Three new COVID-19 cases have been added to the Dare County Dept. of Health and Human Services’ dashboard since yesterday, all of them young non-residents who have been transferred to their home counties for isolation.

Two of the three non-residents who tested positive locally for COVID-19 are male, and two of them are 17 years old, according to today’s dashboard data. One is between the ages of 18 and 24.

The total number of cases in Dare County is now 29.

Seven people tested positive for COVID-19 in Dare County during the past week. Of the seven, five were non-residents. Four were female, and three were male.

Dr. Sheila Davies, director of the DCDHHS, announced last week that a third local testing event would be held soon and would include antibody testing, as well as testing for COVID-19 infection.

Dr. Davies will post a videotaped message update about COVID-19 in Dare on Tuesday.

THE BEACON, 6/7/20

The cut-through traffic flowing through Southern Shores from South Dogwood Trail to East Dogwood Trail to Hickory Trail has been continuous for hours now, with nary a driver stopping at the stop sign at the East Dogwood-Hickory intersection. I could not walk my dog because he was terrified by the unceasing onslaught of vehicles.

Please let me know what has been happening, and still is happening, on the roads north of Hickory Trail. With the volume of traffic I am seeing, there must be long backups.

The cut-through traffic today is reminiscent of traffic we usually see later in June after the kids are out of school. I am seeing plenty of young children in the vehicles passing through.

It would be encouraging to see a police vehicle somewhere near the East Dogwood-Hickory intersection to remind drivers that “STOP” does not mean run the sign.

***

UPDATE AT 7 p.m. SUBMITTED BY A BEACON READER: “At this time, WAZE shows traffic backed up on Hillcrest by the hill near the tennis court to the Hillcrest/Sea Oats stop signs and again on Sea Oats from 11th to Rte. 12. Rte. 12 is backed up from Chichahauk north to Duck.”

Please read the other comments that came in from readers after 7 p.m. Clearly, we experienced a lot of gridlock yesterday in the residential areas from the afternoon until darkness.

My thanks to everyone who reported on conditions they observed.

Ann, 6/6/20

 

 

A Dare County woman between the ages of 25 and 49 has tested positive for COVID-19 and is the 26^th case reported locally, according to today’s Dare County Dept. of Health and Human Services’ dashboard update.

The young woman is classified in the dashboard as having an “active” case and is reported to be in home isolation. She is the second female Dare County resident between the ages of 25 and 49 to test positive for COVID-19 in the past two days. The other, Case No. 25, is also in home isolation.

Dr. Sheila Davies, the director of DCDHHS, gives a videotaped message update on COVID-19 in Dare County each week. We expect Dr. Davies to comment on Case No. 26 next Tuesday.

Although The Beacon has not been reporting daily the number of statewide laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases, completed tests, hospitalizations, and deaths recorded on the N.C. Dept. of Health and Human Services’ dashboard, we have been monitoring these statistics.

In general, the number of confirmed cases has increased substantially, with an increase in the number of tests being performed. In the past three days, for example, more than 1,100 cases have been reported statewide: 1,189 on Thursday; 1,289 on Friday; and 1,370 today. The positive-test result rate for the respective days was 6.2 percent; 9.3 percent; and 9.0 percent.

The State recorded its highest positive-test rate in months on June 1 when 12 percent of the completed tests were confirmed to be COVID-19-positive.

Hospitalizations for COVID-19 patients have steadily increased in recent weeks and are today at a high of 708, according to the NCDHHS dashboard.

More than 992 people have died in North Carolina of the novel coronavirus’s severe respiratory disease. That’s more than double the number of people who had died just a month ago.

Phase Two of Governor Roy Cooper’s reopening expires at 5 p.m. on Friday, June 26.

OPEN MEETING; BEACH NOURISHMENT HEARING JUNE 16: Please note that the Southern Shores Town Council is opening its 9 a.m. June 16 workshop meeting, during which a public hearing on beach nourishment will be held, to the general public, after months of exclusion because of the Governor’s restrictions on mass gatherings.

The Town announced in its newsletter yesterday that the seating in the Pitts Center will be arranged at the workshop meeting to accommodate six-foot distancing between attendees and that public seating will be limited.

When the number of staff and Council members at the June 1 meeting clearly exceeded 10 people, Interim Town Manager Wes Haskett announced at the meeting that the Governor’s Executive Order 141, which took effect May 20, excludes municipal governments from a mass-gathering limit.

The Beacon would have preferred that the Town had implemented social-distancing accommodations for members of the public at its June 1 meeting, when the Council considered the no-left-turn initiative. There are no adequate substitutes for an in-person audience and speakers.

We also weary of the poor sound quality of the Zoom videoconferences. Neither Police Chief David Kole nor Fire Chief Ed Limbacher–or whoever substituted for him on June 1; the Mayor did not introduce the speaker–has been visible or clearly audible during the Zoom meetings. They have been consistently off-camera and out of the effective reach of microphones.

ANN G. SJOERDSMA, 6/6/20

 

Non-resident Dare County property owners Joseph and Linda Blackburn of Richmond, Va. claim in the class-action complaint they filed May 15 against Dare County and the county’s six beach towns, including Southern Shores, that they “lost the fair market rental value and value of use of [their Dare County] property” during the 45 or more days that they were prohibited from accessing the Outer Banks because of the COVID-19 emergency.

These are the financial damages they claim: the loss of “fair market rental value” and the loss of use value. They are not claiming specific rental income losses.

If the Blackburns, who own a home in Frisco, or any “similarly situated individuals” in the class of plaintiffs—which has not yet been certified by the federal court—suffered any income loss, it was more likely due to the County’s two-month-long visitor ban, not the access restriction on non-resident property owners.

The Beacon has finally obtained, and perused, a copy of the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina by the Blackburns’ attorney, Lloyd C. (“Clif”) Smith, Jr., of Pritchett & Burch, PLLC, of Windsor.

According to the complaint in Blackburn et al v. Dare County and the towns of Duck, Southern Shores, Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills, Nags Head and Manteo, the plaintiffs allege that the County’s ban on non-resident property owners’ access between March 20 and May 4-8 constitutes:

“a temporary complete taking by regulation by the governmental units, which are the Defendants herein, of the Plaintiffs’ property rights as the Plaintiffs had no rights whatsoever to and in their real property in Dare County but were subjected to continual [sic] taxes and such utilities bills as may be required.” (Paragraph 17 of the complaint)

How do you quantify in dollars the value of “a temporary complete taking” of property?

The complaint suggests that you look at property taxes and utilities paid by the plaintiffs during the period of access denial.

In a Pritchard & Burch intake form titled, “New Client Questionnaire Dare County Temporary Taking,” which The Beacon also obtained, Mr. Smith seeks the amount potential plaintiffs paid in 2019 Dare County property taxes and their average monthly income for renting their properties, as well as their water and utility bill payments for March, April, and May.

The suggestion is that the value of what the Blackburns and “similarly situated individuals” lost when they could not access their properties would be the sum of a prorated amount of annual property tax, water and utility bills for the six weeks, plus such other damages as may be determined. (“Similarly situated” is a standard legal definition for plaintiffs in a class.)

Mr. Smith asserts in the complaint that the matter in controversy exceeds $5 million.

Dare County has insurance in the amount of $2 million, according to an informed Beacon source who requested anonymity because of potential personal consequences. The County also has a substantial reserve fund, the amount of which we will not cite without official Dare County corroboration.

The Blackburns’ lawsuit is what all attorneys recognize as a “1983” claim, which is brought pursuant to title 42 of the United States Code, chapter 21, section 1983. (The U.S. Code codifies all federal statutes.) Section 1983 is invoked in federal court for alleged violations of constitutional rights by States, including local governments and their officials.

The specific violation alleged here is a governmental taking of private property—albeit a temporary taking—without due process of law.

The Beacon has learned that personal-injury litigators, Corey Ann Finn and Stuart Wade H. (“Wade”) Yeoman, of the Louisville, Ky. firm of Finn & Yeoman, will be working with Pritchard & Burch on the case.

Litigators Christopher Geis and Brian F. Castro, who are in the Winston-Salem office of the national law firm of Womble Bond Dickinson, have entered appearances in the lawsuit on behalf of Dare County.

The case, no. 2:20-cv-00027, was assigned to U.S. District Court Judge Louise Wood Flanagan and referred to mediation on May 19.

According to Pritchard & Burch’s and Finn & Yeoman’s client retainer agreement, the attorneys are to be compensated for their services by the greater dollar amount of one of the following two methods, and we quote:

1. “The attorneys will diligently seek reimbursement and apply to the court for an award of fees and costs to be paid by defendants, and attorneys will further seek such reimbursement of costs and attorneys’ fees by way of any settlement. Client understands that such an award of attorneys’ fees and costs may be dependent upon the contingencies of the settlement process, court approval, and various methods of calculation including hours expended, costs advanced, etc. and that the final amount is within the discretion of the court and/or the defendant for approval.” OR
2. “Attorneys will be compensated on a contingent fee basis calculated as follows: “A maximum of thirty-three and one-third percent (33 1/3%) of the gross amount of the recovery made on behalf of the client by way of settlement, verdict, or other form of recovery.”

The retainer contract also specifies that any settlement, verdict, or judgment on behalf of the plaintiff class will first be reduced by “costs” that have been advanced by the plaintiffs’ attorneys and have not been paid by the defendant(s). These costs are not spelled out in the contract.

IN OTHER NEWS ABOUT LITIGATION STEMMING FROM THE COUNTY’S ACCESS PROHIBITIONS . . .

OBX Today reports today that a group of vacation-home renters “signed a retainer” yesterday with a Greenville law firm to represent them in a class-action lawsuit against Surf or Sound Realty of Hatteras Island for its failure to refund security deposits and other monies they paid for rentals that were canceled because of Dare County’s ban on visitor access during the COVID-19 emergency.

The group reportedly has hired the personal-injury firm of the Law Offices of James Scott Farrin of Greenville to help them obtain the refunds that Surf or Sound has withheld.

Surf or Sound’s refusal to return monies to the thwarted vacationers contravenes an opinion issued earlier this year by the N.C. Real Estate Commission, which said that vacation property owners must return funds to lessees who could not access their vacation homes.

Clif Smith, who is representing the non-resident property owners in the Blackburn lawsuit, is representing Surf or Sound Realty. According to OBX Today’s report, Mr. Smith contends that Dare County and the Outer Banks’ town governments should refund any monies advanced, not Surf or Sound and the homeowners it represents.

According to OBX Today, Surf or Sound originally told canceled vacation renters that they would be receiving refunds, but then it reversed its decision in May, offering to book later alternative vacation weeks instead.

The N.C. Real Estate Commission ruled March 19 that the N.C. Vacation Rental Act mandates the return of monies to visitors for vacations to be held in houses that cannot be “provided.” But we could not find a provision in the statute that requires a landlord to do more than provide “fit and habitable” premises.

N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein supported the Real Estate Commission’s ruling.

The Commission is an independent state agency that licenses and regulates N.C. real estate agents.

A court may give deference to an opinion by the N.C. Attorney General and/or the N.C. Real Estate Commission, but it is not bound by it.

ANN G. SJOERDSMA, 6/6/20

Of the 205 people tested for COVID-19 this week during the drive-thru event in Nags Head, 204 received negative results, and one had an invalid specimen that was inadequate for testing, according to an update posted today on the Dare County Dept. of Health and Human Services’ website.

The DCDHHS also reported that planning for a third testing event, which will include both diagnostic and antibody testing, is under way. It said information will be released later this month.

Earlier this week the DCDHHS reported upon the positive test results of a non-resident male, between the ages of 50 and 64, and a resident female, between ages 25 and 49, as COVID-19 cases no. 24 and 25 on the DCDHHS’s newly expanded dashboard.

The man “is currently asymptomatic and remains in home isolation in Dare County,” the DCDHHS confirmed in its update today. “This individual acquired the virus through direct contract with a family member.” (One can surmise that he has family living in Dare County.)

The woman, who is also recovering in home isolation, is considered to have acquired the coronavirus through community spread, the DCDHHS said, because “it cannot be determined how [she] acquired the virus” otherwise.

The health department has identified and notified all direct contacts associated with both of these cases.

The good news is that the person who tested positive for COVID-19 last month and has been in the hospital for more than three weeks has now recovered, according to DCDHHS’s update.

See update at https://www.darenc.com/Home/Components/News/News/6321/1483.

The DCDHHS’s new data dashboard, which gives demographic and isolation details for all 25 COVID-19 cases in Dare, is available at www.darenc.com/covid19.

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 6/5/20

 

A 25^th person has tested positive for COVID-19 in Dare County, according to today’s Dare Co. Dept. of Health and Human Services’ dashboard.

This individual is a female resident of Dare County who is between the ages of 25 and 49 and is in isolation at home, according to dashboard data.

This young woman’s case brings the total number of active COVID-19 cases in Dare County to three. The two others have had active cases for more than three weeks: One is in isolation in a hospital; the other is in home isolation. (See The Beacon, 6/3/20.)

Overall, 19 Dare County residents and six non-residents have tested positive for COVID-19 in Dare County.

Dr. Sheila Davies, the director of the DCDHHS, provides videotaped updates about COVID-19 locally on the health department’s website every Tuesday. The Beacon anticipates that Dr. Davies will provide more details next Tuesday about the two people who tested positive this week—as well as others who may test positive in the interim.

As more people arrive on the Outer Banks for vacations, and more interaction occurs among people who are not members of the same household, it becomes even more important for people to observe infection-control measures such as distancing themselves by six feet from others and wearing face coverings.

Please observe the three W’s of wash your hands frequently; wait six feet; and wear a face covering.

Reducing COVID-19 transmission is so simple to accomplish that the State of North Carolina has reduced the process to monosyllabic words that a kindergartener can understand.

And yet, I find myself often walking into a store and walking right out again because people don’t care about waiting and wearing. Even employees aren’t taking precautions.

Those people who are throwing caution to the wind should understand that the damage this new coronavirus can cause is not yet fully known.

Contrary to what too many people say, it is not a “bad cold” or “another flu.” It is a distinct strain of coronavirus–not an influenza virus–that does not have a sufficient enough history yet for a person to fully evaluate the risks it presents.

ANN G. SJOERDSMA, 6/4/20

 

A 24^th person has tested positive for COVID-19 in Dare County, according to the Dare Co. Dept. of Health and Human Services’ dashboard.

This individual is a non-resident male between the ages of 50 and 64 who is in isolation in Dare County, according to today’s dashboard data. No further details were provided about either the person’s condition or how he contracted the coronavirus.

DCDHHS Director Dr. Sheila Davies explained in a videotaped message posted yesterday to the department’s COVID-19 website that the 23^rd person who tested positive in the county was also a non-resident. (Dr. Davies posts a videotaped update every Tuesday.)

This person, Dr. Davies said, acquired the coronavirus from direct contact with an infected family member and is asymptomatic. He/she is now isolating in his/her home county, not in Dare. The person’s test result was not available until after he/she left Dare County.

Dr. Davies also updated the test results from last week’s drive-thru testing event in Kill Devil Hills. She said that of the 179 tests performed—a correction from the 178 cited in a previous DCDHHS bulletin—177 had tested negative, and two of the tests were invalid.

Although 200 people registered for the drive-thru testing at First Flight High School, 21 were “no-shows,” according to Dr. Davies.

A second drive-thru testing event was scheduled to be held in Nags Head yesterday, with tests available for 500 people who reside in either Dare or Hyde counties. These test results should be available within 72 hours. Dr. Davies did not announce a third drive-thru testing date.

It is now possible to get tested for COVID-19, even if you do not have symptoms. The urgent care centers in Kitty Hawk and Nags Head are testing people, provided they call ahead to make an appointment, Dr. Davies advised.

The DCDHHS Director said that 1,021 test results have been reported to DCDHHS through May 31.

Dr. Davies also elaborated in her message about the two Dare County residents who have had active cases of COVID-19 for more than three weeks now.

One of them, she said, is over age 65 and “considered high-risk.” The other is middle-aged and does not have any “underlying medical conditions,” Dr. Davies said. The two people are “not connected,” she noted.

One of these patients remains in isolation in a hospital, and the other is isolating at home.

To recap, of the 24 people who have tested positive in Dare County:

*18 are Dare County residents; six are non-residents.

*10 are men; 14 are women.

*One is between the ages of 18-24; eight are between 25 and 49; eight are between 50 and 64; and seven are 65 years old or older. (This means that 62.5 percent are 50 or older, and about 29 percent are 65 or older.)

*One Dare County resident has died; 15 have recovered; and two remain active, as described above.

*Four non-resident patients have recovered; one is in isolation in his/her home county; and one is in isolation in Dare County.

You may easily access the DCDHHS’s website about COVID-19 by linking to darenc.com/covid19.

The longer URL is https://www.darenc.com/departments/health-human-services/coronavirus.

The Beacon will update COVID-19 data posted on the N.C. Dept. of Health and Human Services dashboard, which we are monitoring daily, at a later date.

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 6/3/20

Southern Shores is among the Dare County municipalities sued by named plaintiffs Joseph and Linda Blackburn of Richmond in a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of non-resident property owners who were denied access to their homes for 45 days or longer during the COVID-19 shutdown.

The Blackburns own property in Frisco on Hatteras Island, according to The Island Free Press, which broke the story locally. They are represented by Lloyd C. (“Clif”) Smith, Jr., who is with the law firm of Pritchett & Burch, PLLC, of Windsor.

Mr. Smith reportedly filed the class-action lawsuit on May 15 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, which is the federal trial court that serves Dare County and 43 other eastern North Carolina counties.

The lawsuit reportedly names Dare County, Southern Shores, Duck, Kitty Hawk, Kill Devil Hills, Nags Head, and Manteo as defendants, and alleges that they violated the constitutional rights of a class of plaintiffs led by the Blackburns, causing them financial damages, including lost rental revenues.

The Dare County Control Group, on which every town mayor sits, prohibited non-resident Dare County property owners from entering the county as of Friday, March 17, at 10 p.m. and staggered their reentry during the week of May 4.

This extreme measure was taken pursuant to the county’s declaration of emergency in response to the COVID-19 threat.

The Beacon has not read the plaintiffs’ complaint, to know the specifics of the violations alleged and the relief sought.

The Island Free Press describes the complaint as claiming that the Dare County access “closure amounted to an illegal seizure of out-of-town owners’ property in violation of the U.S. Constitution.”

The Free Press further reports that Mr. Smith claims the “property owners also lost fair market value for property rentals” during the shutdown.

According to Pritchett & Burch’s website, it operates an office at 6225 N. Croatan Hwy. in Kitty Hawk, which is across the street from OBX Chevrolet Buick, near where Dare County Sheriff’s deputies operated a checkpoint at the Wright Memorial Bridge. Police screened people seeking entry into Dare County between March 17, when visitors were excluded, until 12:01 a.m. May 16, when visitors were allowed free access.

This appears to be a makeshift office. A visit to the site reveals only one law office operating in the location, and it belongs to sole practitioner Pat Hudspeth.

According to a website associated with Mr. Hudspeth, he “has taken an opportunity with a local company and is no longer accepting clients.”

The Southern Shores Town Council held a closed session at the end of its meeting Monday to confer with Town Attorney Ben Gallop about this litigation—but you would have only found that out if you had waited in front of a blank Zoom videoconferencing screen and happened to hear Mayor Tom Bennett’s “do-over” of his motion to adjourn into closed session. I suspect I was the only one who did.

At the start of the Town Council’s meeting, Mayor Bennett amended the agenda to add the closed session. At the conclusion of the business portion of the meeting, he motioned to adjourn the meeting to go into closed session, and the Council approved that motion.

At no time, however, did Mayor Bennett explain the nature of the business that required an attorney-client privileged session. In fact, he can be heard on the meeting videotape saying after his first motion for a closed session: “I should’ve got the wording for that.”

Yes, he should have. When the meeting resumed briefly in order for Mayor Bennett to make a proper motion, he referred to the name of the case, Blackburn v. Dare County et al, and gave a U.S. district court case file number of 220-CV-27.

[Update 6/5/20: The case name is Blackburn et al v. Dare County et al, and the file number is 2:20-cv-00027. According to the district court record, the case was selected for mediation May 19. Attorneys in the Winston-Salem office of the national law firm of Womble Bond Dickinson have entered appearances on behalf of Dare County.]

Town Attorney Ben Gallop should have given the Mayor the information he needed to make a proper motion—including the citation to the appropriate N.C. General Statute that gives the Town Council authority to hold a closed session for the purpose it did. Mayor Bennett included this citation in his do-over motion.

We also question why Mr. Gallop did not mention the lawsuit in his report Monday. We believe the public had a right to know.

To view the video of the June 1 Town Council meeting, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxrgdn3O_zo&feature=youtu.be

According to the Island Free Press story, Mr. Smith said his law office would soon set up a website for property owners to obtain more information about the class action lawsuit. In the meanwhile, anyone interested in joining the class may call his office at (252) 794-3161. He will gladly send you a contract.

See The Island Free Press story at https://www.obxtoday.com/top-stories/couple-files-class-action-lawsuit-seeking-damages-for-outer-banks-non-resident-property-owners/

The Free Press also reports that Mr. Smith is representing Hatteras-based Surf or Sound Realty in a challenge to the N.C. Real Estate Commission’s opinion that “people who rented vacation homes this spring but were denied access should have their funds refunded” by the realty companies.

Mr. Smith alleges that Dare County and other Outer Banks municipalities should compensate vacation renters who were banned from the county for the deposits and other payments they made, and that Surf or Sound and its property owners should not have to refund those monies.

Surf or Sound has refused to issue refunds to visitors who lost their vacations because of the Outer Banks’ shutdown.

“Dozens of renters who lost funds to Surf and Sound” have responded to the company’s refusal, The Free Press reports, by “attempting to launch their own lawsuit.”

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 6/3/20

 

Of the 23 people who have tested positive for COVID-19 in Dare County, nine are men and 14 are women; eight are between the ages of 25 and 49, and seven are age 65 or older; and 18 are Dare County residents, while five are non-residents, according to an expanded dashboard posted today by the Dare County Dept. of Health and Human Services.

See https://www.darenc.com/departments/health-human-services/coronavirus.

Two Dare County residents continue to have an active COVID-19 status, with one being hospitalized and the other in home isolation, according to the dashboard.

Of the five non-residents who have tested positive, four have recovered, and the fifth has been transferred to his/her home county for isolation.

The latter appears to be the most recent laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 case in Dare County, case no. 23. [In a videotaped message posted today, Dr. Sheila Davies confirms that it is. The Beacon posted more details 6/3/20.]

A further breakdown of the ages of the people who have tested positive reveals that one is between the ages of 18 and 24, and seven are between the ages of 50 and 64.

Please see a 6/3/20 Beacon posting for an update.

THE BEACON, 6/2/20

Dear Readers: I will be out of pocket this afternoon and during much of this week, attending to work and life outside of The Beacon. I will post further reports about yesterday’s Town Council meeting and about news of interest to Southern Shores property owners and residents as my time allows.

By now you should have received a mailer from the Town requesting your opinion on a potential town-wide beach nourishment—from the Kitty Hawk/Southern Shores line to the Southern Shores/Duck line—in 2022. You are being asked to submit your comments by June 12, via email to info@southernshores-nc.gov or by mail to the Town Hall, 5375 N. Virginia Dare Trail, Southern Shores, NC 27949.

Please include your property’s address with your comments. This point was not made in the mailer, and it is very important because the Town Council is considering funding a beach nourishment project by imposing new taxes on property owners according to their property’s proximity to the ocean.

Oceanfront and “ocean-zone” property owners would bear the lion’s share of the tax burden for the Town’s financial investment in an estimated $14 million to $16 million-plus project. (Dare County also would be a contributor.)

The Town staff will compile the comments in a report to the Town Council, which will be holding a public hearing about beach nourishment at 9 a.m., Tues., June 16, in the Pitts Center during its workshop meeting. If you would rather not send in written comments, you may speak at the public hearing, the details of which The Beacon will provide later.

The Beacon just learned from Interim Town Manager Wes Haskett at yesterday’s Council meeting that municipal government meetings are not restricted by the 10-person maximum occupancy limit that Governor Cooper has imposed on other “mass gatherings” indoors. We intend to follow up on this exemption ASAP.

We believe that the relegation of the public to Zoom videoconferencing in order to join a Town Council meeting—while all Council members and Town staff are physically present in the Pitts Center—has adversely affected public participation and the flow of public information in Southern Shores governmental affairs.

Yesterday, I was one of seven Zoom audience members for the Council meeting. By the meeting’s conclusion, I was one of five.

I have wondered before whether the Town Council meetings were being attended by more than 10 “in-house” people.

Because meeting participants who sit on the sideline or in the front of the Pitts Center meeting hall are not visible on a Zoom videoconferencing screen, I have not been able to verify my counts. I trusted the Town that it was adhering to the 10-person maximum occupancy. Last evening it was clear that at least a dozen people attended the meeting simultaneously.

I would like very much to see accommodations made for the public to attend the June 16 workshop meeting, with seating arranged so that social distancing can be observed.

DISAGREEMENT ABOUT TOWN ENGINEERING CONTRACT

The Town Council unanimously approved yesterday the proposed fiscal year 2020-21 budget and an amendment to chapter 16 of the Town Code that updates the Town’s flood damage prevention ordinance, after holding public hearings on each during which few remarks were made.

Differences of opinion arose, however, when the Council took up implementation of the no-left-turn initiative this summer (see The Beacon, 6/1/20) and the selection of a new engineering contractor from among applicants to a Request for Qualifications issued by the Town. The Beacon will delve into these differences in a later post. Today, we would simply like to share with you a most unusual occurrence.

Town Councilman Matt Neal was in the middle of making a motion during the meeting about delaying a decision on a new engineering contract when Town Councilman Jim Conners interrupted him to make his own motion to approve awarding the contract to current engineering contractors “Deel and Anlauf.”

Mr. Conners’s interruption was a shocking breach in professional courtesy and the rules of procedure. But, rather than rebuke Mr. Conners for his breach, and disallow his intervention, Mayor Tom Bennett seconded his motion, ignoring Mr. Neal!

I have never seen such a sequence of events occur in a Southern Shores Town Council meeting. When former Councilmen Gary McDonald, Chris Nason, and Fred Newberry were on the Town Council, Councilman Conners often asked not to be interrupted, and the offender would always apologize and desist. That Mr. Conners would interrupt another Council member and not stand down was quite shocking.

Town Attorney Ben Gallop, who might have stepped in to restore order, chose to say nothing, until after the Mayor attempted to amend Mr. Conners’s motion to somehow incorporate Mr. Neal’s request.

The Beacon will elaborate on the interests at stake in this disagreement when we have sorted it out better. Neither the RFQ nor the applications received by the Town were in the meeting packet for public perusal nor are they on the Town website.

Town Councilman Leo Holland spoke about verbal presentations made by the applicants, but The Beacon is unaware of when such presentations may have occurred and before whom. Council members also repeatedly referred to a “scorecard” for applicants—which Mr. Neal called too subjective—but that scorecard also has not been publicly disseminated.

Bottom line: The awarding of the Town’s engineering contract will occur at the June 16 workshop meeting.

We agree with Councilman Neal that new Town Manager Cliff Ogburn should be involved in this decision, but he will not be in office by June 16.

In fact, we believe he should make the choice, and the Town Council should approve his choice, unless there is a clear problem with the qualifications of the engineer he chooses.

It is Mr. Ogburn, not the Town Council, who will be working directly with the town engineer.

Ann G. Sjoerdsma, 6/2/20