I was born here, raised here, and I intend to stay here. I am not running because I wanted to be a politician. I am running because after 18+ months of documented, evidence-based requests to city and state agencies, the people responsible for protecting this community have chosen not to act.
Everything I am, I owe to her - MSgt. Joan R. McGillem, USMC (Ret.); I call her Mama Bear. She still substitutes at Havelock Elementary and Havelock Middle, two of the schools on the corridor I am fighting for. Her students walk these roads.
Background
Lifelong Havelock native and taxpayer. CDL-A holder with Hazmat and Tanker endorsements. Owned and operated a Havelock home repair company - seven employees at its close when COVID hit. Current family caregiver. AAS Cybersecurity & Networking student at Craven Community College, a top National Cyber League competitor.
What I Bring
A lifetime on these roads - every inch of woods, street, and railroad in this town. I have cared for Havelock's parents and grandparents as a CNA, and spent twenty years building and repairing its homes. I have also seen enough of everywhere else (nearly all of the lower 48 behind the wheel, a handful of countries beyond); I know what a town looks like when it puts its own people first. I will live with the results of every decision right alongside my neighbors.
My Commitment
A more peaceful and prosperous Havelock: public money spent with clear, itemized accountability, and taxpayers receiving every service they already pay for. And I will answer every constituent email within one week, with a quick acknowledgment sooner.
Standing
I am not asking Havelock to trust my word. I am asking Havelock to read the record. Every claim on this site is documented. Every number is sourced. Every letter is in my sent folder.
Platform
Five things to start. All of them specific.
01Enforce the ordinances already on the books before writing new ones. Havelock's noise and traffic ordinances are quality-of-life laws - they decide whether a street is livable. The problem is not the law; it is the will to apply it equally to everyone.
02Force the McCotter Boulevard safety question into the open. McCotter is a state road, so a city can't reroute it alone, but the seat can put a documented safety case in front of NCDOT and refuse to let it be ignored. Five schools within walking distance, and two four-lane roads built for commercial traffic barely over a mile away: Roosevelt Boulevard about 1.2 miles, and the US-70 / Fontana intersection about 1.3 miles. The honest limit: I will write NCDOT under my own name every two weeks and bring the evidence to the board; whether the board joins me is their recorded vote.
03Answer every constituent email within one week, with a quick acknowledgment sooner. Constituents deserve a government that actually responds - not one that treats a question as a nuisance. This is the floor, not the ceiling.
04Improve HPD training on ordinance enforcement. Not to punish officers - to give them clear, consistent direction so that a plainly audible violation produces a consistent response, not a judgment call that varies by shift.
05YOU! Your needs, questions, and suggestions, all heard and on the record. My communication is open not just for complaints, but also for Suggestions or Inquiry. I Intend to Keep myself available to ALL of Havelock on a regular and open basis.
How I'd Govern
Pay for results. Not for a title.
One Open Standard
I do not measure a decision by whether I think it is right or wrong. That is not my call to make for you. I measure it by one thing: open to read, or not. Ten years from now, a resident should be able to pull the record and see exactly what we did and why, and decide for themselves.
I am one vote of five. I cannot pass anything alone, and I will not pretend I can. What I can do is put things on the floor and make every commissioner vote them up or down, in public, on the record. A recorded vote is how you, the people, finally get to see who stands where.
I will not hand you a list of cuts I have not earned the right to name. I do not yet know exactly where every dollar goes, and that is precisely why I want in. I will read every line of the budget, and where I find a dollar that is not serving the people doing the work, I will say so on the record, with the receipts.
City-Manager Pay: Reward Results, Not Titles
Havelock has hired five city managers in thirty years and paid top-of-market the whole time - yet the pipes still burst and the roads still crumble. Paying more did not buy competence.
The last manager left with a $287,415.19 exit package, approved in a closed session and drawn from the General Fund - Board of Commissioners minutes, October 20, 2025. That is roughly ten times Havelock's per-capita income of $29,099. The city is now advertising the next manager at $185,000 to $230,000 - in a town where about one in seven residents lives in poverty.
When I worked for the city's own public utilities and our crew asked for a raise, the department head told us the city couldn't compete with bigger towns' pay. Fair math for a small town - but the same city pays its manager like a rich one. Two rulebooks: one for the people doing the work, one for the top.
The reform is simple. A base scaled to our budget and comparable to towns our size, with additional pay earned through incentives tied to independently audited savings that do not cut the services residents already pay for. If the city thrives, the manager thrives. Make their stake the same as ours.
And one open standard on the spending itself, applied to everyone equally. Any payout over $100,000 gets an advertised public hearing and a written, plain-English reason entered into the record before the vote. No burying it in a consent agenda or a special meeting nobody knows about.
Everything else the city spends, down to the routine vendor transactions, gets posted in plain English where any resident can pull it up. No meeting required. Just open. The honest limit: I am one of five, so what I can promise is to put this on the floor and make every commissioner vote it up or down in public.
Jobs First - Growth Worth Something
I don't measure growth in rooftops on a map. Havelock needs real careers - manufacturing, skilled trades, cybersecurity, and a deeper supply-line partnership with Cherry Point - work you can raise a family on, not another shift of minimum-wage retail. Settle the quality-of-life questions first, then grow on purpose. Residents before commerce, every time.
Here is a concrete first step: an open, outcome-weighted apprenticeship grant for Havelock businesses. Under the state's Local Development Act (G.S. 158-7.1), the city can pay an economic-development grant to Havelock businesses that train local apprentices, capped at four or five per business. A base grant for a documented, completed training term, and a larger grant when the apprentice passes an actual certification. The base pays the shop for putting in the hours and teaching the trade; the bonus rewards a real credential earned. Priority to Havelock kids. Funded from existing economic-development dollars, with the amounts set at a public hearing and a recorded vote.
The honest limit: the city does not run the schools. Craven County does. So I cannot put a program in a classroom by myself. What I can do is convene the partners, from the college to the trades to Cherry Point, champion a studied pilot publicly, and stand up the out-of-school apprenticeship programs the city does control.
Why I Have To Run
Because nobody else will.
"We did not buy a home in a construction zone. NCDOT is now saying it is one. Nobody asked us. Nobody told us. Nobody answered when we called."
When the US 70 Havelock Bypass opened in December 2025, commercial truck traffic was quietly redirected onto McCotter Boulevard - a residential road with no sidewalks, no shoulders, and five schools within walking distance. On my own timestamped video I have counted more than 80 commercial trucks in under four hours on this corridor. At the posted 35 mph, a loaded truck needs roughly 80 to 120 feet to stop - far more than a car, and more still on a wet road.
I did not go looking for this fight. But if no one else will consider the risk against the reward, then I have to. Along this one road there are homes, residential traffic, and pedestrians. Within walking distance - according to the county GIS maps - there are five schools. Three public parks sit on the corridor too - two children's parks and a dog park - and one gate stands permanently open onto McCotter, about 90 feet from the roadway. Every one of those setbacks sits inside the distance a loaded truck needs to stop. I am asking the city to weigh all of that against ONE extra minute of travel for a commercial driver to take one of two alternate routes.
NCDOT says it sees no safety issue. But look at the road itself: two lanes, no shoulders, and driveways that open straight onto the pavement - while a four-lane alternate built for this kind of traffic sits about a minute away. A residential street built like this was never meant to carry routine commercial trucks. The geometry is the problem.
The corridor at a glance - my own route assessment as a CDL-A, hazmat- and tanker-endorsed OTR & Local driver. 5 Schools, 3 public parks, 100+ homes versus ONE extra minute of travel time for people who are paid to drive! As a responsible caring CDL-A holder, the decision is VERY simple to me.
While the safety of our citizens is the primary concern, there is also the quality of life of hundreds of residents to consider. Across the FOIA periods I have documented, Havelock police logged 87 loud-noise calls for service and produced just 6 enforcement actions. In the two weeks around Christmas and New Year, nine of those calls came in - and produced a single criminal summons. In that same window the same officers issued 45 other citations and warnings - not one of them for noise. The noise complaint logged on McCotter Boulevard that same window produced nothing.
And I tried every other path first. I filed complaints, sent emails, made calls, and submitted FOIA requests. I bought a calibrated Type 2 sound level meter, learned to use it, and logged over 150,000 A-weighted measurements. I contacted FHWA, NCDOT, the City, HPD, the DA's office, state legislators, and three members of the U.S. Congress.
A word about "The Sound of Freedom".
Havelock exists because of MCAS Cherry Point. The jets are loud. They are proud. And every single person who lives here signed that contract the day they moved in - the sound of freedom is non-negotiable, and it is welcome. I would not trade it for anything.
What is not in that contract is inconsiderate civilian vehicles with modified exhausts, booming audio systems, and jake brakes echoing down a residential corridor at all hours. The jets are lawful, and they are welcomed. A straight-pipe rattling a residential street is a violation of the ordinance already on the books - at noon and at 2 A.M. The city ordinance does not set a time on "plainly audible". The difference between the two is not volume. It is that one is protected and the other has simply gone unenforced.
And a straight-piped exhaust is NOT anyone's "Freedom." When one driver's noise takes away a whole street's right to open a window, enjoy a backyard, or sleep - on streets we fund with our own taxes - that is not Liberty being exercised. That is Liberty being taken.Your Freedom ends where your neighbor's begins. That is the oldest American rule there is.
"We accepted the sound of military service. We did not accept the sound of willful indifference."
I am running because I have tried everything else, because this is a town worth fighting for, and because the people on McCotter Boulevard - and every residential street in Havelock - deserve a commissioner who has read the ordinances, knows the statutes, and will not stop asking until somebody answers.
I am not running to start a political career. I am running to end 18+ months of willful negligence.
The Issues
What this campaign is actually about.
CMV Traffic on Residential Roads
McCotter Boulevard is a school walking route; it has been my whole life - I walked these roads to HMS/HHS myself. It is a bus corridor with no sidewalks, no shoulders, homes about 70 feet from the travel lanes, five schools and three public parks nearby - including a children's park whose gate stands open about 90 feet from the pavement. Since the US 70 bypass opened, it has absorbed commercial truck overflow it was never designed to handle. McCotter is a state-maintained road (SR-1824), so a city cannot reroute it on its own - under N.C.G.S. § 136-66.1 and § 160A-296 that authority belongs to NCDOT, and NCDOT has told me the trucks' weight is legal. So this is not a fight about tonnage; it is about safety and geometry. What a commissioner can do is force the question into the open: a Board resolution, a documented safety case, and a formal demand that NCDOT and the Division 2 Engineer answer it. I don't promise a reroute - I promise to force the safety question into the open.
NCDOT's own Environmental Impact Statement says the US-70 Havelock Bypass was built to remove through-traffic from Havelock. NCDOT projected that roughly 18,800 to 22,900 vehicles a day would shift off US-70 through town onto the bypass. That is a projection, not a measured count: the bypass opened December 19, 2025, and no post-opening traffic counts exist yet. Its southern end ties back into US-70 right at McCotter Boulevard.
Along that one residential route: children's playgrounds and ball fields sitting 30 to 80 feet off the pavement, over a hundred families including several apartment complexes, and an in-home daycare whose location puts the route inside its safety buffer. Craven County's own GIS draws a 1,000-foot protective buffer around every school and daycare. The truck route runs straight through them.
How I would push it, as one vote of five: write NCDOT under my own name every two weeks asking the same question; bring the evidence to the board and ask my fellow commissioners to sign a single letter from the full board requesting the reroute; and if NCDOT keeps ignoring it, ask the city attorney to put the request in a formal letter on the city's behalf. The ask costs the city nothing: reclassify the route, restrict heavy commercial trucks (3+ axle) on McCotter, and post a couple of signs at each end. One extra minute of travel for a commercial driver to use a road built for it.
Noise: The Ordinances Exist. The Enforcement Doesn't.
Havelock City Code § 93.04(B)(7) prohibits vehicle audio plainly audible outside the vehicle - no measurement, no equipment, no exemption required. Modified exhausts are covered separately: § 93.04(B)(2), and N.C.G.S. § 20-128, the state exhaust statute, which carries no exemptions whatsoever. Straight-piped exhausts are plainly audible even through closed walls and windows.
This is not a nuisance complaint - it is a documented health problem. Peer-reviewed research links chronic traffic and community noise to heart disease, stroke, and disrupted sleep, and flags intermittent noise - like passing trucks and exhaust - as a cardiovascular risk (UC Davis 2025). Low-frequency bass passes through walls and closed windows, impairs higher-order thinking, and is under-counted by the standard A-weighted meters cities rely on (Liang et al., BMC Public Health 2024). That is exactly the noise the plainly audible standard in § 93.04(B)(7) is written to reach - and exactly the noise going uncited. When the ordinance already covers the harm, enforcement is the only protection residents have.
In the three most recent documented periods - February through August 2026, about six months - 37 noise complaints were logged citywide and not one citation was issued. Period after period, the city's own records custodian confirmed in writing that no noise citations or warnings were written at all. This is not a resource problem. It is a choice.
Local-First Spending
The police department is one of the largest appropriations in our city budget - and that is fine, if we receive the services we pay for. The record shows officers producing citations for expired tags, inspections, and insurance - paperwork that does nothing to make a street quieter or safer - while the ordinances that actually protect residents' quality of life go unenforced. Our officers' time belongs to Havelock's residents first.
The same principle runs through the whole budget. We pay city and county taxes separately for a reason: the city's resources belong to the people who live here. Havelock's money serves Havelock's people - before Raleigh, before tourists, before anyone who does not live here.
Accountability and Transparency
Residents deserve to know what their government is and is not doing. FOIA requests should not be the only way to find out that a road was never studied, that a noise complaint was never acted on, or that an enforcement directive produced less enforcement. Documentation requests are not adversarial acts - they are citizenship.
Property Rights and Quality of Life
The homes on the residential streets and lanes along the McCotter Boulevard corridor were purchased with a reasonable expectation of what that neighborhood would be. That expectation was changed without notice, without study, and without consent - by decisions made by people who do not live here. Government action that destroys the use and enjoyment of private property has a name. Not unlike United States v. Causby (1946), residents have a right to what they paid for.
The Data
This is not opinion. This is the record.
150K+A-Weighted SPL Readings
Calibrated Type 2 measurements, captured one per second. An additional 400,000+ C-weighted readings capture the low-frequency noise - engine, exhaust, bass - that A-weighting understates.
3,000+Video Files
Timestamped clips documenting excessive and modified exhausts, loud audio systems, and numerous commercial trucks.
87Noise Calls Logged
Across 5 documented FOIA periods. 6 enforcement actions - none in the last three.
80+CMV in less than 4 Hours
Documented traffic count on a residential school walking route.
5Nearby Schools
HES, HMS, HHS, CCC, and Roger Bell - all within the affected corridor.
0Traffic Studies on McCotter
The City confirmed in writing: no traffic-impact analysis, no traffic study, and no logged traffic complaints for McCotter - 1990 to present.
Five FOIA periods, Sept 2025 – Aug 2026: 87 noise calls, 6 enforcement actions, and zero across the last three windows. Source: Havelock PD records, row-verified.Share of calibrated readings above each limit. A-weighting (grey) understates engine and exhaust noise; C-weighting (rust) is what residents actually feel - 76% of it breaks the 55 dB residential limit.
The health case behind the numbers - why so many readings over the C-weighted limit matter (expand)
Those readings are not just an annoyance. Low-frequency bass and exhaust are exactly what C-weighting captures and what A-weighting understates - and they pass through walls and closed windows. Peer-reviewed research ties chronic community and traffic noise to heart disease, stroke, and disrupted sleep, names intermittent noise as a cardiovascular risk, and finds low-frequency bass impairs higher-order thinking while ordinary A-weighted meters under-count it. That is why the "plainly audible" standard in § 93.04(B)(7) exists - and why leaving it unenforced strips residents of their only protection.
Sources: UC Davis (2025) · Liang et al., BMC Public Health (2024) - full links under Sources below.
Note: Raw, uncompressed audio - genuinely loud. Start with your volume low before pressing play, especially on headphones. Most of this noise is deep bass, which a phone speaker can't fully reproduce, so it sounds quieter on a phone than it does in person. For the real weight, use headphones or an external speaker - just bring the volume up gradually.
Breaking the Social ContractToo Many - Car Audio SystemsToo Many - Modified ExhaustsSound-level meter, live - Sept 3, 2026I do not like Excuses
Liang et al., BMC Public Health (2024) → Peer-reviewed meta-analysis linking low-frequency (bass) noise to impaired higher-order thinking; standard A-weighted meters under-count exactly this low-frequency sound.
BOC special-meeting minutes, Oct. 20, 2025 → The $287,415.19 city-manager separation package, including a $26,307.07 vacation payout (about a full year of a typical resident's income), approved in closed session.
Contact
This is a two-way conversation.
If you live in Havelock and you have experienced something similar - noise complaints ignored, CMV traffic on your street, emails that go unanswered, or anything else you can think to share - I want to hear from you. Together, We ARE Havelock!
This campaign runs on real concerns from real neighbors. Not talking points. Not consultants.
Paid for by BearForHavelock, Bear is a candidate for Havelock City Commissioner. No money was raised or spent to produce this site - it was built by the candidate himself.
Message received.
Thank you for reaching out. Your message is in my inbox, and I will respond Personally, within one week, with a quick acknowledgment sooner, as I have promised. We Make the Change! - Bear
My road brother, "TrailMaster", and I laughing somewhere out in the open road; I have seen firsthand what truck lanes do to a community. Let me protect OUR community from it!
