North Wilkesboro Town Board members voted unanimously to approve the lease agreement for Wilkes Regional Medical Center, and agreement that had been in negotiations since late last fall when the board chose the Hospital Operating Board to lease the facility for the next 30 years.



The Winston-Salem Journal reports that with the lease in place, the hospital board will initiate a new long-term management agreement with Carolinas HealthCare Systems of Charlotte for day-to-day operations of the hospital. An agreement will also be in place for Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center to help expand clinical programs and recruit physicians and other medical personnel.



In making its selection, the town board rejected a bid by a for-profit hospital company that would have paid lump-sum payment of $51 million.



It also turned down a proposal from Novant Health, a nonprofit company based in Winston-Salem. The company's hospitals include Forsyth Medical Center. Novant had offered annual lease payments of $1 million a year. Hearings during the hospital-lease process drew hundreds of people to a series of meetings. Many speakers said they favored keeping local control.



The lease decision drew a standing-room only crowd to the town commission meeting in October, with the issue decided by a single vote. After that, it was a matter of working out the details, and the audience was small at Tuesday night's meeting for the vote that approved the new lease. Wilkes Regional will pay $1 million to the town for the initial lease. Annual lease payments will be at least $600,000, with the actual amount based on net revenues.

The owner of a Wilkes roofing company faces charges of defrauding at least one customer, and perhaps several more. Wilkesboro Police have filed a charge of obtaining property by false pretenses against Dwayne Smith in relation to an incident where a woman prepaid him for work that he never did. His business is known as Affordable Roofing Systems.



In September, we told you about an incident where Smith was alleged to have been paid more than one thousand dollars to do a roof for someone, but then never showing up to complete the job. At the time, the incident was referred to the civil court system, and the victim filed a small claims court action against Smith.



Since then, he has missed three separate small claims hearings on the case, and it went back to police Wednesday. The victim signed a complaint on the misdemeanor charge, but police are discussing with the D-A's office possibly upgrading the charge because they say Mr. Smith has a history of similar incidents. A search of our records finds at least one other case in which Smith is reported to have been prepaid for a job and then not done the work.

A Wilkes homeowner says someone kicked in her front door Wednesday and stole almost 11-hundred dollars worth of property. 26-year old Angela Adams and her roommate, 23-year old Tracy Baity, went to Baity's mother's house Wednesday evening to play cards.



When they got back to their house on Byrd Ridge Road about 9 that evening, they found the front door of the house kicked in. The thief grabbed a bunch of items that can be pawned easily for quick cash, including two jewelry boxes, a DVD and VHS combo player, a CD player and several CDs, 30 DVD's, and a necklace worth about 100-dollars.



Neither woman says she has any idea who might have broken into their house. The case remains under investigation.

Wilkes county deputies have released the list of crimes cleared and property recovered in a recent raid on a house in Wilkesboro. Gene Wayne Haymond, who turned 36 last weekend, was arrested two weeks ago today when deputies, along with Wilkesboro Police, North Wilkesboro Police and Ashe county deputies raided his home at 515 Corporation Street.



At the time, they said his arrest would solve more than a dozen burglaries in Wilkes county. The reports on those cases were released today, and total exactly one dozen crimes, spanning much of the last half of last year. More than 37-thousand dollars worth of property has been cataloged and identified by burglary victims in the past two weeks, and Haymond faces a litany of charges. Many of the items were stolen from houses under construction, but other items taken included a laptop computer and a 50-inch cut riding mower.

A Miller's Creek man is dead, after he lost control on Hiwghway 18 this morning and crashed with another pickup. John Wayne Bullis was driving his 1985 Ford Pickup southbound on 18 near Mountain Valley Church Road about 11:30 this morning. He went off the road to the right and over-corrected, pulling back onto the road and across the center line. There he collided with a 2000 Dodge Driven by Boyce Thomas Galloway of North Wilkesboro.



Highway Patrol Trooper Joe Rankin tells me Mr. Bullis died on impact. Rescuers had to extricate his body from the crushed pickup cab. Mr. Galloway was taken by ambulance to Wilkes Regional Medical Center, and his injuries are not life-threatening. Highway 18 was closed form Mountain Valley Church Road to Windy Ridge Road for a little over an hour while the scene was cleaned up.