Community Blood Center to open Belmont Office
Monday, May 5 Grand Opening and ribbon-cutting at 10 a.m. for the Community Blood Center of the Carolinas new Gaston County Donor Center in Belmont.
The location is 1212 Spruce Street in the CaroMont Health Building. This is the CBCC’s first satellite office.
It will collect whole blood and platelets.
CBCC is a nonprofit organization which provides more than 90 percent of the blood used at 14 area hospitals including Gaston Memorial, Piedmont Medical Center and all of the Carolinas HealthCareand Presbyterian hospitals in the Charlotte metro area.
For more details, call 704-972-4700 or visit www.cbcc.us.
Coffee with Local Legislators – April 11
Have Coffee & Conversation With Local Legislators on April 11
Here’s your chance to ask questions of and make suggestions to your local legislators
before the N.C. General Assembly convenes in May. Sen. David Hoyle, Rep. William Current
and Rep. Wil Neumann are scheduled to participate in a Chamber Coffee & Conversation
on Friday, April 11, at Queen of The Apostles Catholic Church Family Center, 503 N. Main St., Belmont.
Hoyle 
Neumann
Dr. Current
Coffee and juice and a light breakfast will be provided starting at 7:30 a.m. The program will start promptly at
8 a.m. and end at 9. The cost is $5 at the door. Registration is requested by email to info@belmontchamber.com.
For more information, call 704-825-5307, or go to the Chamber website at www.belmontchamber.com.
Gaston: No ICE detention facility
No Doubt!
Both the papers are now reporting that a 1,500 bed federal detention center most likely will not be built in Gaston County.
We kinda wonder why our county officials had to travel to Washington “for discussions” about this project? Wouldn’t have been a bit cheaper for Sue Myrick and former Mecklenburg Sheriff, Jim Pendergraff to have visited Gaston?
The Gazette, ever hopeful for downtown revitalization, expressed an interest for an “ala carte” project that would be less expensive.
Seems to us that the project tab of $150 million fits into “Big Plan” Palenick’s vision for Gaston — right along with the laundry list of a “conference center/hotel”, restaurants, a hidden homeless shelter, and an $18 million baseball field.
This is leaving us wondering what sort of earmarks that Ms. Myrick is planning to dangle for us as her re-election campaign gears up. Our schools who qualify for Title I funding are shrinking even when the number of poor students grows. The estimated $1.6 Billion (yes, billion) “Garden Parkway” is still an apple of David Hoyle’s eye, but without federal funding and passage of a Toll Authority from the state, that will be out of his lifetime. Maybe he and Ms. Myrick could talk – surely there is still a bit of money at the bottom of the pork barrel for good ‘ol Gaston.
The Belmont Front Porch 