Welcome to the first standard edition of the Smithfield
Weekly Sun.
We plan to post each week's new content on Thursdays.
Our subscribers will be notified by e-mail as soon as a
new edition is posted. Anyone else may access this
digital newspaper anytime at smithfieldweeklysun.com.
If you want to sign up as a subscriber (free of charge),
there's a form to do that at the bottom of this page.
All real estate revalued for taxes
By now, you've received in the mail a notice from the
County of Johnston giving you an updated valuation of
your real estate for local property taxation. North
Carolina law requires counties to do this every eight
years, so this is our year for across-the-board
"revaluation."
Keep in mind that the new values do not tell you what
your actual property-tax bill will be for 2019. For
Smithfield residents, that will be determined by tax
rates set by the County Commissioners and the Town
Council when they adopt their annual budgets this
spring.
Property owners may appeal the new valuations according
to information printed on the back of your "Notice of
Assessed Valuation" form. You may get started by
visiting the Johnston County Tax Office's Valuation Appeals page online.
If you'd like to check out valuations assigned to your
neighbors' real estate, check out the county's "Map Click"
searchable database of properties.
Hospitals limiting visits as flu cases rise
Over the holiday weekend, emergency departments at
Johnston Health in Smithfield and Clayton saw an uptick
in the number of influenza and respiratory viruses among
their patients and throughout the community. As a
result, both hospitals are restricting children ages 11
and under from visiting until further notice. Meanwhile, have you gotten your
yearly flu shot yet?
A New Year's Day in the park . . .
With intermittent sunshine and temperatures rising into
the mid 70s, Tuesday the First of January was a good day
to get outside for some recreation. This scene shows
young families enjoying the swings at Smithfield's
Partnership for Children "inclusion park" --- a new
section of the Community Park off Booker Dairy Road next
to the Recreation and Aquatics Center. This unique
facility features playground equipment for handicapped
children, but it's open for play to everyone.
Johnston County Board of
Commissioners
10 a.m. & 6 p.m. Monday, January 7
Johnston County Courthouse, 207 E. Market Street,
Smithfield
Commissioners' Chairman Ted Godwin will present the
annual "State of the County" address during the morning
session.
Cleveland Township representatives will update the board
on a proposed parks and recreation tax district during
the evening session. View the agendas for both sessions
here.
Johnston County Board of
Education
2 p.m. Tuesday, January 8
Evander S. Simpson Building, 2320 U.S. 70 Business East,
Smithfield View the school board's agenda once
it's published online.
The board will receive a report from Mark Dorosin
of the Julius S. Chambers Center for Civil Rights on
Johnston County Schools' attendance districts and how
they are affecting racial and socioeconomic diversity
among students. The report was requested by Concerned
Citizens for Successful Schools, a task force made up of
local citizens focused on schools in the
Smithfield-Selma district. Here's a link to the full report.
Smithfield Town Council 7 p.m. Tuesday, January 8
Town Hall, 350 E. Market Street, Smithfield View the agenda with supporting
documents (large PDF - slow to load)
This month's agenda includes awarding of a contract for
a "Wayfinding Signage" project to guide visitors to
significant places in town.
PEOPLE IN THE NEWS
We'll do our best to keep you informed about newsworthy
honors and awards received by Smithfield citizens and
professional people. The headlines about particular
persons are followed by links to online stories about
them. The honors highlighted below were bestowed this
past fall. We're drawing attention to them now because
they were thinly publicized when first announced....
Carolyn
Ennis receives "Volunteer of the Year" award read more...
Leo
Daughtry honored by Wake Forest School of
Law read more...
Twyla Wells receives
Athena Award from Chamber of Commerce read more...
We
welcome award announcements from public agencies
and civic organizations. "News releases" should
be e-mailed to: editor@smithfieldweeklysun.com.
DEATHS & FUNERALS
Each week we'll post links to obituaries about persons
who have died during the past week. We will monitor the
websites of local funeral homes to compile our list, and
we welcome links provided by readers to obituaries of
persons with Smithfield connections who have died
outside our immediate area.
Wednesday, January 2
Apex Friendship
73
Smithfield-Selma
59 Spartans: 24 points by Anthony
Council, 16 by Sha'kerr
Howard
Team's record to date: 4-7
Next game:
Friday, January 4 (7:30 p.m.)
Harnett Central @ HOME
GIRLS VARSITY
BASKETBALL
Wednesday, January 2
Apex
Friendship
45
Smithfield-Selma
23 Spartans led by Khaliyah
Peacock, averaging 11.6 points per
game
Team's record to date: 4-7
Next game:
Friday, January 4 (6:00 p.m.)
Harnett Central @ HOME
THAT'S THE WAY IT WAS
Here's an early 1960s view of the Cities Service station
on Smithfield's busy "Truck Lane" (so named when built
after World War II as a U.S. 301 downtown bypass; today
it's the southern leg of Bright Leaf Boulevard). In the
background is the entrance to Smithfield's last cotton
gin, which closed in the 1970s and a portion of which
still stands, although in disrepair. All of these were
businesses owned and operated by the late J. Marvin
Johnson. The service station later served as the local
base of AmeriGas. It was recently demolished. (Photo
from the Reuben Johnson collection at the Johnston
County Heritage Center in Downtown Smithfield.
A PLACE FOR OPINIONS
Any American newspaper worth its salt has an "editorial
page" --- a place where its readers may voice their
opinions alongside the point of view of its editor. The
Smithfield Weekly Sun will continue that long-standing
tradition to provide a public forum for the printed
word. We will restrict the content of our forum to
concerns of local interest, and we will require
subscribers who wish to contribute their opinions to do
so over their names. In other words, we will only
publish signed (and verified) "letters to the editor."
We do request that your submissions be in digital form,
electronically transmitted to us via e-mail addressed to
wingate.lassiter@hometownheritage.com.
If you're not a registered subscriber and want to "get
in the game," simply sign up (free of charge) using the
form that appears at the bottom of this page.
A new year's editorial agenda
As we head into 2019, I've got a few issues of concern
on my mind that I plan to address on these pages in the
weeks ahead. Here are some of them:
MARKETING
SMITHFIELD . . . Out community has not done what it
takes in this dynamic and highly competitive
region to entice more folks, and businesses, to
make Smithfield their home. We've seen progress
here in parks and recreation, downtown
revitalization, public safety, competitively
priced electricity... but Smithfield's story has
not been shared with the rest of the world as it
ought to be shared. The recent hiring of a
marketing specialist by the Town of Smithfield
is a start toward correcting that shortcoming.
Let's see what else we can do to "put us on the
map" of economic development.
LOW-PERFORMING PUBLIC SCHOOLS . .
. Smithfield's schools --- elementary,
middle, and high --- continue to fall behind most of
those in the rest of Johnston County when it comes
to the state's academic measuring sticks. And that's
a drag on efforts to attract families to live here.
Granted, there's some recent momentum among school
leaders and concerned citizens to change that, but
it's an issue that merits our close attention to
make sure any reported progress is for real and will
continue.
COMMUTER RAIL linking Johnston County
with the Triangle . . . I attended a recent "summit" hosted by the
Smithfield-Selma Chamber of Commerce to jump-start a
local discussion about the feasibility of getting that
done. While the business community and citizens at large
can push for it, commuter rail is unlikely for us until
our County Commissioners step up to the plate with
financial commitments to make it happen.
GREENWAY TRAIL connecting Smithfield and Clayton . . .
This past year the County Commissioners received a
report from Friends of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail about
efforts to secure greenway easements from local property
owners along the Neuse River between Smithfield and the
end of a paved greenway trail that extends from the
Falls Lake Dam north of Raleigh to Sam's Branch at
Clayton. The big question before us is who will build
and maintain the new connection? The County of Johnston?
With assistance from the municipal governments of
Smithfield and Clayton?
That's an incomplete
list of goals for our community, from my point of
view. But for now, it's a start....
For more information about our community,
visit our "online newspaper parent" via the link shown
above. This website is a handy "portal" to important
sources of current information about Smithfield and
Johnston County.
