On Sunday, we kicked off our Moore County Board of Education endorsements with the District 1 and 2 seats. Voters countywide also are being asked to cast ballots for the District 4 and 5 seats on the seven-member school board.
The Moore County Board of Education has been busy the last couple of years. It had voters overwhelmingly approve a rare bond referendum in 2018 to build three new elementary schools; it built a fourth and is finishing a critical expansion at North Moore High School with conventional financing.
Once upon a time, elections for the Moore County Board of Commissioners were vigorously contested affairs, but they really haven’t been for some time now.
For the first time in memory, Moore County has not one but two Congressmen: Republicans Richard Hudson and Dan Bishop.
After winning the State House 52 seat in 2008, Republican Jamie Boles went 10 years without a Democratic challenge. That changed two years ago when businessman and former teacher Lowell Simon stepped in.
2020 has been anything but predictable, save for one thing. On the day after the 2018 election, we had a pretty good feeling we’d again see a matchup between Republican incumbent Tom McInnis and Democratic challenger Helen Probst-Mills.
We’re now just under four weeks until Election Day 2020. Ballots are flowing into boards of elections across the country.
As it turns out, the help that Robbins has been needing the last few years may have been a lot closer than anyone believed.
For many of us, fortunately, the coronavirus has remained conceptual. We’ve gone about our days, working and running errands and living lives mostly unaffected, save for where we fall on the mask-wearing, social-distancing spectrum.
There hasn’t been a lot of good news on the coronavirus front these past six months, but Gov. Roy Cooper’s recent willingness to loosen up school attendance for our youngest students is decidedly good.
Birdie, by FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital, for trying to ascertain how exposed the community might be to the novel coronavirus.
Moore County officials cut the ribbon Wednesday on the new Aberdeen Elementary School, the first project completed in the $103 million bond referendum voters approved two years ago.
The coronavirus has laid bare a number of critical needs, but those needs are not limited to public health alone.
A hole-in-one is a celebratory feat, for sure. But an even rarer accomplishment is the double eagle, or albatross — a golfer scoring a “2” on a par-5 hole.
Pinehurst has been nothing if not deliberative this year in its quest to parse every single detail and opinion in the village about the future of library services.
On Sept. 6, 1936, having just returned from a trip across nine states to see the effects of the Dust Bowl and drought — two months before the next election, and with the country still in the midst of the Great Depression — President Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke directly to the American people…
Birdie, by Moore County Schools, for choosing transparency when it comes to how it’s handling the coronavirus in its schools.
The enterprise of food is a keystone to any downtown community. Vibrant downtowns derive much of their verve from the varied selection and manner with which food and drink are served across neighborhoods.
Early on, the Moore County Health Department looked like it was on top of the coronavirus.
This past week was to have been the first big week of fall high school sports. Tennis, volleyball, boys’ soccer, football — they exist now only on calendars rendered worthless by the coronavirus.
Birdie, by Phil Richardson, for his recent promotion to assistant town manager in Aberdeen, while also keeping his regular job leading the town’s emergency services.
Even in common years, the first two weeks of school would have hiccups. Buses run late routes, kids go to wrong classes, kindergartners’ butterflies turn to upset stomachs. It all eventually works out and the year falls into rhythm.
Pity the lawman who takes the top job in a small Southern town. They’re almost bound to get compared at some point to the fictional Sheriff Andy Taylor.
In normal times, your average county health department works, like most of the government bureaucracy, to keep the cogs in the machine moving. Its staff inspect public swimming pools, ensure restaurants are meeting health requirements, oversee immunizations and administer a raft of health in…
What do Aberdeen, Carthage and Robbins know that Southern Pines doesn’t? When it comes to the subject of downtown murals, quite a lot, apparently.
Few communities have experienced the kind of demographic change like Whispering Pines has these past several years. Once a retirement enclave nestled among a series of manmade lakes and tobacco fields, the village has taken on an entirely new profile.
Eagle, by Tim Evely, sales manager of Montgomery Motors Lincoln dealership in Troy, for showing a group of teenage boys that immense kindness can overcome immense bad.
Moore County’s public school students may yet be relegated to remote learning, depending on what happens with the coronavirus in the next month. But if things remain as they are now, Moore County Schools has greatly improved its return-to-school plan.
Now is the summer of our discontent — sunken in a sullen, snappish state of uncertainty. Four months into this global coronavirus pandemic, we are no closer to an end than we were back in March — or even those beguiling days of April, when we all talked of “being in this together.”
In the end, it seemed like Robbins was hoping against hope that it might still be able to carry off its 65th annual Farmers Day event at the end of this month.
Whether he knew it or not, N.C. Gov. Roy Cooper did Moore County a huge favor on Tuesday by amending the conditions under which schools will resume next month.
The Pinehurst Village Council has spent a lot of time lately trying to figure out how to make its past work for its future.
The $168.3 million Moore County budget that began July 1 is no document of great inspiration. But could it be?
Eagle, by Judy Osborne, the recently retired theater teacher at Union Pines High School, who dedicated more than three decades to giving students a place to feel at home and spread their wings.
This is a partial text of the Declaration of Independence, adopted in Philadelphia 244 years ago yesterday, on July 4, 1776.
Law enforcement has always been a discretionary activity. How many of us are the beneficiaries of a cop in a good mood who pulls us over for speeding but lets us off with a warning?
In its more than 15-year history with Moore County, U.S. Kids Golf has done nothing but grow. Today, the U.S. Kids Golf Foundation has a permanent home at Longleaf Country Club in Southern Pines, and its myriad tournaments, clinics and other events are growing the game globally.
For the last several years, ambitious Moore County high school juniors and seniors have been able to use Sandhills Community College to get a jumpstart on college.
With respect to the coronavirus pandemic, we don’t expect the world of the Moore County Health Department. Like other health departments, it is short-staffed, underfunded and has had difficulty getting virus testing kits and capabilities.
Were the great comedian Henny Youngman still around, with a child in public school, he might start a bit with, “Take my child — please!”
Eagle, by Lakisha Womack, Shirilla Horton and Lanisha Bailey for organizing the recent caravan that traveled through southern Moore County to honor the memory of George Floyd and speak out for racial equality and justice.
Last month in this space, we endorsed a community-oriented plan to preserve Southern Pines Elementary School on May Street once it is vacated next year for a new elementary school off Morganton Road.
Congratulations, high school graduates! You have turned your tassels and a corner in your life.
It’s been pretty standard during the coronavirus pandemic to say, “We’re all in this together.” But after events of the past week, we’re so clearly not.
When it opens next winter, the new Southern Pines Elementary school off Morganton Road will be one of the most positive lifts the town has had in years. For years, the town has had to put up with dual schools — built in the era of segregation — that did not meet modern standards or the expec…
Birdie, by Moore County Commissioner Otis Ritter, for understanding the necessity of getting new laptop computers into the hands of Moore County Schools students.
Memorial Day is an appropriate time to reread Abraham Lincoln’s sublime Gettysburg Address honoring Civil War dead.
Sheriff Ronnie Fields and District Attorney Maureen Krueger chose recently what laws they wish to enforce and then bragged about it with press releases.
Restaurants, such an important component to our everyday lives, have been one of the greatest sufferers during the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing lockdown to reduce its spread. Our communities have tried as much as possible to keep these concerns going until they can safely open again.
The Pinehurst Village Council has conclusion contusions over what its library services consultant has done.
