Her opponent is vice chairman and old friend John Owen.
Kelly laughed when asked about her competition and said the race is fine with her, because she and Owen remain friends when it comes to the Republican Party. She said it’s possible other candidates could emerge before the county convention is held March 29.
Bill Peaslee, a Moore County native who now serves as chief of staff and special legal counsel to the state Republican Party, will act as convention chairman.
The county convention will open at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 29, at the historic courthouse in downtown Carthage.
Although Kelly remains a candidate for the county chairmanship, she is relinquishing her other office as chairwoman of the 6th Congressional District Republicans. She plans to step down from that position at the district convention to be held in Carthage in late April.
YOUNG GOP — Kelly and Owen will be on the program for the Tuesday, Feb. 22, meeting of the Moore County Young Republicans Club.
The club will meet at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in Room 208, Van Buren Hall, Sandhills Community College.
Gail Prevatte, secretary of the Young Republicans, said the guest speakers will be candidates for the position of Moore County Republican Party chairman this year. She says the public is welcome to attend the meeting.
SENIOR CENTER — The architectural design contract for a senior center is on the agenda for the Monday meeting of the Moore County Board of Commissioners.
The board will be asked to act on a resolution authorizing the county manager and the county attorney to negotiate a contract with Kanoy Architecture.
The meeting will begin at 6 p.m. in the historic courthouse in Carthage. Prior to the regular meeting, the commissioners will meet at 3 p.m. for a work session on county utilities.
HEARINGS — Four public hearings on planning and zoning issues are also on the Monday night agenda.
It is likely that two hearings will not be held because the applicants have withdrawn their requests. The applicants were BLATCO Inc. and Eric Larsen. Still on the table are hearings for a rezoning request by Karen F. and James D. McKenzie from Rural Agricultural-40 to RA-Conditional Use District and proposed text amendments to the zoning ordinance. The McKenzie hearing will be quasi-judicial, which means speakers must be sworn-in.
The board will be asked to approve a resolution authorizing negotiation with Hobbs Upchurch & Associates for engineering services for the headworks pump station replacement at the wastewater treatment plant.
Also on the agenda are a revision in the county’s water purchase agreement with the town of Southern Pines, an agreement with Solutions for Local Governments Inc. to conduct a second phase in the facilities space needs study, and a resolution endorsing the merger of Lee and Harnett counties with the Sandhills Center for mental health and related services.
ELECTIONS — A bill that passed the state Senate Wednesday would designate rules under which the N.C. General Assembly would resolve disputed elections.
The bill now goes to the House. If the bill had been in place last year, North Carolina might have had a ready solution to a couple of knotty election problems.
One of those problems has already been resolved by the concession of Britt Cobb to Steve Troxler for the state office of agriculture commissioner. Cobb is a Democrat, Troxler a Republican. The issue in this case was the closeness of the statewide totals, complicated by the loss of more than 4,400 ballots in a computer programming glitch in Carteret County.
Still unresolved is the race for superintendent of public instruction. Democrat June Atkinson was leading by 8,535 votes, but the state Supreme Court has ordered the state Board of Elections to disregard about 11,000 provisional ballots because they were cast in the wrong precincts. What to do next is now in the hands of a superior court judge.
