Eason urges continuation of progress

North Ward Concilwoman Tency Eason 

ORANGE - If Donald Page can boast that he’s the candidate in the race who has most actively opposed Mayor Mims Hackett, North Ward Councilwoman Tency Eason is the only person who can rightfully argue that she has already defeated Page.

When she challenged the sitting North Ward councilman with Hackett’s blessing in 2002, she beat him by ten votes.

"I was lackadaisical," he says.

Whatever, Eason says. The bottom line, in her view is that Page turned his back on Hackett after earlier in his career enjoying the advantages of Hackett’s popularity.

"When Hackett met Page he didn’t know him from a can of bait," says the councilwoman. "He got elected, and then forgot from whence he came. Even though something may be good for the city, he’ll vote against it. He voted no to pave a street in my ward - which is also his ward."

But Page - and other opponents in the race - argue that Eason lacks credibility as a candidate given her healthy political alliance with Hackett, the man charged with telling a federal informer that he could deliver votes on the city council in exchange for cash.

Retired from AT&T as a product manager in marketing, Eason says her opponents continue to use her political affiliation with the mayor as an invitation to distort the facts.

There’s a rumor out there, for example, that the only explanation for Eason’s dogged support for Hackett is that she’s related to him.

"That’s nonsense," the councilwoman says. "It’s not true. We’re from two totally different states. He’s from Alabama and I’m from North Carolina. In his mother’s obituary it mentioned a relative was married to an Eason. We’re not related at all."

Still, her competitors are convinced Eason’s alignment with the mayor is unmistakable.

"If you heard her at the debate the other day at the senior center, she said ‘let’s continue the progress,’" points out Janice Morrell, a long-serving chair of the zoning board.

Hackett, Morrell admits, secured state extraordinary aid for Orange and accomplished some good, but ultimately didn’t deliver where it counted. As far back as 1986, Orange’s public officials knew that the pumping station in the Valley section required an overhaul in order to increase water capacity.

"Now we’re 22 years hence," Morrell says. "Ten years after Hackett took office and we’re still having discussions about the pumping station."

The delay in this case has hindered the progress of redevelopment projects in the valley, which all of the candidates believe can stimulate the city’s economy, though they have differing views on tax abatements for developers.

Eason points out that the council recently passed a resolution to bond for $9 million to replace the pumping station - an action that should spur construction at the Berg Hat Factory and other Valley locales slated for improvement.

But Morrell and Page continue to chastise Eason for agreeing to a 20-year tax abatement for the Berg Development Corporation. Moreover, Morrell does not believe the mayor and council properly oversaw the finances of brownfields remediation in the Valley, and suggests that taxpayers and not the developers shouldered the undue weight of cleaning up those sites.

"They don’t understand tax abatements," Eason says of her critics. "If we don’t do that the developers don’t have an incentive to come here."

Regarding her longstanding political ties to Hackett, Eason offers no apologies - neither does she accept the view that she has been a rubber stamp for the mayor.

"I’m not a person who’s going to call anyone out in public," she says. "If I have an issue with him, I’ll go to him in private, not grandstand at a council meeting. I’m the quiet warrior. I don’t live to fight through the media. Donald needs the media behind him. I don’t."

He lost to Eason once, but by a thin margin. Now Page believes his aggressive citywide political action over the last four years come to head now in an election will shut down his old North Ward nemesis.

"Losing to Tency was a blessing, and the best thing that ever happened to me politically," he says.

In his comeback two years after Eason ousted him from the council, Page trounced the Codey/Hackett-backed Anthony Williams for an at-large seat.

"That victory in 2004 gave me the opportunity to develop a citywide constituency as an at-large councilman," he says.

Whether Hackett’s meltdown sufficiently diverts North Ward voters away from Eason into his column, only Election Day can determine. What is certain is that Eason won’t stop fighting him.