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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview
K-0510, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern
Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill”
In this interview, Steve Holland, Republican county commissioner and businessman in Pender County, NC, describes the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd. His business, a store and restaurant, was destroyed, and although the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) denied his application for aid money, he is still waiting for adequate compensation from the Small Business Administration (SBA). Holland seems angry about the red tape he and other Pender County residents encountered as they tried to piece their lives back together, and rampant fraud supplemented his frustration. He speaks at great length in the interview about his irritation with big government, property taxes, and freeloaders.
Steve Holland, a Republican county commissioner and businessman in Pender County, N.C., describes the personal and bureaucratic struggles he faced the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
So we're here. This is Shelter Creek. What do you call it?
This is Holland Shelter creek. The name of the creek is Holly Shelter Creek.
Holly Shelter. Okay. [We are] here with Mr. Steve Holland who's a Pender County commissioner and a small business owner. It's December 16th, 1999. I'm Charlie Thompson, and we are talking about the flood after Hurricane Floyd—how it affected his business, how it affected the river, this community, and hopefully we can talk some about the county's perspective on it since Mr. Holland is a county commissioner. You were starting to tell us that story about how when you were young you used to come up here. You weren't born right here on the river, on the creek.
I was born right outside of Burgaw. Which is—. I'm probably nine miles from where I was born. Part of my live I was raised over near the Morse Creek Battleground, which is over in the Currie area.
Currie of Pender County?
Um-hum.
Okay.
At thirteen years old I moved to Wilmington, or my parents did and I had to go. At thirty-three I moved back to Pender County, which is where my grandmother and all my aunts and uncles on my mother's side were from.
Now, you didn't want to go?
No, I never could get that mud out [from] between my toes when I got in Pender County.
Because you liked the outdoors, you didn't want to move to town?
Yeah. My grandmother lived in Atkinson. I came up and spent a lot of with her and my step-granddaddy, and [we] squirrel hunted. Then at thirty-three years old I got a chance to buy a little fishing shop on Holly Shelter Creek.
What were you doing then, when you were thirty-three, up to that point?
Well, I'd been a construction worker. I'd been a boat captain. I ran a tractor-trailer. I had a shrubbery business. I'm a boiler maker, pipe fitter, carpenter. My dad told me when I was real young, learn how to do a lot of different things, that way you'll never be out of a job. I took him for his word. I tried to learn as much as I could over the years.
And you went to high school here in—.
I went to high school in Wilmington at New Hanover.
Did you go on to other school after that?
No.
You just started all your mini-businesses?
Yep. I started working when we lived in the country in tobacco and blueberries, and stuff. Then we moved to Wilmington and I went and worked for a contractor when I was thirteen years old. I worked after school and summers, and played ball. Played a little football and baseball. When I got out of school I went into service.
Was that the Vietnam era?
Um-hum. When I came back I went back to work for the same man as I had worked for when I was thirteen. I ended up building nine houses myself. I got into the bulk-head business—piers and stuff—for a few years there. Then, when I was about thirty-three years old, I had been trying to figure out how to come back to Pender County. I was up here on the creek and found a lot right around the corner from this store here. I drove back up here. I didn't know how to get to it by land, but I new how to get to it by water. The guy who had this little fishing shop said, "Instead of a lot, why don't you have a business?" Eighteen days later I leased it for thirty years.
Did he give you the idea of what business, or did he just say—?
Well, all he had here was—. He sold drinks and maps, and sold a little bit of bait and tackle. So I added onto it. I put in a little sporting goods department. After about a year I realized that you can't make it off of hunting and fishing six months out of the year, so I built a kitchen and a small dining room.
What year was that?
I came up here in 1981. I put my kitchen in in '82—the end of '82. In '84 I built the first dining room that's over the wharf, and went into the seafood business. I went from one employee in 1981 to, probably, in 1984 I had three. In 1999 I had twenty-three. I average a little over three thousand people a week for this little restaurant.
Which seats—? You told me already.
Which seats, now, one hundred and thirty-five. It went from twenty-eight seats to a hundred and thirty-five seats over this period of time.
You've got other businesses associated with this restaurant.
Well, then I built a campground. And then in 1998, in the fall, a good friend of mine came in and went partners with me on—not on the store and the restaurant, but we built ten cedar cabins with tin roofs, and bought forty canoes and a fifteen-passenger van, and started running trips on the creek. And the restaurant business just kept growing. We had just started [the creek trips before the flood]. We had the cabins we finished up and opened in May of 1999.
Ten cabins, was it?
Um-hum. They were just starting to pay for themselves. I think we had done thirty-eight or forty-eight church groups and youths groups, as far as running trips on the creek. We were renting quite a few individual canoes out, for people's day trips. Then on September 16th, it all stopped.
That's when the flood came.
That's when the hurricane hit us.
Did you have high winds? You could tell the hurricane was passing through?
Oh, yeah. I had maybe four or five threes that got blown down. Really didn't have hardly any damage—a few shingles off here and there.
Now your house is also here. You own a good bit of river frontage? Much more than that one piece you bought in '81.
Well, I leased this property for thirty years.
That's right.
There's three thousand feet of water front here. There's about seven and
a half acres. A few years back I bought a couple of lots on the creek
right around the corner
And that's all been through floods and hurricanes before, right?
Well Fran, when it came through, I got some water in my garage under my house. That didn't bother me a whole a lot. The store had no water in it. The campground didn't have any water in it. And my farm—. I did get fourteen inches of water in a little camp that I have down there, but it wasn't very destructive. But this September, the water came up, basically, about seven and a half feet higher than Fran did at the restaurant, the store, and the campground, and my house. It didn't rise that much at the farm. We had the back up effect of the water not being able to get out of here—which was no one's fault. It was just that too much water came down at one time.
So back to the fifteenth, four trees blew down and then you got up the next morning it was still possible to live here?
Oh, yeah. The water didn't really get bad until the hurricane hit on Wednesday.
Right. And that was the fifteenth, wasn't it?
Yeah. The fifteenth. And three days later is when we realized that it [the flooding] was going to be worse than we'd ever seen.
How did you start knowing that?
Well, we came across the river bridge and the water was getting so deep
that you couldn't drive a vehicle. Shelter Creek was still dry at the
time, but it [the flood
You were watching on TV, the news about this place.
Yeah. One night I was watching the news and they were showing a boat going down Highway 53. They showed a roof and I recognized it as my business. Some friends came [to the hospital]. They didn't want to tell me about it because I was kind of in bad shape. Then I found out it also went in my house. I stayed, altogether, eleven days [in the hospital]. I was unable to walk or get up. On the eleventh day they found out what was causing the problem [and] they operated on me. I got out of the hospital on a Friday, and on Sunday morning they told me I couldn't ride or drive for six days. But on the second day I told my mother that I had to go see what I was facing. She brought me up here and that's when I saw what was left of my store.
What did you think when you first saw it?
Well, it was devastating. After I saw the store and the campground, I
went to my house. I couldn't go to the farm because I just couldn't face
one more thing in the same day. I'd seen them both. It's not the worst
thing I ever went through. I lost a daughter eight years ago to cancer.
There's nothing that can devastate you as much as
Do you understand that process? Can you explain it to us, and how they determine who is eligible for FEMA and SBA, and so forth?
Well, I wish I could explain it. I don't understand it. I watched TV while I was in the hospital [and heard about FEMA]. When I got out of the hospital and I went to them, they said, "Oh, we're going to help you out."
You went to them in Burgaw?
Um-hum. When I finally got out of the hospital [and got to the point] where I could walk, I went in and filled out all the paperwork. I got a letter from them saying that I didn't qualify for anything.
Because you are—?
It really didn't say. It said, "At this time you don't qualify for anything." Since I was turned down by FEMA for any assistance, I went to my bank. My bank told me that whatever it took to get me back in business, they would help. Then SBA showed up. SBA said, "We're going to put you back to where you were before the hurricane."
That was when? What month?
That was in October—the end of October.
And this [SBA] person came out of Raleigh? Out of Washington?
I guess he came out of Atlanta. That or Washington. But the process is—. I still ain't got any money and it's been four months since my place closed down. I think we're getting close to that. As long as you got enough collateral, then they loan you the money. They don't give you any money. They loan it. You pay it back at a lower interest rate.
Can you tell how much you want to borrow and how much collateral they require? That seemed a little bit high when you were telling us before. More than a little bit.
I don't understand how they figured it. They tell me that I qualify for three-hundred and sixty-eight thousand dollars in loans on my store and restaurant. The campground did not qualify for anything because it has not been in existence since May, actually. I didn't have a track record back there, even though I owned the campground before and I turned it over to a new partnership.
It's been in business thirty-three—.
Well, eighteen years in this location. But that it didn't qualify for any assistance—loans or anything else. My house qualified for a hundred and thirty-eight thousand dollars in loans. I had flood insurance on it. The flood insurance wasn't as high as their estimates were to fix it. The man that built it originally says he can put it back the way it was for a lot less than they estimated. They just started working on it. I also had a farm. It went under water and it didn't qualify for anything.
Say what you raised on the farm.
Well, it's a small game preserve with deer, wild turkey, ducks, squirrels, rabbits.
Are you actually responsible for putting some of those animals out there, or do you just make it attractive for them?
I make it attractive for them. I was probably spending six or seven thousand dollars a year feeding wild game and taking very little. I've been a sportsman all my life and I figured—.
And you have two sons who are [sportsmen] as well, right?
Yeah. I always felt like if God looked out for you and you could afford to do it, that you needed to give something back. That's one of the places that I give back. They don't go hungry at the farm. We plant corn, we plant oats, soy beans. We plant rye and peas. I bought five loads of sweet potatoes last year. I probably bought four or five hundred bags of corn and put it out for them.
You drive your truck out there and just leave these things around the fields?
I put seven fields in on this property and I plant it every year. I built a duck impoundment that's about five acres when it is flooded with water. I put a corn field right in the middle of it. There was one road in, and I have a little more than four-and-a half miles of roads and trails that I've cut and maintained. It's a right unique place.
And people pay to go in there hunt?
No.
That's separate. You don't have that as a business.
No, it's not a business. It's something I did for my children, because we're losing all the land to development. I thought this was a way my kids would learn to respect wildlife and the outdoors. This is what I try to teach them.
How do you get there from here? Do you go on the river?
Well, you can. It's twelve miles by water, but you can't go up and down the creek right now, because there's too many trees across it. The county had just finished cleaning them up about a year ago. Now, all of a sudden, this last storm, or three storms this year, blocked it up again. By land it's only four miles up the road.
So, you've mentioned three storms. How many inches of water does that total?
Right here in our neighborhood, with the three storms, [the water] amounted to forty-one inches. Some places got a little less and some places got a little more. One storm dropped twenty-one inches of rain on us—Floyd—which is kind of a lot of water to dispose of. I think a lot of it's got to do with—. We're doing so much development now. We're cutting so much timber, that there's nothing to soak up the water. The worst part is hurricane season usually hits us when the sap quits rising. Consequently, all these trees are not drinking the water that they drink during the rest of the year. But I don't think if you look anywhere in this nation they've gotten that much rain in that period of time.
Right. Tell me more about that process of how they opened the dams on the main Cape Fear River and so on. You understand that better than anybody I've talked with.
Well, you have [two] locking dams—Riegelwood, and the other one's up in Elizabethtown.
Riegelwood, what county is that in?
That's in Brunswick.
Okay.
I think it's Brunswick. It might be Sampson County.
Okay.
They didn't have a choice but to open the dams. They tried holding it back as long as possible. It was either open the gates, or the gates blow out—which would have been devastating [and would have]caused more flooding in their area than they already had.
So they opened the gates gradually, or just—?
Well, I'm sure that they tried doing it in a reasonable intervals, you know, to let this water off. What happened was, the Cape Fear River filled up.
It backed all the way up from Wilmington back, right?
Well, the Cape Fear River was at forty-foot or something, flood stage. When they let the water out it came down to Wilmington.
So, it hits the ocean, right?
No, what it does [is] it comes down and hits Wilmington.
Okay.
Then the Northeast Cape Fear in Wilmington runs together, and Black River, all down in Wilmington.
Okay.
When the water came down it didn't have anywhere to go. It was such a magnitude of water coming from everywhere that the water started backing up. The reason that we know it was backing up is because up the road from us the water was a lot lower than it was here, and there was no reason for it to be lower. That's where the water started at. The water shouldn't have built up that high. We should have got less. Instead, we got more. It had to be a backup effect that caused the extent of the flooding that we had, but nobody I know of blames them for opening the dams. They didn't have a choice. It would have been nice if we could have foreseen it and they could have let the water out before it ever got that bad, but I'm sure they were doing the best they could. We just had to pay the price this time.
How many people in Pender County have been affected by the flood?
One of the reports that I saw at the county office was thirteen hundred homes, not counting businesses.
Can you name some of the communities where it was worst?
Well, Maple Hill, White Stocking, Stag Park, Burgaw, Currie. Some places
were a lot worse. We had a lot of flooding up near the Penderlea area,
especially Wallace. Wallace is in Duplin County. They had extensive
Rockfish Creek running into the Northeast backed up over the highways
and devastated the people in that area. Probably our worst area was
Holly Shelter Creek, White Stocking, Grooms Bridge Road, on this side of
the county. Stag Park. Burgaw, they're not in a flood zone and they
didn't realize how bad it was for them—or how vulnerable it
was. They were where this water backed up. We also had three industries
on I-40. It completely closed down I-40
What are those businesses?
Chloride, Wheeland, and Leslie Lock.
Okay. Let's talk a minute, since you're a county commissioner, about what the county's role is in the recovery effort or in the rescue effort. How did you see the county taking action? You were in the hospital part of that time, but what's the responsibility of each branch of government, the federal government, and so on? How is that divided up and who knows whose responsibility it is to save people's live and then whose it is to help people rebuild and that sort of thing?
Well, the saving of lives comes up in emergency management. We did have to come in with helicopters and pick up people.
Pender County has helicopters?
No. We had to bring in rescue helicopters.
From?
Which is military, and there were some private ones, too, but not from Pender County. Camp Lejeune, Fort Bragg brought in amphibious vehicles to help move people out and to gather up dead animals from farms and all. The county was basically more of the focal point where they did the assessment where the water was rising, where they needed more assistance, helping with food banks. And then the Red Cross came in.
You have a chapter in Pender County?
No, but we're in a district area. They came and gave out things and tried helping as many people—. A lot of assistance went through social services and the governor and all sent in supplies and stuff out here.
But some of that just didn't work as smoothly—. I mean, part of this history is about the recovery effort, and if it just didn't work well, if it didn't get to the right people in every case, then I think history deserves to know that. Often in our media coverage and the announcements we get from Governor Hunt's office, it seems as though everyone is getting equal shares of all this, and counties are getting it, you know. Where does it go? It goes directly from the governor's office to social services?
Well, like I say, I was in the hospital during the crucial time, but my understanding was that just about all of the assistance came down from Raleigh, from the state.
From that governor's emergency fund?
Right. [It] came through social services. I think a lot of people were left out of the loop because flood victims were displaced. They lost their homes. They didn't have anywhere to stay.
And they were gone to other counties?
Yeah. They had to find shelter somewhere else. We tried to get the mobile units in here as fast as possible. It seems like a lot of people that needed them didn't get them. A lot of people still haven't got any help. I think there is a better way to do it. They need to assess the damage in other ways.
Can you give recommendations for how that could work?
I think a lot of people that got assistance weren't hurt and didn't deserve it, but they took it anyway because it was free. It really put a bad taste in a lot of other people's mouth. Here I am, I lost everything I had, and I'm not getting any assistance, or any answers, and people that weren't even affected by the flood—I mean they were affected by the hurricane, but they didn't lose their homes and didn't have water in them, or their businesses, or anything else— were standing in the lines getting a lot of this stuff that should have went to people.
Food? Money?
Everything. I think that when all is said and done and they start looking back at it, some of these people are going to be sorry they did what they did. I hope they'll feel responsible for taking things that they shouldn't of took—that they didn't deserve. There's a lot of people in Pender County that got hurt a lot—lost everything. A lot of people didn't lose anything benefited from it. A better way is to assess the damage of who got hurt, and keep a record of who got the services. I just don't feel like a lot of the that people deserved it got it.
As county commissioner, is there any way that you can see the county doing a better job?
I think the county did an excellent job. The breakdown came when the stuff was sitting in here. It was sent to be distributed, maybe not in the fairest way. I think that the ball got dropped between the state and the federal government. I don't think the county dropped the ball. We did everything financially that we could do. There's only so much money in a county. You do not have the resources that the state and federal government has.
About how much money can a rural county like this put together to help people? And how did you use that money?
Well, a lot of the money which the county puts up initially is reimbursable through FEMA or through different agencies that help in these disasters. But the county, and the state—. One of the things that the state did do this time was that they took over the debris removal. Right now the problem that I see is they're going to quit picking up debris. Well, a lot of the neighbors here still haven't got any money, so consequently, they haven't been able to do any work.
In other words, removing debris costs money?
Right. We front a lot of it and then hope that we get back part of it. We set up areas to haul debris through waste management or waste industry. We use the resources that we do, but they have to be paid.
And that includes the county landfill?
Well, we don't have a landfill any more. They closed ours down.
Where do you take all this?
We have some staging areas that it's taken to initially, and then we have to have a contract to haul it to a landfill by somebody that's licensed and can take the kind of material that we have.
Is that in a close-by county, or do you have to go out and—?
I think it's over in Sampson County, the closest one. Hauling costs is
not cheap. You're talking about a lot of debris when you're talking
about thirteen hundred homes and then businesses that have to be gutted
or tore down. One of the biggest things that we lost was a lot of
trailers, which were people's homes. Like you say, even when
In order to borrow money, you had to have had flood insurance?
No, you didn't have to have flood insurance. You have to put flood insurance on it if you borrow the money.
Okay. You have to buy the insurance in order to get the loan.
Right.
From SBA, a least. From the bank, too, probably.
Yeah. It makes no difference. The rates are better, but the parameters of what the loan are for cost you a lot more through SBA then it does through the bank.
That's the first I've heard that. It costs more to borrow from SBA?
Well, it does because of all the loopholes. By the time you hire a lawyer to do title searches, deed of trust, and then you get flood insurance, that's a continuing expense, through the life of the loan.
You figured it up? How much is that money going to cost?
Well, just on this store loan, if I ran it for thirty years and made the payments like they set up, it's going to cost me about a hundred and eighty thousand dollars, extra, just in insurance premiums, above what I'm already paying.
Just to borrow three hundred and thirty some thousand. So you're spending more than half to borrow the money.
Right.
If you didn't have this money set aside, some sort of nest egg, there would be no way you could rebuild.
Well, to start with, to qualify for loans you have to have the insurance in place. Most people aren't sitting around with a nice nest egg, or they've got it tied up in a retirement program, or something, that when you take it out, you have to pay taxes on it. That leaves you without a whole lot of money, but you have to do these things to qualify for your loans. I had to prove that I had insurance on everything that was being used for collateral. Consequently, if I hadn't had the money to buy the extra insurance that they require, I couldn't have borrowed the money. Then, I have to continue paying that every year as long as you have borrowed money. And the difference—. My house and my farm, there was no question about those. My store—. The problem is, on commercial property, it's not—. I don't pay twenty-two cent on a hundred, like a do for a house. I pay a dollar and seventy-eight, I think it is, a hundred on the store. Well, that mounts up to a lot of insurance. The difference is my house is worth two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, or two hundred and twenty-five thousand. The store is worth two hundred and twenty-five thousand.
The store slash restaurant.
Yeah. So, my insurance on my house is going to cost me, three hundred and eighty dollars. The insurance on my restaurant is going to cost three thousand three hundred and twenty six dollars a year.
So how are you doing on time?
Oh, I'm fine.
Still okay. This tape is probably going to run out, and we'll turn it over. But, these fellows are moving this mobile home. Is that something that was on your property?
No, that's a new one. They must be taking it to somebody.
Okay. Looks like they're going through debris. Well, I'm thinking of different levels. We've talked some about the county. We talked just slightly about Governor Hunt's sending money to social services. What do you think about all these millions of dollars? There's a lot of controversy right now in Raleigh between legislators, say, from the mountains—particularly Republicans who say, "We don't want to pay for this." Then there's Governor Hunt's side that says, "Well, we don't want to raise taxes to come up with money. We're going to take it from the other programs." His statement in yesterday's news was, "If you have a leak in the kitchen you have to stop building your deck on the front of your house to go and fix the leak." He's saying the leak is like the flood, and the deck on the front of the house is like all these other social programs, Smart Start, and some of those. Where do you stand on those kinds of issues? What should the state do?
I don't know how much the state can do. They work on basically seven
percent—that is what our tax rate is. I think there's a lot of
programs, because I'm a [Unclear.] [Background noise of car driving by.] [Unclear]
Explain what you mean by that.
Well, you pay unemployment taxes on a sliding scale of what your rate is, or how dangerous it, whether it's a tree man, a line man or a cook, right on down to if you've got clerical work going.
One is more likely to cause disability than the others.
Right.
Okay.
So you try and get your rate down as low as you can by not having accidents, by working safe—by teaching your employees to work safe. The state came along after the hurricane and said, "Okay. We're going to let your employees draw unemployment, but we're not going to let them draw against you. That will keep your rate from going up." Every person that draws makes your rate go up. I have a very good safety record here. I've had two accidents in ten years, and none of them were real bad.
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
What the state did was say, "Okay, you estimate when you're going to be back in business." My estimation was the fifteenth of January. That was under the assumption that my SBA loan, and all, would come through where I could do more work. Well, this is on the fifteenth or fourteenth?
Today?
Yeah.
Well, I have the sixteenth on my watch.
I think it is the fifteenth.
Oh, it is? Well, my watch was wrong. Well, okay.
Well, it is the fifteenth of December, and I'm about thirty per cent through my building. I'm at the point now where I've just about depleted what I had saved up, and now I'm waiting on the federal government.
That makes it exactly three months, really. September, October, November, December. Okay.
Until the money starts coming in, which you have to jump through all the hoops and send in receipts, and all, of what you're doing—. And most businesses or homeowners, even homeowners, aren't as lucky as I was. I had saved some money to pay off some debt. I've used that money to get started. I'm probably not going to hit my target date of January the fifteenth, but hopefully I'll make it back, say February the first. But come January the fifteenth, my employees have to start looking for a job. If they don't find one, then it starts going against my unemployment.
So for four months, exactly, they would not put it against yours.
Right.
Okay. But then you think for two weeks you're going to have to start paying—.
Well, if, if—I'm still waiting on my SBA loan. I've been approved. I've done all of the things they told me I had to do, but the check's not in the mail yet.
And what all did you have to do? You had to get insurance, we went through that.
Insurance, you had to get title searches, you had deed of trust. You had to have an opinion on your property.
Um-hum. Appraisal, right?
Appraisal.
And all that you pay for?
Oh yes.
Okay.
And I was lucky because the lawyer that I used was the one that I used when I bought the things that I had. So consequently, none of it had changed over the years as I made payments. I just paid it down. But a lot of people aren't as lucky as I was. And a lot of people weren't as lucky as I was by having my ( ). I was a lot further along that most businesses or homeowners. And I'm just hoping and praying that I make it at least by February the first. Because I need these people back to work, and I don't need my employment rate to go up to where I have to pay more. I'm already paying enough. I don't need to be paying more.
Now, these twenty-three are just for the store and the restaurant, or are they also for your camp?
That's just the store and the restaurant.
Total, how many people do you employ in the season when you're open with the cabins?
Well, we just opened it up, my partner and I, and we have one contract ( ) that comes in and cleans cabins, a cleaning service. And the rest we do ourselves.
[Aside to someone who enters room.]
Hello.
What do you say?
Do you want me to ( )?
Six or seven cases of ( ), back there in my office. We had to throw them away, salt, pepper. Everything that was plastic had to be thrown away. Now we find out that there wasn't any pollution hardly in this water. Well, it's too late now. Everything's been thrown away. Tee-shirts. I probably had two hundred and twenty-five tee-shirts hanging on racks back there, rods and reels, coolers. I mean just, it's unbelievable all of the stuff that was in here. And stuff on the walls. I mean, there were three Terry Revlin prints hanging on the wall that I bought at either Ducks Unlimited or either the Wild Turkey Federation, that anywhere from three hundred to six hundred dollars. All of them are gone now. Wildlife that was hanging in here. My bear is going to survive. My old wooden Indian is going to survive, and those bass out there are going to survive. But, I mean, probably half the stuff that was in here people gave me. They were in Saudi Arabia and brought me a can back with the letters of Saudi Arabia, or whatever.
( ).
Yeah, yeah. Just all kind of stuff in here that was—and that
you can't replace. Some paintings and stuff that local people did. There
were two wall over in there that were covered with nothing but hunting
and fishing pictures from, it started eighteen years ago, that were
people that were five and six years old and fishing with their
Why do they like coming?
Well, just the way it looked and the food. Plus, I've got some of the best employees you'd ever want to have working for you. Not all of them are that way, but a—I have five that went from nine years to fourteen years with me. You know, when people stay with you that long you must be doing something right.
You get the schematic?
Shucks, no.
Ain't got it yet?
Nope. It didn't come in the mail because I checked it last night. I don't know why it didn't come. ( ). They was going to bring that refrigerator and that beer cooler, Monday, and bring the schematics for the coolers. And I got the new door hinges and all. Do you know how much a set of hinges for that walk-in cooler is? Two hundred and fifty collars for two hinges. A hundred and twenty-five dollars a hinge.
That's probably a good hinge, ain't it? [Laughter]
Now you ( ) fixing?
They were a God-send, the volunteers that came here. They gutted this place in four days.
Where were they from?
Well, I say volunteers, but not volunteers. It was that president, our wonderful president, had a deal where they pay them seven dollars an hour.
Oh, Ameri-Corps.
Right. And, but I'll tell you what, they're workers. They came in here and gutted this whole place. The only problem was, just like the door hinges, when the ripped it out, instead of saving them they threw them away. I mean, they didn't save anything. They threw everything away that was in here.
Now they were saying to some people in some communities, "Throw everything away because it is contaminated." You were saying something about that. Is that what they were telling you?
Oh yeah. They told us if you had any clothing, anything that got wet with this water, throw it away. You can't wash it.
Why? I mean, why did they tell you that?
Because of the pollution in it.
Pollution from—?
Well, the first reports were is that all these hog farms, and turkey farms, and all the dead animals, and all the e-coli, all this stuff.
Someone said it was dead hogs.
But, I went to the Health Department and I was talking to the head, the
health director. And he told me that out of three thousand that they
only had like, twenty-six that had e-coli in the water. And all you had
to do was Clorox it, and they all cleared up. I think they got three
left in Pender county that hasn't cleared up. You know, so, where's
Yeah. We've heard that time and time again.
Well, and a lot of people got more than they deserved. And a lot of people that deserved more got nothing.
Um-hum.
It's like Mr. King over there, wanting to loan him money at seventy-four years old with a bad heart. You know, that's not helping anybody. I mean how many years did he pay taxes, and look out for his country? And there's nobody here to help him. He's never used social services. He's never used the Health Department. He worked and paid his way through. Now that he's at an age that he can't do it again, they want to loan him money? Huh. It's just not right. I don't know what the answer is. The one thing that happens with all these disasters is the government keeps growing. You know, that's the one thing I see is that every time you turn around we have a disaster, they hire another five thousand people. And once they put them on the payroll, they don't ever get off. So government just keeps growing. The one thing they did here in Pender County, and I don't know a lot about it. You can talk to our county manager about it. But they did come up, the Feds, with some of the people that are out of work, and I have two of my employees that are doing it. They hire through the Federal government to do assessments. And go out and take pictures of every flood house. Put it all on maps and stuff like that.
These are Federal employees or contractors? How does that work?
This is people like the people that work for me.
Okay.
That they're going to be out of work for X amount of time. Well, they, they said, okay, the county can hire these because we need the maps updated, we need to know where every house is. So, we'll let you pay them X amount of money, and they'll come to work, and they can work for six months. And then the job ends. Which is a good deal. It's, at least a few of my employees took advantage of it. And the day that I open back up, then their job ends and they come back with me. Or it can run until June. Well, they're not going to be able, mine won't work through June because I'm going to get opened back up one way or another. But, so it gives them—they feel better about themselves instead of laying around the house drawing unemployment. Now I have some that are just as happy as they can be, going down there picking up that check once a week for doing nothing. But then I've got some that just, they're workers and they're not going to sit around and take and do nothing.
So that's an example of people getting on the Federal payroll and then getting back off. But then there's some, you're saying, that get on and never get off.
Oh, of course.
Are they FEMA people, or what's the story?
Well, I'm sure it's FEMA, SBA, all of it. It seems like the few times I went to an SBA office and FEMA, they always had new trainees.
In Burgaw?
Um-hum.
Okay. I want you to describe that office in a bit, but go ahead and say what you're going to say.
Well, every time you go in there they got new trainees working. And just from listening to conversations with them, you know, I said, "How long have you worked here?" "Well, I'm training." "Well, how long have you worked here?" "Well, oh, I've been traveling around doing disasters for nine years. I did it just for one of them and now I've ended up, I've worked, you know, now I've been here nine years, going all over the country." Well, that's what happens. They hire them. They, you know, it keeps growing. The government keeps growing. You know, Pender County is the same way. There's state and federal mandates, programs, that we have to do. And then they'll fund them for about three years, and all of a sudden the funding goes away, but we have to keep the programs. So then we have to pick up the dip. And social services is the fastest one there is in the state. I mean, all the social services are growing. Because they keep coming up with these programs. Instead of cutting out programs that don't work, they just let them stay there. Just mold around it. And then they have these new programs, and they say, "Okay. We're going to fund this. We're going to fund it eighty thousand dollars a year. It's going to take care of this, two staff members, a part-time one, and this and that and the other." And then at three years, all of a sudden the come and say, "All right. We're not going to fund it any more, but you've got to keep it." So what do you do? You have to raise taxes. Because we hadn't raised taxes in Pender County in five years. The reason we hadn't raised taxes is because the, the, we were in bankruptcy. We had less than fifty-thousand dollars in fund balance six years ago.
The county was bankrupt.
Yeah. The state wrote us a letter and said, "You've thirty days to come up with a business plan or the state is going to take over Pender County. It is the worse run county in North Carolina." This was six years ago. For the last three years we've won the most distinguished award in Pender, in North Carolina as the best innovative, best run county there is. That's what happens when you get a good county manager and some good commissioners.
Is that what you all did, you re-elected, I mean, elected some new people and rehired a manager?
Oh, and not because they were Republicans, but we went from a board of five Democrats that took, they spent, they spent more money in a month than the county commissioners we have now spent in a year, traveling.
Traveling.
They went all over the United States. Every conference they came down and stayed in a three hundred dollar a night rooms. County manager that was here spent money just like there was no tomorrow. And then, got to send this back. We hired a good county manager. They elected three Republicans. Turned around and elected two more. We ended up with, five years ago, we ended up with more than four Republicans and one Democrat.
And when were you elected?
Five years ago.
Okay. That's more than I thought. Okay.
But, we said, "All right. No more growing. We're going to get
rid of all the fat. You're going to start doing your jobs, or you're not
going to work here." And we
Um. That represents a huge change for local government, doesn't it? Changing over to the Republican party majority is that, in this part of the state—.
Oh, that was a—listen, the first Republican was elected seven years ago.
First Republican ever?
Ever in the history of Pender County.
Okay.
And not, we had some good Democrat government, too. Problem is we didn't have enough, good ones. We had too many that were too easily lead and ( ).
So they lead them to bankruptcy, to near bankruptcy.
Well, we had fifty thousand dollars in fund balance, which you're supposed to keep between eighteen and twenty percent of what it takes to operate. Which means that you need about two and one-half million dollars. And we had fifty thousand dollars.
That sounds like my billfold.
Yeah. Sounds like mine, too. [Laughter]
I'll see you tomorrow, Steve.
All right.
Okay, let's go back to the FEMA office now. You went in there, you saw these trainees and people. Where did they set up the office, and how many people where there, and how long did they stay?
Well, they're still here.
Okay.
In fact, I think they're getting ready to extend it another month.
That's right. January fifteenth.
They were in the corner building, in the Westwood Building when I went to see them.
Is that in downtown Burgaw?
Um-hum. Right across from the court house.
Okay.
And you couldn't ask for nicer people to talk with. The, the ones that wrote all the letters that said you don't qualify for anything are not the people that were here that you dealt with. They were the bureaucrats sitting in Washington, or in Atlanta, or somewhere else.
So these people come down here and they sit in that office, or do they go out around and look at your homes, or what do they—.
Well, these people sit in the office. And you go in and you fill out all these forms and papers and stuff. And then they tell you whether you qualify for FEMA or whether you qualify or you don't. You get a letter on it. And—.
They just process the papers and send them to Washington or Atlanta.
Right. So the ones that you deal with here are not the ones that give you
the final okay. I just did my final on the store loan last week, and a
lawyer from the SBA came for the closing. And I was lucky, because the
law firm that I've always used had all the records and everything of
what I'd bought, and how much I owed, and all this. So it
You mean as in lawyers and so forth?
Yeah. I mean, how do you do all these things, buy insurance and stuff, if you don't have any money? You know, there's got to be a better system as far as at least coming up with a reasonable amount of money that you can get to start with to get your life started back. And then work into your long-term goals or whatever. But it's, I mean, there is no program that I knew of that you walk in, except a certain group of people—somebody was told that they were giving away seven thousand dollars. I have a guy—.
Per family, is that what you mean?
Yeah.
Okay.
And, I was like, "Seven thousand dollars. Now how did you
qualify for that?" And these were either farmers or, I mean,
all of them were just like I was. Well, why do they qualify and I don't?
I'm still out of my house, you know, so why do I not