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Regional center opens
for business
County and town officials cut the
ceremonial red ribbon for the Northern Regional Center’s grand opening
Wednesday morning, Jan. 9, and the center staff will welcome the first
customers Thursday.
“Our plan is to bring services closer
to where people live so they don’t have to drive to downtown Raleigh for county
services,” Wake County Manager David Cooke told the standing-room-only crowd.
Joe Bryan, chairman of the county
board of commissioners, compared the center’s array of services to “an old
country general store” where people could find everything they needed.
Those services include economic
programs, family support, behavioral health, environmental services, revenue
services, child welfare, health clinics, on-site sheriff’s deputies, community
services and JobLink.
Decentralizing services, moving them
closer to people, is important in a county as large as Wake, 857 square miles,
Dr. David Filipowski, chairman of the county Human Services Board, said. “Wake
County has the largest rural population of any county in North Carolina.”
Dr. Ramon Rojano, the executive
director for Wake County Human Services, described how the county combined
social services, public health and mental health into one overarching agency,
Human Services, in 1996 to better coordinate the care and treatment for the
people those agencies serve.
Commissioner Betty Lou Ward has had
the vision of serving people closer to where they live for almost 20 years,
Rojano said. When she spoke, Ward called it “a dream I have had for a very long
time.” She remembered meeting with James Warren and others in the seminary
cafeteria and talking about the dream. (The cafeteria was on North Wingate
Street across West Avenue from the Ledford Center.)
Mayor Vivian Jones said she was
excited that the people who need them the most will have easier access to
county services. There are “transportation difficulties” locally, she said.
She then turned toward Ross Yeager,
the center’s director who was standing in the crowd near the door of the
reception room. “”We’re glad to have you in our community, Ross.”
Earlier, Bryan had praised Jones and
the town’s commissioners for their leadership in urging the expansion of the
Wake Forest Library next door on East Holding Avenue, the construction of the
N.C. 98 bypass, and in providing greenways and open space. If it had not been
for Jones and the commissioners, the money for the bypass might have gone to
I-40, Bryan said.
All seven of the county commissioners
were on hand as well as Rolesville Mayor Frank Eagles, Wake Technical Community
College President Dr. Stephen Scott, Deputy County Manager Joe Durham and Wake
Forest Commissioner Margaret Stinnett.
The members of the center’s community
advisory board were recognized: Ann Ayers, Stony Blevins, Lynda Creutzburg, the
Rev. Enoch Holloway, Rolesville Town Manager Matthew Livingston, the Rev.
Lenwood Long, Christina Piscitello, Eugenia Pleasant, Jenny Rowe and Wake
Forest Town Manager Mark Williams.
Tours of the building followed the
ceremony.
The center will be open Monday through
Friday from 8:15 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
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