Chamber of Commerce Letter to Wake School Board, County Commissioners

January 11, 2007

Dear (Recipient),

After months of partnership and outstanding leadership by the Board of Commissioners and School Board, we were surprised and disappointed at the recent dialogue on funding the proposal passed last November by the voters of Wake County. The business community advocated for the bonds based on the good work of your boards (over many months) in determining the best balance of operational and political alternatives including cost, renovations, new construction, and mandatory year rounds. We enthusiastically supported your courageous efforts and publicly articulated the rationale for the tough decisions that together you had to make recognizing that any solution was going to be dogged by controversy.

Members of our leadership engaged in public meetings and media events in full support of your decisions because and we still believe that continued investment in our public school system is critical to our community’s success. Suddenly, after the plan has been adopted (following months of controversy and debate), we find that this successful partnership is in jeopardy. We fully recognize that there are points of ongoing contention between the boards that makes it often very difficult to find common ground. Nonetheless, after having spent months addressing a series of very tough issues, having them reopened without so much as a request for feedback from your allies is very disappointing and inconsistent with the high standards of leadership your boards have demonstrated in the past.

Your recent conflict challenges our resolve and will needlessly complicate future funding discussions. We encourage you to quickly resolve any inter-governmental conflict that undermines the credibility of your collective good work over the past year. You arrived here together and you should go forward together as we have many more challenges to come in the years ahead.

Respectfully,



Ronald G. Wainwright Jr.
Chairman of the Board


Frank B. Holding Jr., Chair-Elect
Lee Youngblood, Immediate Past Chair
Fred N. Day IV, Past Chair
Billie Redmond, Past Chair
William K. Atkinson II, Ph.D., Treasurer
Joseph “Bo” Dempster Jr, General Counsel
Phil Zachary, Vice-Chair Communications
Jeff Stocks, Vice-Chair Economic Development
Richard L. McNeel, Vice-Chair Education
Lynne Garrison, Vice-Chair Government Affairs
Sepideh Asefnia, Vice-Chair Membership Services
Erika A. Mangrum, Vice-Chair Small Business
J. Frank Tart, Vice-Chair Membership Development
Philip Freelon, At Large
Rick Guirlinger, At Large
Willy Stewart, PE, At Large




cc: Wake County Board of Commissioners
      Wake County Board of Education