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 two weeks, barring unforeseen life events.
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.
02Pursue the no-cost CMV restriction on McCotter Boulevard. State law authorizes it. Alternate routes exist. Five schools and hundreds of homes are waiting.
03Answer every constituent email within two weeks, barring unforeseen life events. 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
Jobs first. Growth that's worth something.
Careers Before Head-Count
A bypass that routes travelers around a town instead of through it makes that town a place people pass by. I do not support manufactured growth — more rooftops on a map do nothing for a family whose quality of life is going the wrong direction. What Havelock needs is real careers, not another shift of minimum-wage work in food service and retail. That means reaching out to, and finding ways to incentivize, manufacturing and larger-scale employers — cybersecurity and skilled trades among them — jobs you can raise a family on. We settle the quality-of-life questions first, then we grow on purpose.
A Real Partnership with Cherry Point
Havelock exists because of MCAS Cherry Point, and the relationship runs deep — its families' children go to school here, play here, shop here, and eat here. I believe that partnership can go further. There may be a supply line or a production niche that Havelock is positioned to fill — work that helps the base and puts our own people to work at the same time. We still have rail through this town that could move bulk product. I do not claim to have every detail worked out, but the goal is clear: growth that is worth something to the people who live here, not just numbers on a page.
Payroll in Plain View
A city budget is a statement of priorities — and too much of ours sits at the top, in administrative pay and overhead, instead of with the people who keep Havelock running: the crews, the responders, the workers doing the job. These salaries are public record, and I'll treat them that way — reading the lines every budget cycle, asking the hard questions on the record, and pushing for pay that follows the work: real wages, retention, and careers for the people doing it. I want growth that's real — industry and employers that put people to work — not hollow numbers on a report. Build a city worth living in, and it grows on its own, because people want to live here.
What I'll Say No To
I say no to commercial trucks on residential streets where people are backing out of their own driveways, where children walk to school, and where the parks and homes are. The residents come before the commerce — every time. I say no to growth that trades away this town's quality of life for a bigger number on a report. And I say no to expanding administrative cost and comfort in a city that still offers its own people so few real careers. My job is to represent the people of Havelock as they actually are — their priorities on the record, ahead of my own.
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. A year ago McCotter saw roughly 13–20 commercial vehicles a week; we now document that in a single hour. At the posted 35 mph, a loaded truck needs well over 100 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 and three daycares. Three public parks sit on the corridor too, including a children's park less than 80 feet off the pavement with gates that open straight onto it. 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.
FHWA confirmed in writing that the residential length of McCotter Boulevard was excluded from the bypass noise study. NCDOT says it sees no safety issue. Then, on June 3, a commercial dump truck struck a civilian SUV on SR 1824 (McCotter Boulevard). One collision closed the entire corridor to all traffic for roughly an hour and forced commercial trucks onto an even smaller, tighter residential lane while an HPD officer managed the scene. A road that a single crash can shut down completely — pushing trucks onto a street smaller still — is not built to carry routine commercial traffic. 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 Daycares, 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 81 loud-noise calls for service and produced 6 enforcement actions — a 7.4% rate. 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 citations and warnings across 29 offense categories — led by expired registration tags, with paperwork violations (inspections, insurance, plates) making up 16 of the 40 citations. Not one of the 45 was 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 even walked these roads to HMS/HHS. It is a bus corridor with no sidewalks, no shoulders, homes roughly 70 to 90 feet from the travel lanes, five schools, three daycares, and three public parks nearby — including a children's park whose gates open within 80 feet of the pavement. Since the US 70 bypass opened, it has absorbed commercial truck overflow it was never designed to handle. State law already provides a no-cost remedy under N.C.G.S. § 20-118(b)(4) and § 20-116(h). An appropriate alternate route exists less than one minute extra travel time. The question is not whether the law allows action. The question is why no one has taken 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.
In the two most recent documented periods — February through March and all of May 2026 — 31 noise complaints were logged citywide and not one citation was issued. For May, 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.
81Noise Calls Logged
Calls for service over 4 documented FOIA periods. 6 enforcement actions.
90+CMV in 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.
$0Cost of the Fix
N.C.G.S. § 20-118(b)(4) authorizes a CMV restriction. No funding required.
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 two weeks, barring unforeseen life events, 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!
