At the risk of making a lot of people angry and receiving the ire of many, I would like to address the “elephant” in the county which not many want to talk about.

Pasquotank Commissioner Cecil Perry seems to be extremely unhappy of late. First, he wants to redesign the districts to elect commissioners in the county; now he is unhappy with the county Board of Elections. Unless I misunderstand Mr. Perry’s opinion, he feels the black population of this county is not adequately represented because of the percentage of black elected officials does not match the percentage of black residents. If he truly believes that decisions are made solely based on race and not what is best for the county, is he then in fact telling us that his first consideration is based on race and not what is best for the county?

Before Mr. Perry starts pushing for quotas based on race or ethnicity perhaps he should consider the entire population? I wonder just how far he wants to go. What about the growing Latino population? What about the Asian population? We could go further and get into religious affiliation, or we could really get technical and take into consideration Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, etc.

For Mr. Perry to imply that elected officials make decisions first based on race and then based on what is best for the community is insulting to those officials. Perhaps Mr. Perry should focus his efforts on encouraging more people he wants to see in office to actually run for office.

I don’t know about Mr. Perry, but I’m an American first and always. I will vote for the person I believe will do the best job; I don’t care if that person is blue with orange stripes. I truly believe Mr. Perry’s continual complaints do more to harm the cohesiveness of the community than anything else.

And while I’m on my soapbox, the Albemarle Hospital Authority Board of Commissioners must not let dollar signs cloud their judgment and give our hospital away for 30 or 40 years. Think about the long-term ElectriCities agreement that Elizabeth City and other cities signed. Do hospital board members want to be remembered as fondly as the group that bestowed us with ElectriCities?

SUSAN HAINES

Elizabeth City