NEWTON GROVE — The Newton Grove Area 100 Committee held their annual dinner recently host by Newton Grove Methodist Church. President Larry Resnick presided over the activities.

Newton Grove Mayor Gerald Darden reported on several new enterprises that have opened their doors. Warren Eye Care is in their new building as well as well as Embroidery by Design, Circle City Auto Spa and the Ice House all on Main Street. He also reported that the Fire Department had worked hard to raise their rating for a 9 to a 7 which means all in the Newton Grove Fire District will see lower fire insurance premiums.

John Swope talked about some of the initiatives that his organization is working on including interest by an outside organization in a distribution center along I-40. He also mentioned that the Fibrowatt project is taking longer that anticipated to get off the ground due to negotiations with the power companies on supplying power for the grid.

The featured speaker of the evening was John Harbison, Colonel USAF (retired) who is the Deputy Director of the BRAC Regional Task Force. The BRAC RTF is composed of 11 counties and local municipalities surrounding Fort Bragg. BRAC has the responsibility to unify community planning efforts by coordinating the requirements and shortfalls for the counties affected by BRAC actions at Fort Bragg and Pope AFB.

According to Harbison, “The BRAC movement will be complete by 2013 and will bring in approximated 35,000 new people at Bragg. That equates to about 10,000 new households. That will be a boost for the Real Estate business as well as contractors who will be involved in the command and support structure that will be moving in.”

Moving into Bragg will be the FORSCOM/USARC. Pope Air Force Base will resort to its original name of Pope Field. More that 3000 officers will be moving into the area from Atlanta by 2011. With them will come approximately a $30 million Department of Defense (DOD) budget. There will be a projected growth of 35,000 to 40,000 at Pope.

“In order to handle that many people many things have to change. We will need more schools, more classrooms, more highways, improved highways, basically more of everything. Restaurants and other shopping centers will be needed,” Harbison said.

“It is anticipated that the area will need $230 for new schools. There will be 100,000 more transits per day in the area. If you have 30,000 new people going to work that’s probably 40,000 transit per day right there, one going to work and one going home. Add in the transits for the spouses and others, the number grow quickly. Right now the area cannot handle the additional traffic. We are in the process of upgrading roads around Bragg. The military is going to close a part of Bragg Blvd. on post. That traffic has to be rerouted. It will be rerouted along Murchison Road which will be widened to six lanes, three in each direction,” he added.

Shortly, the Patriot Missile System will be moved to Bragg. That will bring nearly 2000 embedded contractors that support the system. According to Harbison these will by higher skilled, higher paying jobs. This will also require a high skilled local workforce to fill positions that will come open.

“One of the major problems we face right now is the workforce. We have a 30 percent dropout rate in the area. We have to get these students staying in school and get the math and language skills up,” he said.

Harbison has been teaching at Fayetteville Technical Community College. He stated, “Nearly 50 percent of the students that apply cannot pass the basic algebra test for admission. We have to work on the surrounding local educational systems to get that number up or we will have to import people to fill the jobs that will be created by BRAC.”

He also brought up the fact that many of the job opening that BRAC will create do not require a four-year degree. Many of them can be filled by two-year technical degree programs with salaries in the $30,000-$50,000 a year range. He asked a question, “Anyone know what a good welder makes an hour?” His answer was $100 to illustrate his point about the technical degree and high paying jobs.

Some of the job opportunities that will open up are manufacturing and repairing mobile devices, which the military has many of. Also mentioned were electronics processing, electronic equipment repair and maintenance. All of these will require two-year technical degrees.

He also discussed the top 100 hot jobs that BRAC anticipates. Among them are accountants and auditors, teachers, advertising sales, computer and information technologists and technicians, child care workers, lawyers, maintenance and repair workers, medical services, physical therapy assistants, retail sales and the list goes on and on.

To make a point about what kids today are into, he pulled out his smartphone and asked what today’s kids are doing. “They are texting, googling, emailing, and browsing the world wide web from these devices. In order to reach them, we have to get their attention and use the devices they are using,” he said.

He also discussed some of the educational initiatives that BRAC RTF is involved in pilot schools in each county that is hoped will help with the lack of math skills. They are in the final stages of an interactive algebra curriculum that utilizes computers and learn at your own rate technologies. One of the things they are pioneering is enhanced technology classrooms where students can work on local projects from a workstation and also have piped in experts on a white board screen that goes along with the skills being taught at the moment.

They are also working on other curriculums as well. A group of students at Richmond County Community College is working on an enhanced geometry curriculum much like the algebra curriculum.

“In order to make this work, we are going to have to change the mindset of educators and school boards and send teachers back to school to get retrained in the technologies that will become available. We have to reach students on their level, get their attention and increase their attention span to make this work,” he concluded.

He also showed a short video and had a discussion of a website that will come on-line in January. This is called PipelineNC. It will offer employers a place to post, interactively, job listings they have along with skill requirements, educational levels and other pertinent information. The neat thing about the site is that a person can fill out an inquiry about a job and get an idea of what they need to do in order to be able to fill that job. Once the employer posts his requirements, the site will search new applicants as they post information and provide recommendations to the employer about applicants that might be able to fulfill the job requirements.

The site will allow employers to post photos and/or movies of the jobs they have. The site will also offer assessments that a prospective employee can take to assess their fitness for a particular job. In addition to personal information, applicants will be able to post traditional resumes as well as video resumes. All of this comes under the BRAC RTF umbrella.