamlico County, we do not have a rehab facility, a homeless shelter, a domestic violence protection shelter or halfway house of any sort. Without those facilities, people who are leaving the county jail do not have the sort of safe reentry needed to build a stable life and avoid recidivism. 

The North Carolina Department of Corrections intends to identify and support 10 new reentry facilities by 2030 that will help people transition to regular life after incarceration. The INN hopes to be one of those facilities. 

She rounded out her presentation with a call for donors and volunteers.

“We want to invite you all, if you have anything on your heart for this kind of project, we'd love to work with you,” Yeager said. “Our motto is a proverb. It's “wise people are builders.” They build families, businesses and communities. And we are builders.”

The commissioners also approved a resolution asking the state not to reduce ferry service. When the state legislature ended their session without a budget in place, it left the ferry system, including the Cherry Point Ferry used by many Pamlico County commuters and Cherry Point Academy students, without adequate funding. 

The resolution reads in part: “Pamlico County strongly opposes the proposed 43 percent reduction in ferry service on the Cherry Branch–Minnesott Beach route and urges the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) and the North Carolina Ferry Division to maintain current service levels.”

The North Carolina Department of Transportation Ferry Division has proposed the reduction in service to cope with budget shortfalls. 

County Commissioners also approved a resolution of support for the area’s crabbing industry, with amendments to more directly address the needs of Pamlico County crabbers. The state is currently considering limited crab harvesting in Albemarle Sound. The commissioners want to preemptively address potential new regulations on catches in Pamlico Sound.

Health Department Director Melanie Gibson presented her quarterly report to the County Commission.

In the past quarter, 460 appointments were kept at the health department across 65 working days. About 41% of those were nurse and provider visits. The remainder were nurse-only visits. Gibson said she expects the number of visits to increase with the help of the full-time provider approved by the commission.

The Health Department clinic brought in $145,159.98 over the past quarter. Self-pay patients accounted for 266 appointments. Private insurance paid for 92. Medicaid paid for 68. The remaining 14 were paid via Medicare. 

Gibson said the county receives about $4,000 a year for WIC. She says she does not know what the direction of WIC will be in light of federal cuts. 

She also reported that the county is 100% compliant with the North Carolina Electronic Disease Surveillance System (NCS), which monitors communicable diseases in the state. 

The county’s new Animal Services department (previously Animal Control) has three main duties: dangerous animal investigations, animal violence investigations, and rabies investigations. The Animal Services officer was called to investigate four possible incidents of rabies. All were negative. Additionally, the vehicle used for Animal Services is in desperate need of repair or replacement. 

The commissioners approved the following consent agenda items:

A public hearing on property valuations was scheduled, but closed without comment as no members of the public signed up to speak

The commission went into closed discussion to discuss a personnel matter

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