4/29/05

Officials Dub Trip to Boston Networking Success

Networking, marketing Holly Springs to Wake County movers and shakers, and learning about how other municipalities face challenges were the top objectives attained by three Holly Springs officials during a recent trip to Boston. The three-day trip, part of an annual Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce outing to a different municipality each year, grouped Holly Springs Mayor Dick Sears and Councilmen Ernie Pearson and Chet VanFossen together with approximately 100 Wake County government and private-sector leaders last week.

All three officials emphasized the marketing and networking aspects of the trip.

“It was really invaluable to be close to the people the town is doing business with, such as county leadership and representatives from other towns,” Pearson said. “You can hardly measure the value of being with those types of people in that type of setting.”

Pearson said that he would present ideas he gained from the trip at the next council meeting.

“Frankly, I thought it was an extraordinarily good trip and worthwhile,” he said.

VanFossen agreed.

“The trip gives the local officials a chance to get together in a social environment to discuss problems that face us all,” he said. “The ability to go one-on-one with county officials, school board officials and private enterprise is invaluable.”

Sears concurred.

“Perhaps the most important result of this trip is the continued marketing of Holly Springs,” he said. “We networked extensively.

“We talked extensively to anyone who would listen about the proposed landfill issue and why it is such a ‘dumb idea' for not only our town but also for the county,” Sears added. “I felt progress has been and is being made but it still is an unresolved issue until some time this summer.”

Trip attendees included commissioners from Wake County and county municipalities, Wake County Public School System Superintendent Bill McNeal, the Raleigh mayor and town manager, and others. Private sector attendees include representatives from the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, Wake hospital officials, Progress Energy administrators and others.

The Wake County group visited different locations in Boston and heard presentations from the Boston chief of staff, MIT, Harvard, Northeastern University, Boston Public Schools, the Roxbury Center for the Arts and Harvard Medical School.

“Each day was packed with meetings from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.,” VanFossen said. “Education, affordable housing and traffic were on the forefront of the Thursday and Friday meetings.”

In addition, Pearson and VanFossen visited several closed landfills in and near Boston with other government and private-sector officials. Though many of the closed landfill sites had been reclaimed as open space and park land – and one even was being used for playing fields for a local school – when asked by a fellow tour attendee, VanFossen said his opposition to Wake County locating a landfill in Holly Springs had not changed.

“Touring the closed Boston landfills was very interesting to us from Holly Springs due to the amount of closed landfills we have in our small town,” VanFossen said. “One of our officials asked what Boston was doing with their trash now. The answer was that they haul it out-of-state to a landfill in New Hampshire.”

VanFossen noted that shipping trash out-of-county is one of the options on the table for Wake officials to consider this summer.

“My mantra for the entire trip was, ‘Lets make the Durant Road landfill the last landfill in Wake County,'” he said.

Sears said regionalism – the principle that what happens in one community affects others in the same area – was among the top themes of the trip.

“The critical need to work together, to support each other, to ask for private business participation and community involvement was one of the most important messages given,” Sears said. “What happens in Raleigh or other towns does have an effect, either long or short term, on Holly Springs.”

The trip's cost per attendee was approximately $2,000. Holly Springs officials plan to give a more detailed overview of the trip at the next Town Council meeting, sharing what they learned and gained from the experience.

Town of Holly Springs - PO Box 8 - 128 South Main Street - Holly Springs, NC 27540 - (919) 552-6221 - Holly.Springs@hollyspringsnc.us