The year in review: A town manager's brief tenure in Kenly stood out

Here's a recap of stories that made news in Johnston County in 2022.

A brief tenure in Kenly

The events happened in quick succession.

In early June, Justine Jones began work as Kenly's town manager. She had worked in local government in Minnesota, Virginia and the Carolinas.

"I am honored that the council has entrusted me with the responsibility of being Kenly's next manager," she said in a statement released by the town. "Kenly's diversity and dynamic potential offer intriguing challenges and a promising future of growth and prosperity that I am excited to become a part of."

A few weeks later, Kenly Police Chief Josh Gibson said he and his full-time officers had submitted their resignations alongside Town Clerk Sharon Evans and Utility Clerk Christy Thomas.

Gibson said Jones had created a toxic workplace. "The new manager has created an environment (in which) I do not feel we can perform our duties and services to the community," he said.

The community was soon divided over Jones, with a special Town Council meeting drawing both supporters and detractors of the new town manager. Her supporters said the police chief, town clerk and other town employees had balked at the accountability that Jones had tried to bring Town Hall. Others believed Gibson when he said Jones had created a toxic workplace.

In late July, the Town Council asked its attorney to determine what prompted the mass resignations, which included all full-time employees of the police department.

The Town Council met behind closed doors on July 22 to talk about the resignations but took no action.

On Aug. 30, a divided Kenly Town Council voted 3-2 to fire Jones after just three months on the job.

At a rally three days later, Jones said a tumultuous tenure in Kenly wasn't what she was expecting. "When I was offered the position as town manager, I was really excited about the difference I could make with the town," she said. "I was up for the challenges that came with it. But I never expected, within weeks of the job, to find about half the staff walk out the door."

Jones noted that the town attorney's examination of the mass resignations found that she did nothing wrong, and because of that, Jones figured she would keep her job.

"We all know that didn't happen," she told the audience at the rally. "But it wasn't because of me. It was because of them, and the best excuse they could come up with was I wasn't a good fit."

Two months after her ouster from Kenly, Jones appeared to have landed on her feet. On Oct. 10, the Spring Lake Board of Aldermen hired Jones to become that town's manager on Oct. 24.

But three days later, State Treasurer Dale Folwell said he would not approve the money needed to hire Jones. (In 2021, the state's Local Government Commission assumed control of Spring Lake's finances because it feared the town was in danger of defaulting on its debts.)

"Our primary goal is to save Spring Lake from drowning and return the town to financial health and operational stability," Folwell said in a news release. "New and unsettling information has come to light about the past employment history of the individual who was offered the job. That information does not generate confidence that she is the right fit at this time to lead Spring Lake."

Folwell noted that Jones filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint when the county government in Richland County, South Carolina, fired her. When the EEOC dismissed her complaint, Jones sued the county.

Folwell said he feared Jones' hiring could lead to legal and financial liabilities for Spring Lake and damage town morale. "The town does not need a distraction from the important work they are doing to return the town to fiscal health," he said.

Food hall opens; retailers announced

Old North State Food Hall, Johnston County's first food hall, announced its roster of eateries. On the menu were chicken, burgers, pizza, curry, Cuban cuisine, mac and cheese, tacos, barbecue, coffee and ice cream.

The food hall opened on Aug. 26. By late fall, one of its vendors, taco eatery My Cielo Taqueria, had shuttered.

In December, AdVenture Development, the company behind the food hall, named the retailers that will be in the first phase of a 200,000-square-foot retail center in Eastfield, the mixed-use development near Interstate 95 in Selma.

Joining Hobby Lobby in phase one will be Old Navy, Ulta Beauty, Marshalls, Ross, Burlington and Five Below. In a news release, AdVenture said construction would start in the first quarter of 2023 and the stores would open the following year.

Cold case closes

Larry Joe Scott, 68, died while awaiting trial in the 1972 kidnapping, rape and murder of Bonnie Neighbors of Benson, whose death had been one of Johnston County's oldest cold cases.

Sheriff Steve Bizzell had reopened the investigation into Neighbors' death in 2007. And on April 29, 2019, using DNA from the crime scene and fingerprints from inside Neighbors' car, authorities arrested Scott in Bradenton, Florida.

"We were confident and ready for trial," District Attorney Susan Doyle said after Scott's death. "The evidence against Scott was conclusive and overwhelming."

Baseball in Clayton

The Clayton Comets brought baseball to Johnston County.

The team, which began play on May 30, competes in a wood-bat summer league for college players.

Its home field is East Clayton Community Park.

The team won its first-ever game, 8-4 over the Fuquay-Varina Twins.

Selma gets social

Selma created a downtown "social district," allowing open containers of alcohol on streets and sidewalks.

"It seems to be a trend that's growing across the state," Town Manager Brent Taylor told the council in April. "There are other municipalities that are doing it, and it just makes Selma more receptive socially."

The rules require bars and restaurants to put their carryout beverages in specially marked containers of no more than 16 ounces. And downtown shops don't have to allow alcoholic drinks if they did not want to.

The idea enjoyed support from downtown businesses, even those that do not set alcohol.

"I'm all for this," said Jeffery Hamilton, owner of Coffee on Raiford. "I think it's good for our community, and I think it's a way to get ahead. We're trying to grow our community, and I don't see anything wrong with it."

Kristina Miklush, the owner of The Alley bar, said downtown bars and restaurants should be able to serve festival-goers in Selma. "Any time you have bands or any festivities going on ... people want to walk around with their beer," she said.

Town Manager Brent Taylor said Selma would police the social district. "You certainly can control behavior," he said. "If people come out and they're belligerent or acting up, we've got means to take care of that."

Taylor said it would be easy to shutter the district if folks got out of hand. "So if we do have problems, all you gotta do is revoke it, and it's done," he said.

The social district made its debut at Rockin' on Raiford on Sept. 15, and by the one account that perhaps mattered most, it went well.

"We would like to thank the citizens and the band Switch for putting on a safe and great show for Rockin' on Raiford," the Selma Police Department said in a Facebook post.

Decals will stay

In July, residents of rural Johnston were a year away from being free of the hassle and cost of buying a county trash decal. But at the request of County Manager Rick Hester, commissioners in July gave the decals an indefinite reprieve.

Hester might simply have been providing cover for commissioners, who remain divided over the decals despite a vote to end them.

Some commissioners like decals because they mean that users of the county's solid-waste convenience center pay for their operation. Other commissioners dislike them, noting that many Johnstonians would rather dump their trash along a roadway than purchase the $100 decal needed to use the convenience centers.

Commissioners voted in 2020 to end the decal program. But in the two and a half years since, they have yet to devise a way to replace the money the decals generate.

Sewer capacity?

County Commissioners said they would likely ration sewage-treatment capacity until a new treatment plant comes online in a couple of years.

"We really have nothing to give away, in this board's opinion," Butch Lawter, chairman of the county Board of Commissioners, said in August.

Chandra Farmer, the county's utilities director, saw it differently. "The county does have sewer capacity," she told commissioners.

Lawter and Farmer's different perspectives left Commissioner Fred Smith frustrated. "There's a big disconnect between what I hear staff say and what I hear this board say," he said.

Here's why:

Much of the seemingly dwindling sewage-treatment capacity is on paper only, meaning developers have received allocations but not used them. The promised but unused capacity is about 2.6 million gallons daily. When gauging remaining capacity, Farmer looks at actual flow: an average of 6.7 million gallons daily in a plant capable of treating 9.5 million.

In her view, Johnston is nowhere close to out of capacity. Commissioners, on the other hand, see capacity as what's left when they add actual flow and promised allocations. In their view, the county's remaining treatment capacity is just 190,000 gallons daily.

Johnston can legally allocate capacity from the new sewage-treatment plant the county is building near its landfill, Farmers notes. But Commissioners want that plant to be online before they start allocating treatment capacity.

The commissioners' perspective will no doubt prevail because they're the decision-makers. And lately, they've shown a growing sense of urgency about the county's infrastructure.

"We need to be working on water and sewer availability," Dickie Braswell told his fellow commissioners in August. "We need to get serious about it."

COVID-19 recedes

COVID-19, which dominated headlines in 2020 and for much of 2021, largely faded from the news in 2022.

Early on last year, Johnstonians were rushing to get tested for the Omnicron variant of the virus. But while Omnicron was surging, deaths from COVID-19 were falling.

Still, the surge prompted school leaders to continue their mask mandate.

"I know that is not what everybody wants to hear," said school board member Lyn Andrews. "We are weary of it. We are tired of it. But I'm just not sure what else we can do to stop this number of children and staff members being out of school."

In mid-January, 1,651 students and 142 staff members were quarantined because of COVID-19.

But one month later, the school board made masks optional in Johnston classrooms. And in March, the board made them optional on buses. That decision came after the federal Centers for Disease Control said it would no longer require masks on school buses.

In a sign of the receding virus, a bridal expo in February drew a large crowd to The Farm at 95.