Recapping the Ketner intersection issue

I submit the following synopsis of the Ketner intersection issue in Havelock for those who have not followed this scenario.

The North Carolina Department of Transportation converted U.S. 70 into its current configuration 40-plus years ago and in doing so, created the height differential between U.S. 70, the adjacent frontage road and Ketner Boulevard.  In the ensuing four-plus decades, NCDOT has made no attempt to correct their mistake.

In 2005, NCDOT contracted Kimley-Horn and Associates in Raleigh to conduct a safety study of all intersections of U.S. 70 from Clayton to Morehead City for the preceding three years.  Of the 13 intersections studied in Havelock, the Ketner intersection was far and away the safest intersection in the city; yet when NCDOT briefed our legislators in Raleigh in late 2006, on the pending closure of this intersection; it was described as “unsafe to the public.”

How did this city’s safest intersection wind up on NCDOT’s chopping block?  The city of Havelock offered it in order to obtain a traffic signal for Wal-Mart.  The affected residents in neither the 770 homes nor several important businesses had any input in this.  Since that time, the city has pledged $100,000 to improve the intersection in an attempt to prevent its closure; yet, the undeniable fact is the city commissioners unanimously signed an agreement between Havelock, Wal-Mart and the state of North Carolina to close the intersection and move the traffic lights to Wal-Mart.

The NCDOT is seemingly unreceptive to any other negotiations. Havelock has offered another traffic light, but this was not acceptable to NCDOT. Mr. Neil Lassiter, the spokesman for NCDOT’s Division II office in Greenville, has clearly stated the NCDOT staff has decided this intersection will close and it will take political involvement to reverse that decision.  That statement cannot be misunderstood. 

With that fact clearly in mind, I wrote our elected officials, Sen. Jean Preston and Reps. Alice Underhill and William Wainwright, asking for their support.  The Ketner Citizens Action Group represents 1,383 citizens who signed our petitions of opposition to closing this intersection.  I had previously petitioned the governor to intercede, but he refused to circumvent city government decisions.

I read in the Jan. 24 edition of the Havelock News that the two representatives have chosen to not involve themselves in this matter. The New Bern Sun Journal of Jan. 25 reports the senator chooses to be a “peace maker.”  To whom do the voters turn if not these officials elected to represent us in Raleigh? We have obviously been wrong all along thinking elected officials represent the citizens.

Our resistance to this illogical situation will continue, but an invaluable political lesson has been learned about politics in Havelock, Craven County and North Carolina.

This is not just a matter of keeping an intersection open; rather, it is a matter of right versus wrong, of government dictating to the people with no thought given to their well being nor demonstrating a willingness to include them in the democratic process.

M.C. “Skip” Skipper is a resident of the Ketner Heights neighborhood and chairman of the Ketner Citizens Action Group, which formed to oppose the removal of the Ketner Boulevard traffic signal.