Committing of one’s personal time and energies to what is often thought of as a thankless job is one thing, but when a highly experienced candidate, who happens to also have been your Town Administrator, now retired, decides to throw their hat into the ring, it does present the Town with a golden opportunity, and a uniquely qualified candidate who can “hit the ground running.”
Such is the case today, as Howard B. “Blake” Proctor, Ph.D., filed as a candidate to fill one of the three seats up for election on the Bladenboro Town Board in the upcoming municipal elections this November.
As Town Administrator for only a short fifteen months prior to his retirement in early 2020, Blake did “hit the ground running,” first overseeing the dredging of the Bryant Swamp Canal and then applying for and receiving grant funds for the Town of Bladenboro of $500,000 from the Office of North Carolina State Recovery and Resilience due to Hurricane Matthew damages and another $200,000 for demolition of dilapidated buildings downtown.
Blake holds a BSBA in Accounting from Florida Technological University, with post-graduate study in Public Administration from the University of Central Florida and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Pacific Western University.
Blake’s work experience is just as energetic, having been a small-town specialist during his entire 38-year career. Employed as a Town Manager in six municipalities and one small county in four southern states, all with populations under 4,800, Blake secured grants of nearly $20,000,000 for those governments he served. He also ran his own consulting business, Proctor and Associates, for 11 years providing performance management advisory services to small towns, with emphasis on communities in crisis.
Blake is a decorated Vietnam-era veteran, having served as a Signals Intelligence Analyst with the Army Security Agency, including a year in Thailand/Laos and four years in West Berlin.
When asked, “You’re now comfortably retired. You’ve lived in many areas of the United States, and the world for that matter, and you surely have a good understanding of the challenges facing small-town America today. So why Bladenboro? And why have you decided to run for a seat on the Bladenboro Town Board?”
Blake’s answer was simple: “I could do all those things, and I could live anywhere, you’re right, but I’ve decided Bladenboro is now my home. This is where I want to be, where I want to live, where I want to hang my hat. The people have taken me in and accepted me as if I were one of their own, which is not always an easy thing to do in a small town. In return, I want to share that knowledge and experience I have gained over a long career and help the Town of Bladenboro grow and prosper and maintain the small-town charm I have come to admire and appreciate here. Now I know there are still lots of people in the town I have yet to personally meet; my plan is to get out and meet more of the citizens and personally ask for their vote this November.”
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