I’m in a giving mood this week.

Let’s just hope that Town of Murfreesboro officials and my good friend Bob Spivey, the mayor of Windsor, will accept my “gifts” of words.

First off to the Murfreesboro Town Council and Mayor Lynn Johnson…..grow up!

It appears by the war of words between the Murfreesboro hierarchy, you have reverted in age from reasonable adults to spoiled little children.

I hate to be the one to tell you, but you are all at the age where you can’t take your ball and bat and go home just because you’re not getting your way. By taking offense to someone else infringing on your territory, ya’ll are behaving just like the Bertie and Hertford County high school bands did in their ugly confrontation back on Nov. 2.

Your immature actions are tearing your town apart at the seams. Don’t believe me…..we have the phone calls to our office to prove it. We’ve fielded numerous calls from Murfreesboro citizens who are expressing their views from both sides of the issue.

That issue deals with the Beautification Committee. Some feel they performed a great service to the town prior to council members, at their meeting last week, pulling the plug on that volunteer group. Others say Mayor Johnson played too much of a role behind the scenes and guided the committee to her liking, so much to the point where curtains/drapes were purchased for the council’s meeting room without the governing board’s approval.

Mayor Johnson counters that she has documentation to prove that numerous purchase orders for the town’s goods and services are approved without the direction of the council.

Please….stop the bickering and in-fighting. None of you are setting a good example of what strong, effective town government should be. Bury your respective hatchets (hopefully not in each other’s heads) and set forth on a collective effort to make Murfreesboro a better place to live, work and visit.

Now to my friend, Mayor Spivey.

I’ve known and respected Bob Spivey for a number of years. He is passionate in his plans to make Windsor the best little town in all of North Carolina. Bob is also actively involved in a number of other organizations, each designed to strengthen the future of northeastern North Carolina.

But there is one thing Bob and I disagree upon, the US 13 bypass around Ahoskie.

I can’t quite understand Mayor Spivey’s logic when he addressed his town commissioners at their meeting this past Thursday. We had a reporter at the meeting.

Mayor Spivey told his board, “We’re not against four-laning Hwy. 11, but not at the expense of sacrificing the 13 bypass.”

Whoa….who is sacrificing what? If the bypass is built, it comes at the “sacrifice” of farmers, homeowners, businesses and churches in the Ahoskie and Powellsville areas, not Windsor.

Spivey went on to say, “We’ve all built our businesses on the Hwy. 13 corridor for 50 years.”

Mr. Mayor, that statement makes it sound like if the Ahoskie bypass isn’t built, then U.S. 13 will disappear, along with the Windsor and Bertie County businesses built along its corridor. The road isn’t going away and neither will the businesses or the tourists. It will be traffic as usual on US 13, with or without an Ahoskie bypass.

“Many of the surrounding towns and counties are for the Hwy. 13 Bypass,&uot; Spivey told his board. This may be true, but he has overlooked his own county in that statement as officials in Aulander and Lewiston-Woodville (both located on the NC 11 corridor) have said they support highway 11.

With construction nearing completion on the Windsor US 17 bypass (part of a four-lane link north to the Virginia line along that route) and the fact that US 13/17 is already four-lane to Williamston (where highway 13 joins U.S 64 and runs west to Bethel, where, ironically, it reconnects with NC 11, which is now four-lane at that point), it appears Mayor Spivey is seeking a “hat trick” with the Ahoskie bypass proposal.