Current Town Council members Matt Neal and Mark Batenic, whose terms expire in December, filed their notices of candidacy yesterday, the first day of the Dare County municipal elections’ two-week candidate filing period. Election Day is Nov. 7.
Southern Shores voters will be electing three people to serve new four-year terms on the Town Council. Besides the seats held by Mr. Batenic and Mr. Neal, who also serves as mayor pro tem, the seat currently held by Councilman Leo Holland will be turning over.
Mr. Neal won his term on the Town Council in the contested 2019 municipal election. Mr. Holland was elected at the same time.
The Town Council appointed Mr. Batenic in January 2022 to serve out the two years remaining on Elizabeth Morey’s Town Council term, after she was elected mayor in November 2021. (Hence, the parentheses in our headline: Only Mr. Neal is seeking re-election.)
To run for town office, a candidate must have lived in the municipality for at least 30 days, be registered to vote in that municipality, and be at least 21 years old by the date of the election.
For more information about running for office, see: https://www.darenc.gov/departments/elections/candidates. The two-week candidate filing period ends at noon on Friday, July 21.
We hope that Southern Shores voters will have multiple candidates from whom to choose, and that the election results in a diversity of opinion on the Town Council that we have not had in the past two years.
The Town Council will meet Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. in the Pitts Center for what appears from the agenda to be a short business session. You may access the agenda and the meeting packet here:
The cut-thru traffic last weekend was heavy, and the traffic already today seems to be just as oppressive, but there is no indication from the Council’s meeting agenda that it will revisit the problem.
Please feel free to comment here on the traffic, if you’d like.
And as a final note: You may have noticed that speed bumps, not humps, have been installed in front of the Food Lion at the Southern Shores Marketplace. Bumps are designed to slow traffic down to 5 mph or less—which should be the speed in a parking lot—and, as we noted on 6/29/23, are not appropriate for residential streets.
Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 7/8/23
The Southern Shores Beacon 