North Carolina Now; North Carolina Now Episode from 03/16/1998

It's Monday March 16th tonight the Statesville company heading up up and away in North Carolina. Now. Let. Me. Hello everyone I'm Zoraida. Thanks for joining us for this Monday edition of North Carolina. Hope you all had an enjoyable weekend. Well this evening we'll welcome back to the program. Transportation Secretary Norris Tolson on Friday Secretary Torsen was here to discuss the massive reorganization underway at the Department of Transportation. Tonight he'll discuss his major goals for that agency. But up first tonight the continuation of our special series called Made in North Carolina. Recent attempts to fly a balloon around the world have focused a lot of attention on the sport of ballooning. But did you know that some of the most recognizable hot air balloons are designed and crafted right here in North Carolina.

And availability of textiles access to the furniture industry and craftsman not to mention the great weather combined to make this state an ideal place to manufacture hot air balloons. This evening producer Judy Van Wyke takes us to a balloon factory in Statesville. Whether it be the Wicker Park. The burner that he or are they confident the balloon envelope it's all designed and crafted right here. This is balloon works. A hot air balloon factory that looks more like a crafts workshop. You notice how I push the Whicker back with my thumb when I grab it with my fingers. Engineer Charlie Gardner better known for Bernard design is teaching a new employee how to make it tight even we push your back with my thumb grab it with my fingers and just keep on going. Balloon making equal parts art in engineering. To indicate the rover can be both attractive and sturdy enough to withstand a lot of bumpy landings. Hot air balloons are

classified as light aircraft by the FAA. As such every phase of construction must pass an FAA certified inspection. Interestingly enough in this simple device like one of our sport balloons there are over fourteen hundred inspections from end to end on the sewing floor. Each and every rule of fabric is tested for flaws before it's used once sewn all the stitching in the blue envelope is carefully scrutinized. We feel. Real sure if you're inspecting every stitch of a complex pattern like this butterfly made up of hundreds of inlaid fabric pieces put in spots and. Also the fun. When we inspect the bones were put fans in both and them and blow them up in here and then we'll walk inside and inspect the gorge. And. I. Kind of made it look straight from inside use to the high production quotas of the textile industry. Heidi says she enjoys the pace and precision of balloon making and crafting the balloons is a precise art here.

A hot knife melts polyester fabric it almost 500 degrees Fahrenheit allowing for precise but it won't unravel. So this is a special machine that we developed right here laughingly called their Cadillac because of its price tag. So this machine is used to assemble extra large sections of balloons that. As for the fabric itself balloon works as designed a uniquely constructed polyester designed to be lightweight sturdy. And heat resistant. We have a thousand or one here on this. No one is generally 180 to 250 hours. And we can get it now easily up to a thousand hours but Sydney gone is not nearly as proud of his patented fabric design as it was of the fact he's resisted the urge to buy cheap foreign textiles. We buy the fiber for this. At the sewing plant just down the road and it's beamed there and sent to the Millikan factory in Greenville South Carolina for weaving. So it's a uniquely Carolin originally from Canada.

The Cons have been manufacturing balloons since 1982 when they bought balloons works from a friend sit in Eleanor Khan first got involved with the company with customers. In 1980 piloting the balloon made right here. The couple was the first to successfully fly over the North Pole and a hot air balloon. We have a lot of fun. We have you know great people with us. We got to know better because we're together for you know the kind of intense experience we have. We had a good time. It was all very positive very spiritual being up there and the colors are magnificent and have just a few people and nobody else for 2000 miles what's different is manufacturers the kinds of made safety priority number one in the mid 80s balloon looks developed in nonconductive material called Pavlovs five times stronger than steel and heat resistant Kevlar new playfield cables that have been used to suspend the passenger carriage.

We used to have maybe a dozen fatalities every year from powerline contact ever since we developed and started using kuffar. We have had no fatalities. Clooney equipped with Kevlar vests front and are like Pugwash is one of the many safety related innovations balloon Lexus contributed to the hot air balloon. An industry in which the company holds roughly a 40 percent share of the market. Filmworks client list includes the state of North Carolina as well as many large corporations. There was the Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket that we built years ago and while standards float balloons make up the bulk of the business special commissions for odd suit and elaborate patterns are gaining and so the company's future. I think we want to continue to build the very best quality and safest and saddest books in the world does give people a really good experience for their own future. Balloonists lets you say the cons don't plan to try for another ballooning record. Not that they don't appreciate the recent attempts to fly around the world. They just don't think balloons are

designed for such a long flight. I think they will have to use is not well suited for the task. Still one never knows when the cons decided to fly over the North Pole as an advertising stunt to promote their audio equipment business. They never imagined they'd be building balloons in North Carolina. In case you're interested in taking up ballooning yourself you might like to know that you can purchase a standard sports balloon for between 15 and twenty thousand dollars about the price of a new car Milans with fancy designs and offbeat shapes take considerably more time to build and cost accordingly. Well still ahead on the program transportation secretary Norris Tolson. But first here's Mitchell Lewis with a summary of today's statewide news. Hello. Hi there Merida. Good evening everyone. Topping our news today marks the start of a Durham court case that will try a man for first degree murder and the drunk driving death of a 4 year old girl. The trial of Timothy Blackwell is significant and that he is only the second person in this country to stand trial for first degree murder in a drunken driving death in

February of last year Blackwell allegedly caused the Durham County accident that killed four year old Megan Dale. Blackwell was later found to have been high on a combination of alcohol cocaine and heroin at the time of the accident. In a separate case last year Forsyth County jury sent its demand to life in prison for the alcohol related deaths of two. Wake Forest University students. The Department of Health and Human Services has recommended 18 counties to be eligible for the state's new welfare pilot program. The program will allow counties to create and run their own welfare programs out of the 27 counties that submitted plans to the state. Nine were rejected. All 27 plans are currently up for 45 days of public review. The General Assembly will make a final decision during the upcoming short session. The you and the Board of Governors has adopted a new budget plan that distributes money through the 16 campus system based on the cost of programs rather than enrollment. Under the new plan schools with students taking classes that costs less to provide would receive less money. Schools that teach courses in subjects such as

nursing or agriculture would get more money due to the cost of providing such classes. The 100 million dollar budget anticipates enrollment increases and calls for a 6 percent faculty pay hike. System president Molly Broad says the pay raise is crucial to the system maintaining a competitive position. North Carolina's NAACP branches will now have to send half of their fundraising proceeds to the national office. That decision ends longstanding exemptions that had kept most of the money in the state. A spokesman with the NAACP national office says North Carolina and three other states had been exempted from the 50 percent assessment for years. But the change was needed to bring all chapters in compliance with tax laws. The rule is to take effect by the end of this year. Some Wake County educators have started a new charter school to educate inmate populations. The John H. Baker Jr. Charter School is believed to be the first school of its kind anywhere. Students have to be charged with a crime and awaiting trial before they can be admitted. The school offers the same course load as other Wake County Public Schools and to teachers handle

all of the classroom duties. School director Marty Wilson believes the school will help errant kids find something positive even though they face jail time. The school was named after Wake County Sheriff John Baker and now for a look at tomorrow's weather. Temperatures across most of the state will reach into the mid to upper 40s. Wilmington will have highs in the lower 50s. Rain is likely for the mountains and Piedmont. Cloudy skies and a chance of rain is forecast for the rest of the state. In business news 360 communications is merging with Alltel Communications Corporation creating one of the country's largest wireless communications carriers. Alltel is buying 360 communications for more than $6 billion in stock and assumption of debt. The companies say the deal could result in annual cost savings of one hundred million dollars by the year 2000. The merger should be completed by mid-summer pending approval by shareholders and regulatory agencies a lot of public officials and Guilford and Forsyth County appear quiet on the question of raising taxes to pay for a professional baseball stadium in the Triad the Winston-Salem Journal surveyed

67 leaders on the issue and a full 29 declined to comment or did not return phone calls of the remaining 38 nearly two thirds oppose the 1 percent food tax and 50 Cent ticket tax. Fourteen of them supported the proposals the tax proposal will be on the May 5th ballot in two counties. And now for a look at what happened on Wall Street today as. State Traffic engineers will be determining sections of road around our state that are in need of

additional highway safety measures. That's the mandate of the new transportation secretary Norris Tolson as he places safety as a top priority for his agency. Joining me now is transportation secretary Norris Tolson secretary Tolson. Thanks for being here again Mary. Nice to be back. We have to mention at the start of this interview that you were here on Friday and you addressed the issue of the reorganization of your department in case the viewers missed that on Friday and they're wondering why we're not talking about that tonight. OK. So let's talk about safety you're placing this as a top priority for the Transportation Department. Is that because of what you found in your reorganization that there needs to be more attention placed there. No not. No that's not it at all. We believe from the department's point of view long before I got there that safety of the traveling public was the number one priority in everything we do. So as we plan roads as we plan transportation needs in this state we're very conscious about how can we do it safely. And of course we start worrying about things how can we do it effectively and how can we get it fast but how can we get

it done with the best investment the taxpayers dollar. But safety is always paramount. And I might say not only is it of the traveling public we're just as concerned about the safety of our employees as they are up to on the road work as they are out on the highway doing some construction work or repairing a road whatever. We're very concerned that they can do it safely because it is a dangerous place to work. I know some of the concerns stemmed from the I-95 work zone in Lumberton. Tell us some about what are the measures that you put in place there that have helped that situation. What we have happening in Lumberton down on that I-95 stretch of road was we had very high volumes of traffic including a lot of local traffic I think 15000 cars a day out of the local community traveling on that stretch. And it was a lot of north south traffic and it was very high speed traffic. And as we were working on that song and we're putting up barricades so that we could get the work done on the shoulders. We found we were having accidents. So what we did was we dropped the speed limit from 65 to 55. We

backed the speed up speed limit zone all three miles on either side of the work zone and and raise the fines for speeding and the work itself. We wrote a lot of ticket State Highway Patrol the local law enforcement people work very hard with us and we have in fact stopped the accidents and that works. Which is exactly what you're looking for of course. And get the work done. So tell me then about some of the safety guidelines that would be put in place throughout the entire state under your new plan. Well we're taking all we're looking at. All war zones were taken. Lumberton experience and say and we've gone back since that since we instituted those measures we've gone to every work zone and state we're saying OK what is it we need to do to protect this work zone and everyone's different. And so we have to go out and allies when actually my engineers literally get out and drive the work zone size. They look at the workers on site as a driver and they say OK what do we need to do to fix it. Some cases we will put up a warning sign in some cases to be flashers and in some cases it will be all of those measures including

extra police protection Highway Patrol or patrolling Lumberton 24 hours a day seven days a week around the clock. The speed limit Longton by the way he's speeding. The average speed rate was about 68 miles an hour. After we instituted our safety measures we've dropped it to fifty five point three miles an hour. Right where you want to be. It's much safer. We're going to look at other areas in the state and see if we can do those kinds of things. Now in addition to that there are just some general safety things that we're doing all the time. Stop lights turn the lanes warning rumble strips on the major highways. Those are all things that my engineers are looking at on a continuing basis to make our roads safer. Reflective one of our most popular things we've done is the reflectors down the side of the road or on the edge of the road. Very popular. We're always out having to maintain those and replace them but that's another part of our safety program that's on the one.

Is there money in the Transportation Department's budget to do these safety measures. Yes there is never enough money but that leads me to talk about the maintenance issue maintenance in our state is a big issue. We are known as a good road state. We have 78000 miles of state maintained roads in the state of Texas. The other is the largest state with about 200 miles more than ours. But we spend a lot of time build a new road. We've got a lot of new roads but we haven't always maintained them as well as we should. So we've embarked on a major thrust to improve the maintenance of all of our highways taking care of potholes taking care of unsafe roads we've got broken pavement edges that have eroded including things like good shoulder maintenance making sure we're cleaning out the ditches and getting the overhang overhanging brush off the edge of the road which keeps the mowers from being able to get up underneath and mow the grass on the side. This is all part of a major

program. I've asked people in my department to help me find money within our existing budgets to improve overall overall that which would include resourcing a lot more roads. And we're now resurfacing. Secretary when we spoke on Friday we talked about the reorganization plan. One question that I didn't have an opportunity to ask you was about the public's confidence in your department. Now you've put in place a reorganization plan that can fix the mechanics of the deity but how do you restore the public's confidence in the Transportation Department. Well I think the quickest way we can do that is to be sure that we're doing the things that we say we're doing. We say we're going to build a road on a certain schedule. We either build a road on my schedule or we tell the public why. One of the things we are already doing is that we're having a lot of public meetings since I've been in this job about 55 60 days now. I've been around the state holding public meetings with elected officials with citizen groups with advocacy groups with

environmental groups talking about what are the issues that we're faced with in our state. How can you help me get this job done better. What kind of input do we need to seek from you and how do we use it once we get it. I think that's the best way to build the confidence of the people that we are in fact spending their money wisely which in fall analysis is what it's all about traveling safely and spending their money wisely because it is their money. Secretary Thompson I thank you for your time here tonight. Thank you. Well Secretary Thompson is seeking public input about the part that transportation department and if you have any questions or comments you can write Secretary Thompson at post office box at 2 5 2 0 1. That's in Raleigh 2 7 6 1 1. Or you can log on to the Dotty's web page. That address is w w dot D O T Dot state DOT NC DOT us. As.

You. That's our program for tonight. Thanks for sharing part of your evening with us. We're heading out of here early tonight to make room for festival 98 our annual fundraising drive. Please stay tuned for that. And please join us again tomorrow night for another edition of North Carolina now joining me tomorrow will be Andrea Harris of the North Carolina Institute of minority economic development. And we'll continue our series on made in North Carolina products. Until then have a great evening everyone and we'll see you tomorrow night. As