Each River Bend council candidate brings expertise into election

RIVER BEND — Four candidates filed with the Craven County Board of Elections to be in the running on Tuesday for three open seats on the River Bend Town Council.

Three of the candidates are returning to the board for second terms while one candidate, Karl H. Wolfer, is a challenger looking to win a first term.

Each of the four candidates brings a unique set of experiences to the council, coming from professional backgrounds in local government, the law, finance, and business.

The three people with the most votes will win seats. The town’s elections are also staggered every two years.

“As new members of this council or any municipal governing body would come on board, they will be assisted by those who carryover from the previous election cycle,” said town Mayor John Kirkland, whose seat is not open for Tuesday’s election.

Following is a look at each of the town council candidates.

Brenda D. Garvey

Brenda Garvey said she has a servant’s heart, which is why she’s running for re-election to the River Bend Town Council.

In her last four years in the seat, the 48-year-old said she’s most proud of working to help restore the caboose that previously held the Little Red Caboose Library, as well as working on the town’s walking trail, and starting recreation activities such as pumpkin carving in the fall.

She said she was particularly passionate about the walking trail because it would have been a great place to teach her son to ride a bicycle. There was no such trail when she moved to the town in 1997, and she taught her son to ride a bike on her paved driveway.

The council has secured a grant for the trail in addition to the town’s funding match, and the trail is expected to be completed in January.

“Now I’m getting older, and I want to walk in safe places were I don’t get hit by a car,” Garvey said. “Those are all reasons I want to run; I want to help.”

Garvey said that the strongest asset that she would bring to the council is her background in local government. She said she’s worked in government for 26 years, and she’s currently employed as the support services section commander for the New Bern Police Department. She said she’s gained experience throughout her career in areas including finance, records, and personnel.

“My learning curve was a lot shorter than some of the other (new council members) at one point or another, especially during the budget process,” she said. “When you’ve got three months of budget meetings, understanding how governmental processes work offered me an advantage at that point because I was able to jump right in.”

If she’s re-elected, one of her goals is to help manage the budget, as she believes that “with the budget cuts in the state, we’re going to really manage the money well so that the taxes and all the other rates don’t skyrocket.”

She also wants to work on developing a public kayak and canoe access in River Bend on the Trent River. She served as the liaison to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board while on the council, and she can bring ideas back to its members.

“I’m a kayaker, and I’ve lived in Eastern North Carolina all my life,” she said. “To be able to have access to the waterways is very important.”

She said she’s an advocate for the people, and she “just wants to be able to serve.”

 “I have a servant’s heart, and I truly like to serve,” she said. “I just think I have a lot to offer to be able to do those things.”

Philip A. Seymour

Philip Seymour said he responded to a request four years ago that he run for the River Bend Town Council when the town was short on candidates.

This year, the 62-year-old retired attorney and Marine officer is running again because he said he cares about the town, and he’d like to see it grow and develop in a controlled fashion.

His biggest campaign issues are planning for growth that he said would prevent the tax burden from increasingly falling on residents. He also is a proponent of replacing the town’s aging wastewater treatment plant and looking for alternatives to dumping the town’s treated effluent in the Trent River, as well as responding to the demands of the town’s changing demographics.

Seymour said he cares about the town, but he’d be pleased if any of the four candidates were selected to fill the three council openings.

 “We’re, all four of us, the only thing that we really care about is the best interests of the town,” Seymour said. “If the other three were elected, they would take care of the town just as if I were on the council.”

Seymour moved with his wife to River Bend eight years ago, although he said he’s been to the state since 1965 after he enlisted in the Marines following high school.

He was an infantryman during the Vietnam War, and was wounded three weeks into his tour while on a raid into a heavily fortified village. He recovered and returned to active duty, later went on to college, transferred into the Marine Corps Reserves, and then went on to law school.

Seymour returned to active duty and worked as a prosecutor and defense counsel at Cherry Point air station and at other locations for 10 years. He got his master’s in international law, and worked at the Pentagon as well as in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait, retiring in 1994.

What distinguishes him the most from the other candidates, he said, is his legal background. He said he tends to look at the long-term effect of the council’s actions, and whether those actions could result in litigation, “which is something we try to avoid in the town if at all possible,” he said.

Seymour said he hopes River Bend maintains its small-town charm, but also that it sees growth.

“We will have to grow though some point, maybe through voluntary annexation, or development of the northwest quadrant,” he said. “And while I’d like to see it stay a small town like it is and have a habitat for the animals, the tax burden is going to grow increasingly on the citizens.”

The other issue he feels is important is looking into alternatives to dumping the town’s treated effluent into the Trent River, such as a deep-well injection. The town is also looking into the construction of a regional wastewater treatment plant with Pollocksville.

“Those are probably the biggest issues that we’re going to be dealing with,” he said.

Irving ‘Bud’ Van Slyke

Irving “Bud” Van Slyke Jr. is running for a second elected term on the River Bend Town Council to lend some of his experience in finance to the community.

The 76-year-old was appointed to the council in March of 2005, and was re-elected that same year. Van Slyke has served as the council’s finance officer, offering his expertise in an effort to give back to the town and its people.

“There are no other members on council who have that kind of background, nor do the candidates who are running have that kind of background,” he said. “It helps in the management of resources that the people of River Bend have given to the council for stewardship.”

Van Slyke worked for 21 years with the international accounting firm Deloitte & Touche L.L.P. He worked in professional development, teaching new employees audit techniques and other skills. He was eventually responsible for professional development for the New York region.

For 12 years, the company had offices in the World Trade Center. He was on the 100th floor of tower one, looking north over the top of New York City “all the way up the Hudson to the George Washington Bridge,” he said.

Van Slyke was also a general instructor for the U.S. Air Force in Denver, Colo., during the Korean War. He also worked in commercial mortgage lending for a security trust company.

He said he wants to give back to the community that he said has offered him and his wife a good quality of life. It is a pleasant living environment, and he has enjoyed the people.

“They are very, very pleasant people who are willing to step and help others whenever there is a need to do so, without any special invitation,” he said.

As an elected official, he said he believes his main accomplishment was helping the town implement an information technology management system of the old spreadsheet system to manage financial and other data.

“It’s an across-the-board management device, and as it stands now, it’s working very well and earned its right to continue and grow,” he said.

He also wrote in a contributed statement that he has a “sincere interest” in continuing the town’s current financial policies, which he said included maintaining a “reasonable” fund balance, and keeping a proactive approach to the budget.

“We have had no problems from the standpoint of any of our program being discontinued,” he said, in fiscal year 2009. “That’s because of the philosophy that we have in this point in time, in doing the way we were doing it.”

Karl H. Wolfer

As the owner and operator of the River Bend Market & Deli, Karl Wolfer said he has a platform from which he can be the “ear and the voice” of the town.

The 46-year-old business owner is the challenger in Tuesday’s election for the seat of one of three incumbents on the River Bend Town Council. He’s running because as a business owner, he hears a lot of what the people in town have to say.

“There are a lot of people who don’t go to the meetings because they don’t feel they’re going to be heard or that people will listen to them,” Wolfer said. “Because I receive this kind of input, I feel I have a lot to offer and I can better represent the people.”

Wolfer opened the market in 1998 with his younger brother so he could be his own boss. There weren’t many other similar businesses in town at the time, Wolfer said. Their specialty is the made-from-scratch chicken salad, which is their No. 1 best-selling item. They moved last January to 40 Shoreline Drive so that they could operate a drive-through window.

“I’m here constantly with my business, as I hear what people’s concerns are, and what they would like,” he said.

Before he was a business owner, Wolfer had served in the Marine Corps for 20 years. He was a cook, although he said he joined the Marines hoping to be anything but that. He was stationed at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville; Parris Island, S.C.; Okinawa, Japan; Cherry Point air station; and Twentynine Palms, Calif., during his time in the Marines.

He moved to River Bend with his wife in 1992 after the couple found a house in town. They had never heard of the town before then, he said.

“We remembered pulling up to River Bend and we couldn’t even imagine ourselves living here, it was so beautiful,” he said.

If elected, his goal would be to try to keep taxes as low as possible. He said he considers growth and development a way to achieve that goal.

“I would like to see the northwest quadrant to be developed, but developed in a very responsible way,” he said. “You’ve had areas in River Bend in the past where the homes were like cookie-cutter designs.”

Wolfer said he had planned to run for council in the last election, but his wife was sick at the time. He has served as the chairman of Parks and Recreation Advisory Board.

“I don’t have any kids, but I saw how little there was for the older kids to do,” he said. “Now we have a volleyball court out there, a skate park out there; there’s a lot of activities now for the kids.”

Wolfer said he is very open and lighthearted, and would be open and honest with people.

“I feel I have more to offer the town,” he said.

Laura Oleniacz can be reached at 252-635-5675 or at loleniacz@freedomenc.com.