A. The fast answer is no – you can’t walk away – especially if it is a “deeded” timeshare, said Kathy Graham, president/CEO of the based Better Business Bureau of Coastal Carolina.

“It would be just like walking away from a mortgage. Many people fall for one of the most popular scams out there where a ‘company’ will sell your timeshare — do not fall for this either!” Graham said.

There are ways to get out, Graham said, “but you will never get back the money put in.”

“At best, you can sign over the deed, a very specific process, and be free of the annual fees. You can always call your local BBB for more information and to find legitimate companies to assist,” Graham said.

The Conway, S.C.-based BBB of Coastal Carolina can be contacted at (843) 488-2227. Questions and inquiries can be directed to bbbinfo@coastalcarolina.bbb.org

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Sometimes bears show up where they’re not supposed to be. A Florida couple photographed this bear at their swimming pool in Gainesville in May 2013. Halifax Media photo.

Q. How can a bear have been terrorizing neighborhoods off Middle Sound Loop Road with minimal press coverage, no warning (other than amongst residents and social media) to the general public in the area, and the county saying they can’t do anything other than send out animal control for calls (which takes too long – it is gone by the time they show up). Do we need a pet or child killed before the county takes this seriously?

A. Lt. B.C. Evers of the New Hanover Animal control is aware of the bear situation. Unfortunately the local animal control department does not have the resources to deal with such an animal. Doing so requires a permit and specific equipment needed to relocate the bear. He knows that people are worried and has alerted the N.C. Wildlife offices about the problem.

After talking to a representative of the N.C. Wildlife division who declined to give his name, a few details have come to light. Bears are commonplace around our area. The fact that one has been roaming a populated area suggests that it has found a food source in the area. Once a bear finds an easy food source, it is likely to return again and again.

This leads to the problem of getting rid of it. One problem is that a bear is like a cat or dog separated from its home. If it is relocated, it can easily find it’s way back. Another problem is the human factor. A bear is lazy and eats the easiest meal. We allow their meals to be very easy.

The N.C. Wildlife representative suggests speaking to the local food businesses about putting locks on the dumpsters or finding ways of making them bear-proof. Bears will give up if something is too difficult. Also, he suggests that locals wash out their trash cans with bleach every couple of weeks.

If you should happen to come across a bear, do take caution. A bear if very dangerous and is protective of its food. There is also the possibility that a mother may be protecting her cubs. Do not approach the bear or be aggressive towards it. The best course of action is to contact the New Hanover Animal Control at 798-6700. They will do what they can to help.

For more information, contact the N.C. Wildlife Division at 1-800-662-7137.

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NHCS spokesperson Valita Quattlebaum said that the amount collected by local churches this fiscal year is $22,283.

The district currently has three churches that rent space in schools for their services.

“The income from these property rentals covers both the costs associated with the use of our facilities and it generates revenue for the district,” Quattlebaum said.

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On the CFS site, you will find links to other singles sites like the “Young-People-Singles-Chillin-Night-Lets-Meet-Beach-Night” group found at www.meetup.com/Young-People-Singles-Chillin-Night-Lets-Meet-Beach-Night/ and the “20-and-30-Somethings-Out-About –Town” group found at www.meetup.com/20-and-30-Somethings-Out-About-Town/.

There’s Wilmington Dining Adventurists (www.meetup.com/Wilmington-Dining-Adventurists/). This group (we called it a “singles group” until we receives the Comment below) focuses on what their name alludes to, food. The Dining Adventurists try out new restaurants and venues together. They have 319 members

Wilmington Singles On the Go (http://www.meetup.com/Wilmington-Singles-On-the-Go/) is a group of singles that live life to its fullest with group hiking, biking, kayaking, camping, white water river rafting, and weekend adventure trips. They have just over 350 members.

Many Wilmington churches have singles small groups and Sunday School classes. Check out, Port City Community Church at www.portcitychurch.org/, Scott’s Hill Baptist Church at www.scottshill.org/, Rock Church at rockwilmington.com/, Life Community Church at www.lifecc.com/, and Lifepoint Church at lifepointnow.com/.

Do you know of another club geared toward singles? Let us know in the Comments section below.

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John Kelly uses his metal detector to see what he can find at Wrightsville Beach on Jan. 2, 2008. Kelly, from Kure Beach, is a member of Carolina Relic and Beach Hunting Society. StarNews photo by Mike Spencer.

According to Kemp Burdette, executive Director of Cape Fear River Watch, it is legal to charter a boat to the lower Cape Fear Islands.

“You can legally charter a boat to the islands,” says Burdette said.

“If you were to be using a metal detector it is important that you first know if the island is public or private. There are several private and public islands as well as some that are both,” Burdette said.

Burdette’s main concern about metal detecting on public islands is the chance that a historic artifact might be found.

“If someone were to find an historic cannon on public property, the state may try to make the artifact public property,” Burdette said.

It is important to make sure to do your research on where you plan to be using the metal detector. Always know who the land belongs to and if you have or need permission to be on the property.

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Are people allowed on Battery Island, in the Cape Fear River just off Southport?

A sign warns motorists to slow down before driving over a speed hump on High Street in Spartanburg. Halifax Media photo.

Q. Are speed bumps to slow traffic now illegal in Wilmington? I understand that emergency vehicles traveling through a development at 25 mph may have to slow to 15 mph, but will the death of an unsuspecting child be worth that minimal decrease in speed?

A. The city of Wilmington no longer allows new speed bumps, City Planning Manager Ron Satterfield said in 2012. Even private streets have to be constructed to city standards, he said.

Speed bumps increase wear and tear on vehicles and decrease emergency response time, said Mike Kozlosky, the executive director of the Wilmington Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization. And instead of solving a problem, they tend to shift it to another street, he said in 2012. The city developed long-term recommendations for alternatives to speed bumps such as chokers, which are curb extensions that help slow traffic. In Wilmington, they are visible in Sunset Park, Creekwood South and Pine Valley, Kozlosky said.

Also in 2012, the New Hanover County Commissioners voted to require neighborhoods that want speed bumps or humps on private roads to get the county’s permission first. The policy was designed to guide neighborhoods that feel they need traffic control devices and prevent neighborhoods from installing poorly designed speed bumps. In 2009, the N.C. General Assembly directed the N.C. Department of Transportation to establish a procedure for installing traffic calming devices on state-maintained roads within subdivisions. The regulations required neighborhoods to meet prescribed standards before installing speed bumps.

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A. The city launched the health clinic in 2006 to accomplish several objectives, said Malissa Talbert, a city spokeswoman.

For one, the city wanted to provide a cost-effective way for employees to access basic healthcare without having to take a lot of time off work, Talbert said. The clinic also fit into the goals of the city’s wellness initiative designed to find ways to maintain or reduce health care costs.

“Having a clinic like this helps reach that goal,” Talbert said. “It’s really to help those employees with preventative care or those employees who have significant health conditions to try to avoid getting into a situation where you’re going to need extensive health care.”

The preventative care can help avoid situations where employees have major health events that keep them out of work for a lengthy period of time. In the 2011-12 fiscal year, 72 percent of clinic visits were related to chronic disease management, according to city records.

The clinic, which is also available to the families of employees, is designed as a standalone operation to help the city adhere to federal healthcare privacy laws, Talbert said.

The city hires a third party company to staff and run the clinic and chooses the company based on a competitive bid process, Talbert said. The city paid $300,000 to operate the clinic in the 2011-12 fiscal year, which Talbert said is the most current information available.

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The reason North Carolina has not received FiOS is because of the corporate merger that occurred between Frontier Communications and Verizon in May 2009, which caused Frontier to gain control over Verizon.

Frontier signed an $8.6 billion agreement with Verizon to acquire 4.8 million landlines for states that have Verizon services. One of the states was North Carolina, which means Frontier will decide when FIOS will be incorporated into North Carolina.

Verizon FIOS is a bundled service, which includes Internet access, telephone and television services. FIOS is operated over a fiber optic communications network.

NOTE: We’ve actually answered this question twice before. Here’s how Wayne Faulkner answered it on Nov. 13, 2009.

Verizon Communications will not be offering Fios in the Wilmington area.

They only offer it in the 16 states where they historically have offered Verizon land line phone service, says Bob Elek, spokesman for Verizon Communications in Tampa.

A note: Verizon Communications is a separate company from Verizon Wireless.

Elek says that Verizon Communications will not offer Fios even in the areas of North Carolina where it has customers — Raleigh/Durham, for example.

And here’s how Burke Speaker answered it on July 14, 2009:

Fiber-based Wireline (FiOS) is one of the fatest-growing parts of the Verizon landline business, but don’t expect it to grow into Wilmington or even North Carolina any day soon.

“Verizon has no plans at this time to deploy FiOS in North Carolina,” said Sandy Arnette, the media relations manager for Verizon’s Southeast Region.

Dubbed “the internet service that keeps pace with your life,” FiOS is a broadband service designed to provide Internet access with maximum connection speeds, found in more densely populated markets.

Although North Carolina will not be a recipient of this new service, Verizon does have plans to divest its wireline businesses in 14 states to Frontier Communications, a premier rural communications provider, and the state is a part of this transaction.

“We will be the largest provider of voice, broadband and video services focused on rural to smaller city markets in the United States,” said Maggie Wilderotter, Frontier’s chairman and chief executive officer. “We are confident that we can dramatically accelerate the penetration of broadband in these new markets.”

The anticipated transaction date is May 2010 and includes Verizon’s switched and special access lines, as well as its Internet service and long-distance voice accounts. The services of Verizon Wireless is not included in this transaction.

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Old Baldy lighthouse on Bald Head Island is a piece of history that draws thousands of people each year. StarNews file photo.

Susan Grantier, program coordinator for the Old Baldy Foundation, said no records or blueprints explain why the top of the Bald Head Island Lighthouse is offset, but she offered a few guesses:

“The tower itself was supposed to be a specific height with walls a certain width, 5 feet thick at the base, for instance,” Grantier said in an email. “Once that was capped, the lantern room was built on top and an access hatch was cut into the capped roof. The placement of this hatch, as well as the need for more structural support from load-bearing walls, made it necessary that the lantern room be placed off to one side, close to the lip. This also gave more space around it for the light keeper to go outside and make repairs, clean the windows, etc. There used to be a metal railing around the light.”

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Pine Valley was created by Alex Trask out of the lettuce farm that his father, George Trask, had found his earliest major success in. George Trask was the first ever to ship lettuce out of New Hanover County, in fact to New York City. Using careful husbandry and thoughtful innovation, he could offer the first lettuce in a given market, and command the best prices. Eventually the Trask family would turn most of their sizable holdings of farmland into Wilmington neighborhoods, schools, and parks.

In a StarNews 1977 advertisement (it was called the Star-News back then, with a hyphen), new homes in Pine Valley Estates were on “Donald E. Gore Drive, John D. Barry Drive, John S. Mosby Drive, and Semmes Drive.” Barry and Semmes were brigadier generals in the Confederate army, and Mosby was a colonel. But who was Donald E. Gore?

Donald Elwin Gore was not a Confederate commander, but a builder. He was mentioned as a Realtor active in Pine Valley Estates in a 1967 StarNews ad, but by 1968 he was half of the Trask-Gore Construction Co. Alex Trask was the other half.

Donald E. Gore Drive is a single block stretching between (Major General) Jeb Stuart and (Brigadier General) George Anderson Drives. There are 25 lots here, most with a “brick veneer ranch” style house. The first six houses were built in 1976, then nine in 1977, then five in 1978, and four in 1979. One last house, at #350, was built in 1993, after some controversy involving a planned Group Home there.

The longest-term resident, who moved into his then-new house in 1978, confirmed that there were just a few empty lots remaining then.

(The City Directory cannot be relied upon here. It first lists Donald E. Gore Drive in 1978, but only as a street intersecting George Anderson Drive. Addresses and occupants are not listed until the 1983 City Directory, the year that Pine Valley was annexed, after much opposition, by the City of Wilmington.)

However, Donald E. Gore built none of the 25 houses on the Drive named for him, for he died on the last day of 1973, just 50 years old. His own home, at 25 Bedford Forest Drive, was on a prime lot, the tip of a cul-de-sac which juts deep into the course. His wife Nan Whitfield Gore died at age 54 in 1978. Their only child, Nan, born in 1957, sold this property, stayed in Wilmington for quite a few years, and now resides in the Outer Banks area. She stated that she remembers well the street named for her father.

Donald Gore is not the only builder and partner of Alex Trask who is memorialized with a Drive in Pine Valley Estates. On April 2, 2010, a related MyReporter answer, “What does the R.L. in R. L. Honeycutt Drive stand for?” was posted. Renius L. Honeycutt built most of the homes on R. L. Honeycutt Drive, according to his grandson Hal Overby, Jr. Hal’s information is contained in his comment on the MyReporter answer.

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 Why are all the streets in Pine Valley named for Confederates?

A. We queried several N.C. Department of Transportation officials, and none were aware of the marker’s location.

“Our current records at the Division Office do not have anything related to this marker,” said Katherine Hite, traffic engineer for NCDOT Division 3.

If anyone knows more about that marker, let us know in the Comments section below.

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A. Advertising messages are not allowed to be attached to any traffic control devices including signs and traffic signals, said Katherine Hite, traffic engineer for the N.C. Department of Transportation Division 3.

“This restriction comes from the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, which NCDOT is required to adhere to when installing and maintaining all traffic control devices,” Hite said.

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The complex will have one- and two-bedroom units in four stories built above a 135-space parking deck.

Tom Davis, owner of City Block Apartments LLC, said when the project was announced early last year that one-bedroom, one-bath apartments would start at $925 a month and two-bedroom, two-bath units at $1,200.

Some will have river views.

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What happened to the plans to build a CMS Food Solutions plant in Leland?

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CMS Food Solutions lost a customer, delaying completion of its Leland facility, said Jim Bradshaw, executive director of the Brunswick County Economic Development Commission. It originally had been scheduled to be done by the end of 2012, he said.

But CMS has found three other customers and things are “proceeding well,” Bradshaw said, adding that he had spoken with CMS’ president last week.

In 2011, the governor’s office announced that CMS would open a plant in Leland and employ 52 people.

The company bought the 60,000-square-foot former Southport Boat Works building in the Leland Industrial Park. The project was to receive a $32,000 grant from the state’s One North Carolina Fund and Brunswick County was to match the grant with $32,000 a year for three years.

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A.WECT-TV’s newscasters often stand while delivering the local news. According to Scott Saxton, news director for WECT & Fox Wilmington, it’s a matter of logistics.

“Our anchors move around a lot and need to be mobile,” he said.

Scott Pickey, news director for WWAY NewsChannel 3, said that station’s anchors are seated for most of the newscast.

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“We will check to make sure all our sensors are functioning,” he said.

What drivers might be seeing is the delay in the sensors, which can be perceived that they are not working correctly.

Bennett said there are three approaches to the intersection with arrows. On Third St. the detectors are located at the stop bar in the left turn lane.

The detectors have a delay, and the arrow will only come on after the lane is occupied for a certain amount of time.

He added that the left westbound turn arrow has a detector located a few car lengths back from the stop bar.

“Since this is a shared left and through lane, we would not want a couple of through cars bringing up the left turn arrow,” he said in an email.

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A. The New Hanover County Maintenance Unit is responsible for the roadside mowing on state-maintained routes.

“Piner and Grissom Road should be mowed this week, if not already, as the mowing contractor begin his operation throughout the county last week,” said Gerard M. Taylor, county maintenance engineer for the N.C. Department of Transportation’s Division of Highways.

N.C. DOT’s New Hanover County Maintenance office can be contacted in regard to roadway deficiencies at (910) 341.0500.

“Generally a more efficient response time is provided” by doing so, Taylor said.

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The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Diligence docks on Water Street when it’s in port. StarNews photo by Paul Stephen.

The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Diligence will be open for public tours for the remainder of this week and through Mother’s Day weekend before launching its next patrol, according to Lt. Junior Grade Ted Bourny.

The ship’s crew has not yet received word on its final day in port, but expects to launch early next week (the week of May 13), Bourny said. The Port City-based cutter was closed to the public for much of the spring because of maintenance. Tours typically are conducted between 1 and 5 p.m. daily.

The Diligence is a 210-foot medium-endurance cutter with a crew of approximately 75. It provides offshore search and rescue response and enforces commercial fishing vessel safety regulations, among other duties.

For more information on the ship and its operations, visit: www.facebook.com/pages/USCGC-DILIGENCE-WMEC-616/54395927989

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