A few weeks into his new position as town manager, Daniel Stines is eager to help Spruce Pine along the road to recovery from Hurricane Helene (downgraded to a tropical storm after slowing down over land).
Stines said that under current circumstances, his priority is not to pursue major changes but to make sure the town can simply continue making progress.
“I think keeping the train on the track is probably the most important,” he said.
One of the challenges facing Spruce Pine, he said, is making town government a good place for talented people to work.
“The North Carolina League of Municipalities dropped all local governments from insurance, so we’re readdressing all that,” he said. “So, making sure the house is taken care of, so to speak — the internal part — because without our staff we don’t have a town to even try to build back — that is a top priority.”
Stines is also concerned that some of Spruce Pine’s ordinances need to be updated.
“I want to make sure that our ordinances are in a position to help our town build back in a manner that’s pleasant, that we have the right criteria in place to bring businesses in and maintain parking standards, for instance, and maintain walkability and maintain the quality-of-life components that the town needs to have,” he said. “Our current ordinances are a little weak in that regard — it’s like any town that’s an older town or has some history to it.”
Stines said he and his family have enjoyed settling into their new home in Spruce Pine. His wife, Lauren, is a former youth minister who homeschools their children, and they have joined a local homeschool co-op to connect the family with other children.
Stines came to Spruce Pine from Blythewood, South Carolina, the latest in a series of local-government administrative positions. He decided to apply for the Spruce Pine position while on a family trip after Hurricane Helene, looking for opportunities to help with disaster recovery. The town council voted at the end of January to hire Stines with a salary of $90,000.
The most significant challenges facing Stines right now are directly related to storm damage, such as repairing critical infrastructure and making sure the town is on track to receive reimbursements from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the work being done.
Stines has dealt with flood recovery before, while working for the city of Morganton, and he has experience dealing with FEMA in that context.
Flood recovery is not all drudgery, however — Stines is also working on plans for replacing the historic footbridge between downtown Spruce Pine and the flooded Riverside Park, which is also undergoing restoration.
The new bridge will have to be significantly different from the old bridge, to comply with more modern regulations, such as the federal Americans with Disabilities Act.
“That was an inverted trestle bridge that we had before, meaning all of the metal, all the mass was beneath you, and then you just had handrails over top,” Stines said. “The new bridge is most likely — I’m not a bridge engineer — but most likely that will be a more traditional trestle-style bridge where the mass will come above you.”
To keep the bridge high enough to allow trains to pass underneath and be accessible for wheelchair use, there is a possibility that the bridge will span Upper Street (Oak Avenue) and the parking area at the Pinebridge building, rather than ending with stairs going down directly to the park.
“It’s going to look like an entirely different bridge,” Stines said. “They’re going to want it a minimum of one foot above the latest flood event, which was much higher than it was before.”
Stines said there will be subcommittees established and public forums scheduled to figure out how best to meet the community’s needs with both the bridge and the restoration plans for flooded parks.
“It’ll be a public process and it won’t be done in a vacuum,” he said. “Parks and green spaces bring natural rejuvenation to people. The town and the citizens deserve that — bringing families back, bringing green space back.”