SHEILA DAVIES takes the oath of office as Kill Devil Hills’ newly-elected mayor. She defeated incumbent Ray Sturza in November’s election after a campaign sparked by the previous board’s approval of plans for the new Lowe’s building in front of First Flight landing. She is shown with her husband and daughter.

BRANDY RHEUBOTTOM, Baum Center director, takes the oath of office as a new member of the Kill Devil Hills Board of Commissioners. She is shown here with her husband and daughter and (right) Mary Quidley, town clerk who administered the oath.

MIKE HOGAN takes the oath of office as a new-elected member of the Kill Devil Hills Board of Commissioners. He is shown with his wife and daughter (left) and Mary Quidley, town clerk who administered the oath. He was formerly the chairman of the town’s planning board.

New board make-up may mean more split votes

Three new board members were sworn in at the Kill Devil Hills town meeting Monday. New members now make up a majority of the five-member board.

Sheila Davis is the new mayor, and Mike Hogan and Brandi Rheubottom are the new commissioners, taking the place of Bob Peele, who did not run, and Jeff Finch who was defeated in November. Davies  defeated incumbent Ray Sturza who served as commissioner before becoming mayor. Commissioners Bob Woodard and Paul Buske are the only two members of the previous board still serving. This skews the make-up of the board from primarily business/development-oriented to private resident-oriented.

The meeting was divided into two parts, with the previous board sitting  to deal with old business that they had dealt with before, and the new board taking their seats after this to deal with new business.

The differences in the two boards were quickly apparent with two split votes coming almost immediately, one nullifying a vote taken earlier in the meeting as the old board voted to contract with a Richmond firm, Springfield Inc. to do a staffing study for $13,500. This company was not the lowest bidder but was the one that the old board deemed best able to fulfill the terms the board had advertised. This was an all-inclusive proposal. Another firm’s proposal would have included extra payments for work outside the scope of what was advertised by the board. The vote inf favor was a unanimous vote by the previous board, as most of their votes have been.

After the new board was seated, Mayor Davies said the new members had not had enough time to study the staffing prposals and made a motion to reopen the staff study and to redirect staff not to take action on the earlier motion and to table it to the Jan. 25 meeting. This passed 4-1 with Woodard in opposition.

During old business, the previous board took an item off the consent agenda for discussion. It was the repairs to the Hayman pier that was damaged during Hurricane Irene. Buske and Woodard thought the repairs were too expensive, especially the engineering study which was proposed to be contracted at $12,600, with the total reparis costing about $65,000. Buske said he had recently repaired several similar piers, and the costs were much less. Woodard also questioned the costs. Since the commissioners had been contacted by phone earlier and approved the contract, and their questions had not come up until later, the staff had already contracted with the engineering firm to do the work. The staff had done this because of a FEMA deadline that would have meant that had they waited, the board would have no chance to have the repairs paid for by this agency.The vote was considered to be a detail that would be handled routinely.

A planning staffer explained why the costs were so high, saying that the engineering must be done and signed off on since it is a public pier. The contract also includes rip-rapping the shore and possibly bulkheading the area. Since the contract had already been signed, the board voted in favor of it.

The new board voted in favor, unanimously, to approved the amended conditional use site plan for Nature’s Walk, a proposed 19,200-square-foot residential multi-family 20 unit development in the light industrial zone. The developer wanted to change some units from work-force housing to market rate housing.

The other split vote, 3-2, was to elect Hogan maor pro tem.  Buske had nominated Woodard for this position when nominations were first opened, but it died for lack of a second.

Outgoing commissioners and mayor were allowed time to make comments. Sturza and Finch thanked their supporters and recalled some earlier events, but Peele complained about anonymous hurtful comments made about board members on the Internet. Because they were anonymous, he said, they could not call those writing these missives. He called the comments mean-spirited to the point of qualifying as cyber bullying.

This was the last meeting of the year. The next meeting s set for Jan.9 at 7 p.m.