No Leadership. No TTA Light Rail. No Surprise.
Face it, NC Senators Richard Burr and Liddy Dole didn’t represent us on this deal. Duh, we forgot, Charlotte must be the capital of the state. Never mind that the Triangle is still one of the hottest places in the nation and will remain so for decades. No help from them before, during, or after this concept got rolling.
Duh, the Free Market doesn’t play the game of shuffling taxes to communities for big projects---that is pure politics and human intervention.
Having said that, what did local leaders do to get this thing off the ground? I mean create reality, not sabotage it with benign neglect for ten years. Hmmm? City Councilor Philip Isley was quoted in the paper the other day laying out the problems of the TTA. He is a Burr disciple, so no thanks to him either. Duh, either tell us what would be needed for success in this endeavor---or keep quiet. Or say what you really want.
Well, I’m waiting…and will wait a long time. Chances are good, excellent really, that if this thing ever gets built it will be twenty years from now. You think traffic is bad now? In 2025 you’ll wish you had a flying car. And yes, Virginia, it will get built…
Blah, blah, blah. Imagine the TTA naysayers living about 1900 years ago when the Romans wanted to build the Coliseum. “It is too much money.” “The citizens are being unfairly taxed.” “We should use the money to build a road to Gaul…”
Look, I told you before that over the long haul nobody cares what anything costs. If anything, they marvel at the vision of their predecessors. The question is whether or not it made a contribution to quality of life. Anybody can build roads and subdivisions. It takes another order of thinking to revitalize a city.
Okay, specifics regarding my previous blog about exurbs in Texas. The history of what is happening is self-evident. 50 years ago and more there were suburbs with homogenous neighborhoods, stay-at-home moms, and all the other White Picket Fence ideals all over the fringes of big cities. If you are a blog reader of a certain age, you are familiar with this, and also with White Flight. These days, the big developers will tell you that the quaint neighborhood of yesteryear is a modern marketing concept that generates big profits. Surely you have heard that ad on the radio that has bugs chirping in the background as they describe a gauzy view of what your life can be in a suburban environment. You plug in the variables: safety, neighborhood schools, pools and tennis courts, big yard, low or astronomical home prices---same with taxes, sense of community, whatever.
Raleigh is just now hitting that suburban fringe growth stage. Thus, developer pals, the main idea is to buy huge tracts of land in ever-further reaches of a city and provide some semblance of that mythic ideal so people will move there. Get out your map, get a ruler and compass, and from downtown Raleigh draw circles that are 10, 20, 30, and 40 miles away. Then get out a highlighter and highlight the main drags like Hwy. 64, 50, 70, I-40, etc. Then highlight the present and future outer 540 loop.
Now look up tax records and find out who owns huge chunks of dirt in the farflung areas more or less near roads---and approach them to sell. Now repeat after me: subdivision…strip mall…traffic jam…subdivision…strip mall…traffic jam…
So, have things changed that much in 50 years? Yes, they have, but many people still yearn for that mythic lifestyle and will pay for the opportunity to live it. Thing is, who pays for the roads, schools, and other infrastructure?
Hmmm? Smell impact fees, anyone?
On the other hand, many people see a vital urban core as the heart of a city. For example, they see a Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill with a light rail system whether there is sufficient density now or in the distant future, which is, Duh, a no brainer. They see infrastructure and development exploding around the rail stops. They see possibilities like people living in high end condos in downtown Raleigh or Durham and taking the train to their jobs in RTP. Lots of jobs, lots of building, lots of creativity, lots of progressive ideas for urban living, years and years of growth, and tens of millions invested. You know, the whole melting pot: strong neighborhoods, walkable communities, density, retrofits, culture, etc.
So with all this MISSED OPPORTUNITY because of the TTA loss, we have to ask: where was the development community on this? I mean, I am really at a loss here because I can only conclude that people are suckers for political spin, as if Republicans invented and own the values associated with suburban living and that is all that matters.
Duh, the News and Observer commented that there are developers who are planning to build near the rail “corridor” to the tune of TENS OF MILLIONS of dollars whether there is light rail or not---although we know that there will be some hesitation with development at the stops. That is called risk, pal, with a capital R, and my sombrero is off to those in the fray because they get the concept of urban living. And, Duh, they're supposed to drive everywhere, too?
Maybe these are mutually exclusive ideas of city growth, but I don’t think so. Folks want to live in the exurbs and spend hours of their lives in cars? Let ‘em. But if that comes at the cost of the city proper and the vibrancy that comes from good planning in the urban core, forget it. And thus the game is on. There are too many good examples all over the planet to let the mass transit/multi-modal idea go, and we don’t want to wait until rot and traffic have taken over completely. Naturally, this leads to a discussion about competition for resources, taxation issues, etc. How can a free marketer make the case for a toll (read: tax) that only benefits roads to the exurbs and is supported on the backs of people who have already paid taxes into a state road fund? Is the increase in the tax base from suburban development going to strengthen the urban core?
ETJs and annexation notwithstanding, the city limits of Raleigh will only go so far and then suddenly stop, And then we’ll be forced to go regional as the other municipalities start to take off…just like Frisco. Hey, and how about that water supply?
I am guessing we can have both, but of course nobody is thinking that big, well maybe the newly formed "Blue Ribbon" gang, because most have been brainwashed to think that “taxation” in any form is a bad thing. Again, nobody will care what the cost was 100 years out, and the truth is that nobody is complaining about feeling the pinch in their wallet from the convention center, Fayetteville street, etc.
By the way, BTB.org would like to remind you that we are PRO-development in a big way and we remain bullish on Raleigh. Next time, design a rail system that goes to the airport first.
I'll comment tomorrow on the demise of the TTA Light Rail. In the meantime, an article in yesterday’s Sunday New York Times by Rick Lyman about suburban growth in Texas gives us an excellent glimpse of the future of the Triangle.
Frisco, Texas is a boomtown on the outskirts of Dallas. For those of you from small towns, or have always lived in Raleigh, this will be sort of a primer on sprawl. Those of you from urban areas will recognize the pattern. As you read, plug everything in to what is happening in the Triangle.
In Exurbs, Life Framed by Hours Spent in the Car
By RICK LYMAN
Published: December 18, 2005
FRISCO, Tex. - When Max Bledsoe was growing up on a farm here a quarter-century ago, this was a tiny railroad town of 2,000 souls, far removed from the bustle of cosmopolitan Dallas, 30 miles to the south across the flat North Texas plains. Skip to next paragraph
Now, as a health teacher and softball coach at Frisco High School, Mr. Bledsoe works for a school district with more employees than the town once had residents. It serves an exploding exurb of 82,000, where the rush of new roads and shops has almost, but not quite, caught up to the booming population.
"Used to be, a drive into Dallas was a 30- to 40-minute event, something you could do on a whim," Mr. Bledsoe said. "But now, it takes 20 minutes just to get out of town."
Frisco is an exurb caught in an adolescent age of gawkiness, where every major artery is under construction, or soon will be, and a drive across town can be a maddening crawl between orange cones and roaring bulldozers.
America is growing at its fastest in places like this, at the margins of some of its biggest cities, in the domain of the automobile and the master-plan subdivision, far from the urban centers that spawned them.
They begin as embryonic subdivisions of a few hundred homes at the far edge of beyond, surrounded by scrub. Then, they grow - first gradually, but soon with explosive force - attracting stores, creating jobs and struggling to keep pace with the need for more schools, more roads, more everything.
And eventually, when no more land is available and home prices have skyrocketed, the whole cycle starts again, another 15 minutes down the turnpike.
But in the meantime, life here is framed by hours spent in the car.
It is a defining force, a frustrating, physical manifestation of the community's stage of development, shaping how people structure their days, engage in civic activities, interact with their families and inhabit their neighborhoods.
Ask residents why they moved here, and they tend to give the same answers: more house for the money, better schools, a lifestyle relentlessly focused on the family.
Ask them what the trade-off is, and most often they mention the traffic.
Chris Gray, 34, moved to Frisco with her husband eight years ago, eager for a bigger house in an affordable, family-oriented community. Ms. Gray quit her job as a financial consultant for Electronic Data Systems in Plano, the previous exurban boomtown just to Frisco's south, and decided to become a stay-at-home mother for her two daughters. But her husband, who works near downtown Dallas, has paid the price.
"I can't count on him being home before 7 o'clock," she said. "Even if he leaves the office at 5:30, he's not here until 7. This morning, he left at 5:30 and it took him 35 minutes. But if it's raining outside, he can count on a two-hour drive."
Ms. Gray has been able to volunteer for her neighborhood association and local PTA, and to become a cheerleading coach at school. But her husband's uncertain schedule keeps him from volunteering in community activities.
"I love Frisco to death," she said, "but it's having growing pains."
And no wonder.
Between 1990 and 2000, the Dallas North Tollway was extended to these parts, and Frisco's population grew nearly 450 percent, to 33,714. It has been growing about 20 percent a year ever since.
And still, less than half of the 71-square-mile city is developed, leading urban planners to predict that if current growth continues, the population will reach 200,000 to 250,000 in 2020.
A decade ago, there was one elementary school here. Today, there are 18, and four more are due to open next fall. A second high school opened last year, and two more are due in 2006. A seventh middle school will open in 2007. And three times as many schools will be needed by 2020.
The inevitable result, longtime residents fear, will be a breakdown in the small-town atmosphere.
"For a long time, the homecoming parade was a big deal here," Mr. Bledsoe said. "But now, we have two high schools. And before we're finished, there will be seven or eight. So things are going to change. It's inevitable."
Already, the North Texas Tollway Authority is at work on another extension, this one through the center of Frisco to the town's northern edge. Plans call for taking the road north, where developers are carving up the land around Prosper, the next community in the path of exurban growth.
Christine Obenberger was living in Menomonee Falls, Wis., a suburb of Milwaukee, when her husband said he wanted to move on with his career in high-tech security systems, to greater opportunities someplace else.
Almost immediately, he got a job offer with a sizable raise in Phoenix. "So I jumped on the Internet and was trying to research the area," Ms. Obenberger said, "when suddenly, this box popped up asking me to take a survey on the best place for us to live. It took me about 20 minutes and gave me a list of 20 potential cities. To my surprise, three-fourths of them were in Texas."
Austin she rejected as being too liberal. Houston seemed too hot. So she started looking at the Dallas area, going for the best combination of highly rated schools and lower-than-average house prices. "And I kept coming back to Frisco, which I'd never heard of before," she said.
On July 1, she, her husband and their two children moved into their new house in the Lone Star Ranch development on Frisco's west side. "I got twice the house for the same price, half the property taxes and better schools," she said. "And politically, I feel a lot more at home here."
In 2004, Republican strategists concentrated much of their efforts on counties they classified as exurban, and President Bush received some of his largest vote margins there.
Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's senior adviser, described an exurb as being "like a new suburb" that had sprung up "past the old, established suburbs." And Kenneth B. Mehlman, the president's campaign manager, attributed much of the party's success to its showing in such places.
In more recent elections, like the Virginia governor's race in November, Democrats have fared better in the exurbs. But Frisco seems secure territory for Republicans.
Collin County, where most of Frisco is located (portions bleed into Denton County), went for Mr. Bush over Senator John Kerry in 2004 by 71 percent to 28 percent, a far different result from the vote in Dallas County, where Mr. Bush drew 50 percent to Mr. Kerry's 49 percent.
Mayor Mike Simpson said it was not uncommon for residents to ask him, even in the town's nonpartisan local elections, whether he was a steadfast Republican.
"I think you'd have to say that this is a pretty conservative area," Mayor Simpson said, "and that people here feel pretty strongly about most of the social conservative issues."
A generation ago, the suburban phenomenon was latchkey children, fending for themselves after school in houses left empty by two working parents.
But one of the forces driving people into the exurbs is the ability, with cheaper housing - in Frisco, the median home price is $228,827, city officials say - to cut back to one income and allow a parent to stay home and get more deeply involved in school and family activities.
Technology has accelerated this trend, allowing some people to work from home and try for the best of both worlds.
That is what Ms. Gray does. Since her youngest daughter began attending preschool, she has returned to her old job part time, working three days a week from home. Ms. Obenberger works from home, too, as a marketing consultant.
And Richard E. Kinnunen, a stay-at-home father, sells insurance from an office in his house and spends large chunks of every day volunteering at school.
"It's my wife who does the commuting," Mr. Kinnunen said, giving him time to be president of the Council of PTA's for Frisco schools.
The result is that the modern exurb has more daytime residents than the suburbs did a generation ago, urban experts say. More people frequent a different mix of shops, restaurants and recreational facilities. And that has created more traffic throughout the day, the morning rush hours giving way to gridlock caused by shoppers, school drop-offs and lunch throngs.
As a resident since 1993, Mr. Kinnunen qualifies as an old-timer in Frisco. And although most newer residents say they have found it easy to make friends, older residents note a subtle change in the pattern of life as subdivisions spread and people spend more time in the car.
"We don't really see our neighbors so much anymore," Mr. Kinnunen said. "We all drive into our back alleys and into our garage, and that's that."
The added commuting time has made it difficult to find volunteers for things like school committees and coaching soccer.
"We have now a generation of people who would rather say, I'll give you some money instead of volunteering," Mr. Kinnunen said. "It's harder to get the year-round commitment, the joining and the being part of something. People are too jealous of their time, because they have to be."
Jay Crutcher, a lawyer who commutes to downtown Dallas from Frisco, said any trip of under an hour constituted a good day.
"We moved here, mainly, for the schools, which are great," he said. "And we're people who want to be as close as we can to the fields and the cows and the coyote."
Still, Mr. Crutcher yearns for the tollway extension to be completed, so that the first 20 minutes of his commute will not be on local roads choked with school traffic.
At a town hall meeting at Benton A. Staley Middle School one evening last month, Mayor Simpson presided over a program extolling the city's achievements and plans.
The minor league baseball park, home to the Frisco RoughRiders, part of the Texas Rangers organization, had been a roaring success, he said, as had the new home for the DFW Tornados, part of the North American Hockey League. And in mid-November, a new soccer complex, soon to be home to Dallas's professional soccer team, was the site of the M.L.S. Cup, the national championship of professional soccer.
A recreational center for Frisco residents, including 21,000 feet of workout space, was scheduled to open in late 2006. And construction proceeded apace on the huge new city hall and its adjacent library, the centerpiece of a new downtown area rising to the west of the old one.
But by far the loudest applause came during the city engineer's presentation as she outlined exactly when new roads would open to traffic over the next few years.
"If you're like me," joked Jeffrey Witt, the administrator overseeing the creation of a comprehensive plan for the town, "at least you want to be stuck in traffic behind a car with a lot of bumper stickers, so you've got something to read and at least you're entertained."
I almost choked on my latte this morning when I read in the News and Observer that the Raleigh City Council was annoyed with the design and details of the new Marriott hotel being built downtown. Turns out the façade is going to be brick on the bottom, and some stucco product on the top floors.
You read that right, folks, white icing on chocolate cake in this case, straight out of the deli case from the Birthday Cake School of Architecture. You’ll recall this is a new architectural label I invented a couple of blogs ago to describe buildings that have cheaper materials as the building goes higher.
Turns out that where the original Gentleman’s Agreement, or “memorandum of understanding,” called for “natural stone, high-quality clay brick, colored metal and wood,” we are now getting stucco. I am no lawyer, but this doesn’t sound like a contract. Ooops!
The hilarious thing about this is that District B City Councilor Jessie “The Rubber Stamping Librarian” Taliaferro says, “It’s everywhere” and “It’s cheap.” Damn straight, Jessie, and I’ll bet there are other projects around town that you probably voted for without caring about or bothering with the details, even if folks complained.
The game has been going like this forever: some developer shows up and says they are going to build something…but they don’t quite have the details worked out yet. Fair enough, projects take time and the paper calls this “normal sticking points.” However, I don’t care if it is apartments or a prison, you can take this statement to the bank: when they say they are not sure what the façade will be, maybe brick, wood, stucco, platinum, or vinyl, ALWAYS, repeat, ALWAYS assume that they will go with the cheapest product. You will NEVER see the most expensive product if other options are on the table.
Once they get their blessing, if the details weren’t specified in a contract then the “normal sticking points” turn into disputes. Happens all the time---builders dangle their shiny bauble in front of folks, including city leaders, and hope that nobody reads the fine print. And then they go to the public hearing, Council approves it, and bingo, the next thing you know Jessie is poo-pooing.
Nothing against vinyl, but why do you see this product all over town? Because it is cheap, goes up fast, and lasts a long time. Same with stucco. However, putting up brick costs big dough.
So what goes around, comes around, Jessie, now you know what it feels like to be on the other side. Remember this when citizens come downtown and complain about vague conditions in zoning cases. Thing is, you have something already in the works; we’ll see how y’all wiggle out of this deal.
I have nothing against stucco, and everything against the scam of saying one thing and doing another when it comes to subsidizing building with $20 million of our taxpayer dollars. Had they said stucco upfront, fine. A quote in the paper says that the stucco will be “high enough on the Marriott that no one could see, touch, or even recognize it.” You’re right, pal, we’re all going blind and suffering from amnesia. (Note to self: buy 10 more pairs of glasses at the Dollar Store.) Did the person who said this talk to the Soleil Gang about their comment that the French Tickler would “merge with its environment” at Crabtree?
Well, we’ve got two lawyers and two architects on this Council. Whattya think, can we sue for Specific Performance on the memorandum of understanding?
Or do we have to get out our wallets?
Ooops, we forgot to blog much in the last few weeks. Don’t worry, things will crank up again tonight with the Installation Inaugural Throwdown as the new City Council takes their seats. Should be an interesting two years…
Those of you not on the Progressive Democrat end of the spectrum probably haven’t read “Don’t Think of an Elephant” by George Lakoff. The book has been out about a year and is a breath of fresh air for those of us countering conservative arguments. Go get a copy today.
In a nutshell, it is about framing political debate in a way that sheds new light on the Big Questions---or at least helps you to understand your own value system as opposed to the propaganda coming from the other side of the aisle.
This may not be germane to Raleigh politics because the book revolves around liberal versus conservative arguments at the federal level, but the reason I bring it up is to prompt the Democratic Majority on this Council to step up to the plate and articulate arguments for a progressive Raleigh in a way that counters conservative and special interest arguments that have dominated the debate for years.
Folks, they are going to need your help with that. We know you have ideas, so send your comments to the city, and we’d like to hear from you as well. Gotta keep the momentum going.
Having said that, what happens now in Raleigh for the next two years? Any realpolitik to consider? Of course, but Tuesday is far away so how about a little Fantasyland before we start grinding away at the details?
If I am Mayor Charles Meeker, delusionally speaking, I have met with my fellow Democrats in this last week prior to tonight's Inaugural in order to set up for my third term. First, I thank incumbents James West and Thomas Crowder for showing up at my party downtown on Election Eve. Then I say that I deeply appreciate the support they gave my initiatives over the last two years and I promise that I will act on their concerns.
Then I congratulate Joyce Kekas and Russ Stephenson on their dual Democratic sweep of the at-large seats. I remind them that they work for the entire city and that I expect them to represent the Raleigh electorate as such and do their homework.
Then I turn to Jessie Taliaferro and I wink and say that I am really sorry she couldn’t attend my Election Eve party because she was crying into her beer with John Odom. However, Party Unity is very important to me, and her votes shouldn’t be compromised by her special interest campaign contributors.
After all, I name the chairs of committees. And Public Works, the committee that watches our water supply, just might be the most important committee for some time to come. Plus water issues are part of my Checklist. Such a trusted position is for someone who is absolutely loyal if the Right Thing is going to be accomplished…
And by the way, y’all, just to set the tone, we’re going to start off by unanimously ramming through African Americans Paul Anderson and Renee Bethea on the Planning Commission vote. So don’t even think about mucking things up by bringing me more shills for candidates.
I look to James West and say, “DUH, unless of course more black representation was just a 60’s pipe dream?” I look at Joyce Kekas and say, “You know, merit versus diversity is an interesting concept. Did that ever come up in New Jersey politics decades ago? Can you articulate an historical argument that makes your presence here as a white, liberal female more compelling than theirs and explain that to James? And how did you get your start again?” I just look at Crowder and shrug. No mess, no fuss. I don’t even look at Russ.
I go on to say that I know what it is like to lose an election and sit on the sidelines while the band plays on. That I know what it means to be in a minority voting position and worse, a voting position that represents a fractured majority. And that this City Council, despite a Democratic majority, has been fractured for some time---but that I intend to mend the fences and move on without watering the issues down into pablum.
Well, if I am Russ Stephenson, I am just pleased as punch to be part of this group. At last, the Bigtime. This means mastering the Learning Curve in order to be effective and building relationships with my fellow Dems.
If I am Joyce Kekas, I am a bit worried and I need to be very, very careful. Jessie Taliaferro is my pal, and it was through her machinations that I was even let back into the game by getting an open seat on the City Council. But the mayor is the real deal, and too much footsie with Jessie will expose me as a lackey. Better play ball if I am going to be seen as effective.
If I am James West or Thomas Crowder I am on the floor. (This is because they fell out of their chairs listening to Charles.) Say What? Is this a Kinder, Gentler Mayor or Meeker the Barbarian? Is he really going to pull this group together? Does he like us, to paraphrase Sally Fields, really, really like us? Okay, prove it, so we can look effective instead of sandbagged.
And if I am Jessie, I am annoyed. Everybody is on to my game so I can’t get away with my latest scam of trying to load the Planning Commission with a Republican developer pal in the guise of “balance.” And I am praying that my special interest pals gave enough campaign cash to West and Kekas (hint - they gave a lot) so I can influence them and continue to split votes. Plus Meeker is more popular with builders than I’ll ever be. But alas, the balance of power has shifted with the inclusion of Russ and Joyce. Not too much but just enough, too many Democrats, and I am relegated to the useless sixth vote instead of the killer fifth swing vote that got me so much traction before.
The Mayor stands up, shakes hands all around, and says, “I am your Mayor and leader of this group. I care, and I want the citizens to feel our collective power and concern. What can I do for you? And Jessie, think about your votes.”
And then our guy Charles Meeker goes home, gets out his guitar, and cranks up Born to Be Wild.
So I have asked Lunsford several times about the national trend of tearing down older homes in neighborhoods and erecting gigantic new dwellings but he won’t take the bait. (Please, take a second and hit that link, the pics will clue you in.)
I keep saying, dude, what is the downside here? He just shrugs, hands me another YooHoo, and says, look, what is there not to like? Property values go up, nice rich folks move in, the neighborhood improves, end of story.
Well, he has a point: we aren’t talking crummy additions or rooming houses or landlord-ruined ghettos.
So I figure, okay, I crank out a throwaway blog saying this trend is no big deal, just like the neighborhoods that are being razed one house at a time. After all, money talks, and you know what walks.
But there is something unseemly about all of this. So this is my hoity toity conclusion: we are witnessing the Endgame of the Me Generation. One more Triumph of the Individual over the Collective here in the Land of the Free. We are Neighbors in geography and plat map only---otherwise we probably have nothing in common. (Wait until a hurricane strikes.)
The idea that because of my money, meaning the True and Only Measure of My Self-Worth, meaning What I Buy defines Me, I get to do whatever I want whenever and wherever I want.
And really, why not? Breathtaking, like greed on Wall Street in the 80’s, but at what cost? Lots of old neighborhoods have one “eccentric” home or maybe one big estate, like some of the historic district homes around town. Like, duh, the Josephus Daniels house, but in that case everything built around it was smaller.
So is there a moral component here? Or a civic responsibility? Or a City Council neighborhood zoning/overlay issue? Or am I just envious?
I mean, as your defacto Raleigh Architecture Critic, when we talk about scale and context and character in residential neighborhoods, well, golly, that is all just thrown out the window when we speak of neighborhoods being a MishMash of McMansions, bungalows, ranches, and split levels. Hey, a New Architectural Label, courtesy of me---the MishMash Style of Residential Neighborhoods. Yeah, that works.
Not that the Raleigh City Council gives a hoot about any of this, but in case they do, or in case some ‘hood decides to raise hell because the place is going MishMash, they can see what the Dallas, TX City Council is up to by looking at a Councilor’s (!!) website which is loaded with info on how they are addressing this issue. And yes, Virginia, elsewhere it is an issue.
Now, I have seen some of this kind of infill driving around, and an old yellowed News and Observer article about teardowns off Dixie Trail that I saved directed me to a brand new gigantic pink (!!) monstrosity inside the beltline. PINK, as in humongous baby butt PINK. Well, there is no accounting for taste, and as a former mayor said, you can’t legislate ugly. But out of context, character, and scale? Definitely.
I then went a few blocks further in and saw some nice additions, as well as some new homes that actually were the result of teardowns, but if you drove past you would have to look hard to see the newness because they blended in with the rest of the ‘hood. No MishMash, just thoughtful building in the traditional format. So I guess I should just get over it?
Here is probably the main clue: this trend is happening close to the urban action. Location, Baby. Why go all the way out to Wakefield when you can combine a couple of lots, teardown, and rebuild? Do you smell money to be made close to downtown in Southeast Raleigh? Got a problem with the American Dream, buddy?
I recall my great-grandmother’s house being torn down to make way for a wider intersection. Progress, you know. The place had porches, gables, front and back stairs, and a front parlor where I saw my great-grandma lie in state. Plus built-in stained glass windows in strategic spots. Yeah. Probably over 3,000 square feet top and bottom. Plus a basement. A big old rambling thing handmade by master craftsmen over 100 years ago.
Conversely, my other great-grandmother’s place is still standing. I can still smell it if I close my eyes. Same type of place minus the stained glass windows, plus front and back second story porches that were great for sleeping in the summer. They paid about $5000 for it in 1905 and after it was sold 80 years later it was converted into apartments. In fact, the whole neighborhood is big old houses, not one has been torn down, and in fact younger folks have bought in and kept the places up.
Ah, memories. Who needs ‘em?
So the fix was in to build the French Tickler, as the new 42 story hotel at Crabtree will be affectionately called. Soleil may be the name of the developers, and also French for sun, plus the hotel might tickle the fancy of Joyce Kekas, but so what? The quiet lobbying in advance of the shell game of “public hearings” with the Planning Commission and City Council all but put Astroglide on the votes that greased this deal. Never seen anything rammed through so fast, have you?
The lone naysayers in this scam were Betsy Kane and Thomas Crowder respectively, and Kane went so far as to comment in a Point of View in yesterday’s News and Observer. That is a rarity, but frankly a breath of fresh air - a city representative not afraid to air her views in print. Just so happens they line up with ours.
Now folks, we want you to know that BTB.org is a family website, but we can only take so much political incest in this town… I mean, talk about shacking up: when Lunsford said the PC and Soleil group should get a room the other day surely he was referring to some of the 1000+ luxury hotel rooms currently in the mill. More than a thousand rooms? I said, 1000+ rooms? Who is doing the market research? And who is us selling smoke and mirrors?
My predictions: SAS’ hotel in Cary gets steady business because of proximity to the airport and RTP, internal business, and small scale. The Downtown Marriott goes up and competes with NCSU’s Centennial hotel - both on our dime. They do okay when big events come to town, plus the golf course on Centennial campus is a draw. Crabtree goes up as a visionary novelty and draws business at first but struggles over the long haul because of, what else, location. Which is why they sell entire floors as residential property - eventually when the hotel goes stale it will all go condo. Not a bad advance twenty year marketing strategy: view the whole building as a future retrofit.
And nothing else gets built because folks are watching the occupancy rates of the others, plus the market isn’t there. Dix property hotel? Forget it. Something downtown by the Holiday Inn? Okay, it has location going for it, too, but will be second banana for conventions. The new North Hills hotel puts the Hilton over on Falls of the Neuse out of business and does better than Crabtree because it is located in, ta dah, a walkable area with more night action. Plus a grocery store you can walk to for a cold sixpack of Yoohoo.
Now, the RBC area hotel idea is another story. Connecting the dots from (A) RBC to (B) the French Tickler creates the Second Downtown that everybody is afraid of. Why? Vacant land, and lots of it, from Duraleigh south on Edwards Mill Road. New Art Museum, nascent Performing Arts center, primo location, location, location. No Meadowlands of the South, but eventually big money will go after the dirt, which as PC wizard Mark Everette pointed out, is apparently everything when it comes to planning decisions.
How about a NASCAR track there, Mark? C’mon, we’re talking hundreds of millions…Or maybe another Cadillac Ranch?
Sorry, but I can’t resist another dig at this idiotic hotel. The Triangle Business Journal had a beauty of a comment in their October 21 issue:
The Soleil Group contends that because of the lower ceilings, the height of the building is not an issue and, in fact, the building most likely would merge with its environment when looked at from a distance.
Good thing I wasn’t still in the barber chair when I read that or I would have fell out of it laughing. Is that “lower ceiling” as in, the thing might be 100 stories, but we only made it 480 feet? Like floor 7 ½ in the movie “Being John Malkovich?”
And better, the comment that the building would merge with the environment from a distance? Um, duh, doesn’t everything do that? Is that like the Great Wall of China looking like, wow, a thread from Outer Space? Or the sun looking like a dime when it is overhead in June? After all, the sun does merge with THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE.
And I could be wrong, but the last time I drove away from the Rocky Mountains, THEY DISAPPEARED.
Or maybe we’re only supposed to open our eyes and look at the building when we’re over in Durham?
No, I got it!! This reference to scale is what Russ Stephenson was indicating with his cryptic hand signal in his campaign literature!
Okay, might as well play out the Endgame here. Say two really hip, wealthy, funloving gay guys decide to buy the top floor of the Crabtree hotel. Call them Lunsy and Wally. They buy the entire 4,000 square foot floor for $300 per foot, or 1.2 million. Hell, the little people down the street in Five Points have been dropping $300 per foot on teensy weensy bungalows for years and fixing them up.
So Lunsy and Wally hire the best architects and interior designers around to fit out the joint in pink. Leather, fabrics, lighting, floors, ceilings, the works. Pink and more pink, shazam, the place ends up on the cover of Architectural Digest. At night the place is lit up like a roman candle, a pink beacon, a lighthouse to the liberal masses for a 30 mile radius. Telescope sales skyrocket in Cary, Five Points, and north Raleigh as folks want to keep a vicarious eye on the Beautiful People who frequent this pad. Golly, the place is even visible from the Green Pickle.
Well, Lunsy and Wally decide to go out because the dumb hoteliers wouldn’t put a penthouse bar in the place. So they walk outside, and after standing at the corner of Glenwood and Edwards Mill for three minutes at 11 p.m. on a Saturday, staring at the whizzing cars and darkened buildings all around, they head back to the parking garage, climb into Lunsy’s pink Cadillac, and go, where else?
Downtown.
Okay, All Together Now as we sing along with Petula Clark:
When you're alone
And life is making you lonely,
You can always goDowntown.
When you've got worries,
All the noise and the hurry
Seems to help, I know,Downtown.
Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city,
Linger on the sidewalk where the neon signs are pretty,
How can you lose?The lights are much brighter there,
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares and go
Downtown,
things'll be great when you'reDowntown,
no finer place for sure,Downtown,
Everything's waiting for you!
Lunsford and I have to admit that we thought the month or so after the election was going to be slow for news here in Raleigh, and we’d get a bit of a rest before the new City Council is installed.
On the other hand, there are stories that we either let slide or were waiting for the right moment to pounce. For example, the local trend of tearing down older homes in neighborhoods and putting up McMansions. Or the unbelievable day when the planets lined up and I agreed with Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court that the Kelo v New London case, the loopy decision empowering municipalities to claim eminent domain for monetary gain - um, taking folks property and giving it to developers to get more tax revuhnoo - is a total scam. Or the fact that we’re still waiting for a new Art Museum so we can get our paws on a bunch of Rodin’s stuff. And on and on…
Well, you can imagine my surprise when I realized at 5:30 pm this afternoon that I, Dr. Walter de Gama, had undergone a bizarre metamorphosis and emerged from the phone booth as, ta dah, the new architectural critic of Raleigh. Hey, since the N&O doesn’t see fit to have one, and the academics at NCSU are, well, academics, what the heck, I might as well assume another mantle.
It happened like this: I left work and zoomed downtown on my way to see Lunsford and decided to pop in to a barbershop I used to patronize just to get a quick trim. I am in the chair with N&O in hand. Two kids come in, maybe late teens, and sit down across from me. One of them points at me and says, “What a load of [expletive deleted.]”
The mirror is across from me, and I can see both the barber and me look blankly at the kid. I say, “Excuse me?” And the kid points at the paper and says, “Sorry, I meant that building.” So I look at the front page and see the new 5,760 inch (14,630 cm) hotel that looks to be going up at Crabtree. So I read the story again because, like the other stories above, I am thinking maybe I let this one slide, too. So I say to the kid, “Let me ask you a question - when you look at the Crabtree area, how would you characterize the planning that allowed a 480 foot tower in the middle of a flood zone?”
The kid doesn’t miss a beat and responds with one word:
“RANDOM.”
Well, I gotta tell ya, I almost fell out of the barber chair I was laughing so hard; the barber had to stop clipping or he’d have cut off my ear. Random, Oh God, Wisdom from the Mouths of Babes: The Sum Total Philosophy of Raleigh Planning Decisions in One Word.
So I get a grip and I say to the kid, “Can you explain that?” And the kid goes, “Well, the design is phat but the building should go downtown with all the other new stuff.”
And the barber and I look at each other in the mirror and the barber says, “Sign him up.”
The quotes in the N&O are to die for…
“The Triangle does not have many exciting buildings,” said a local citizen. What, we gotta cave and build this thing at Crabtree because of some Chicago namebrand draftsmen?
Newly minted Councilor Russ Stephenson took all of two weeks to roll over and vote for this lunacy. “I’m a big fan of this project,” he gushed. And then a perfect gem of a line: “Does this suggest that anything can be built anywhere?”
HO HO HO, YES, RUSS, AND THANKS FOR ANSWERING YOUR OWN QUESTION WITH YOUR VOTE.
The Mayor stepped into it by saying he was “worried about the building’s height but will keep an open mind.” We heard you Mayor - you just voted for it.
Councilor Philip Isley, who represents the district where the hotel will go up, said “The infrastructure is there.” Indeed it is, and nobody in their right mind drives through that mess if they can help it. Tell us, Phil, is there any vacant land within a mile or two of this place that isn’t built out? Wouldn’t you rather see it on your new Fayetteville Street?
Steve Stroud of suburban RBC arena fame (that still has no development to speak of around it) said having a hotel at Crabtree might help Raleigh get the National Hockey League All-Star Game - an event that would occur with the frequency of Halley’s Comet for hotel occupancy. And hey, only FOUR EASY DRIVING MILES from the arena!!!
Kudos to Planning Commissioner Betsy “Citizen” Kane, who had the clarity of mind to vote against this thing as opposed to the rest of the Rubber Stamps on the PC. And thanks to perennial Comprehensive Planning supporter councilor and architect Thomas Crowder, who, like a person with normal vision, sees the need to put this thing under the microscope in a committee instead of knee jerk voting it in. Like I said before, these folks downtown get dazzled by projects like kids with shiny new marbles.
So I finally get over to Lunsford's pad and we talk about all this and laugh our heads off, plus the fact that the White Sox were on a roll, so he goes online and starts looking up skylines all over the planet because he smells blog meat, too.
And later I am in the minivan cruising down Wade Avenue coming back from Whole Foods (love that cheese selection) and I pass by Oberlin Court, aka Coker Towers II, or the facsimile thereof. Too bad I didn’t have the kid from the barbershop with me, because he would have said, “How did they crash land that Ugly Monstrosity in that space?”
It's quite amazing how much this project doesn't look like the artist's renderings. I’m telling you, that building is right On Top of Wade Avenue; a paper boy with a good arm could simply launch the morning paper through your open window into your living room as he was driving by. Let the word go forth that when some developer says that “luxury” housing can’t be built on a main drag all we gotta do is point at this mess. People will buy here, urban living and all that, and they can make sure their car is still in what might be the City's most unsightly parking deck - because you can see that too as you drive by.
Come to think of it, the place looks like a big birthday cake, raspberry chocolate on the bottom, chocolate mousse in the middle, and white icing on top. There it is: the Birthday Cake School of Architecture. Nay, the Cheesecake School. What is this loopy trend all over the nation: the higher we go the cheaper the materials and they get color coded by floor to help architects figure it out? Any higher on this Coker-lite dump and the turrets would be made of purple papier mache. Not to mention the grills over the fake patio doors resembling bars on jail windows… Lovely…and, um, who can we thank for this Ugliness? Or maybe we actually should thank them - considering the original scale of the design we would have twice the Ugliness if that deal had gone down.
Kids, sometimes blogs just come out of the ether. Okay, Lunsford, here is the baton, take it away…
Allow me to back up to the “She Coulda Been a Contender” blog for a second. Forget the link, just scroll down. A sharp reader who read that blog sent us a link from the News and Observer archives. Here is the meat from “Light Voting Seen for City Posts” on October 9, 2001:
“As the quiet campaign season closed Monday just as the United States began military action, some groups focused their efforts to get out the vote. The Home Builders Association of Raleigh & Wake County made calls to its 2,000 members reminding them to vote. In Raleigh's District E, a recorded message from state Sen. Eric Reeves, a Democrat, went out to 10,000 Democrats and other voters for Philip Isley.”
Ring any bells? Some of you more plugged in than us surely remember, and never mind that Al Gore also sent out a recorded message for Charles Meeker. No matter how you slice that last sentence we got problems right here in River City. I don’t care what Eric Reeves’ relationship is/was/will be with Isley, but let us flip that sentence around a bit and see if it works the same way in reverse: “In Raleigh’s District A 2005 race, a recorded message from state Sen. Neil Hunt, a Republican, went out to 10,000 Republicans and other voters for Paul Anderson.”
HO HO HO, not a snowball’s chance in July, folks. Hard to decipher just what Reeves was thinking, but it apparently included the notion that Warren Raybould, a Republican and key player in Coker Towers, and pro-neighborhood in a way that Isley could only ever pretend to be, was somehow less palatable to Democrats---and thus the worse of two evils.
So now we have some explanation for those Democratic votes for Isley in District E. Folks who took Reeves advice helped install Isley---who seems to mainline Republican Ideology for breakfast. Go figure. But what about the 461 Dem votes for Mike Regan votes in District A in the last round? Sigh. I don’t know. Maybe our numbers are wrong, and like we said before, if you got better ones, send ‘em on. Frankly, this is getting tedious, and I am having trouble figuring out who is friend and who is foe, not to mention the Unaffiliated crowd. Is the gang of real estate shills on the City Council more Democratic than we thought? Have we met the enemy, and he is us? Nah, but it can be confusing.
Do you suppose Reeves, as solid a Democrat as we could hope for, realized too late what he had wrought for the future of District E and Raleigh politics? I’m sure he took some heat for this major-league sin, but oh well, we wish Eric well in his new job of Finding Himself and hope that he sends a message from the Mountaintop to the District A voters to vote for Paul Anderson and atone for that previous transgression.
As for canned messages to voters, can you imagine what a phone message to the
voters in District A from Republican (Democratic?) (HBA?) hacks will be? “Hi…vote
for Tommy Craven because he will rubber stamp any initiative that benefits the
real estate industry, waters down citizen input, and royally screws Raleigh
taxpayers of all political stripes----namely you, Sucker.”
Are you sitting down, Folks? Okay, what does your gut instinct tell you about homogenous, insulated, outside-the-beltline District A in north Raleigh? Well, you say from your overstuffed vinyl beanbag chair that has duct tape on a seam, thoughtfully stroking your Fu Manchu mustache as you contemplate the quivering blob of red goo in your retro lava lamp while sipping your green tea….I would have to say that they collectively lost their mind two years ago when they installed Mike Regan.
Not to worry, Paul Anderson and Tommy Craven are vying for the seat Mike is keeping warm, and he will soon be a former Council member and ex-wannabe Mayoral candidate. Before we took a look at District A we assumed it was solid Republican turf and figured nobody with a strong streak of Democrat could have voted for the conservative Regan.
Well, Gang, The Intern did it again. And like a previous blog about voting trends in District E, the results were shocking, even to wizened hacks like us. Take a look and sing “Do you see what I see?”
For Raleigh City Council District A 2003
KOSAK. . . . . . . .3,651 33.39
REGAN. . . . . . . .7,235 66.16
WRITE-IN. . . . . .50 .46
DISTRICT A'S LAST RACE – VOTING
Democrat 5117
Republican 5050
Unaffiliated 1694
Libertarian 30
CURRENTLY ACTIVE VOTERS
Democrat 15487
Republican 13998
Unaffiliated 8352
Libertarian 138
Wow. Another Democratic majority---and another instance of Democrats voting across the aisle. Add up the Republican, Unaffiliated, and Libertarian votes from the “A” race and the total comes to 6,774, meaning Regan’s 7,235 total included 461 Democrat votes at a minimum.
So now what? BTB.org knows that the Wake County Democratic Party is helping Paul Anderson out because we saw in the paper that Keith Karlsson, chair of the WCDP, recently held a fundraiser for Anderson. Troubling thing is, they had it late in the game; these events usually occur early when the Bigwigs throw out some cash to get the ball rolling. Anderson obviously needs the dough.
More troubling, when we went fishing for campaign platform planks for Anderson and Craven we got a whole lot of nothing. Anderson’s website is just a biography, and I blame the WCDP for that. So we’re a little worried about what we don’t know about Anderson the politician. The guy does have a long history of community involvement, and that means countless volunteer hours and a willingness to give freely of his time for the greater good. That commitment alone counts for a lot in my book. Look, folks, politicians gotta start somewhere. But do Anderson’s handlers think that District A will come out and vote for a pretty face? How can people make informed decisions?
And not that we are pro-Craven by picking on Anderson; there is precious little information about him, too. You’ll get absolutely nothing from the Wake Republican site, where other candidates have websites but not Tommy. I guess nothing means Default National Republican Party Platform? And that applies to local Raleigh issues how? Sure, there is some information in the News and Observer archives, but so what? Some folks say Craven has a good track record on the environment, well whoopee, but we aren’t electing Neil Hunt either, who, despite his treehugger rep, was Hard Right on everything else. Maybe the Mayor, et al, can “work” with Tommy and cut deals with him, but since Craven is the current darling of the local real estate industry and they want him elected I worry that, trees notwithstanding, when it comes to tough real estate issues that impact the industry Craven will only hear one voice. So that is that.
To continue this vein, District A doesn’t have the same issues as other parts of town, but no matter, this is about power. Don’t believe the real estate community is working to keep Craven in office? The News and Observer reported this week that Paul Anderson has about $7,700 in his campaign war chest. Uh oh. They also reported Craven has almost $57,000, and a big ol’ chunk came from (drum roll) about 60 people in the real estate community. (He has almost triple the number of Anderson’s donors, but eight times the dough.) And you can bet that the Home Builders Association will be calling District A voters, plus they pumped $2000 into Craven’s kitty.
Game over, right? Money wins? I hate it when people smugly assume a result, even if they are right based on precedent, because then they give up their efforts.
Anyway, the political marketing strategies seem to be to look as neutral as possible and hope that people knee jerk vote you in on perceived values without knowing where you stand on issues. Scary, and typical.
Having said that, if an outsider simply looked at the District A numbers above and didn’t know the details they couldn’t predict who would win the race because the numbers could support both sides. Stop laughing; people bet at 100 to 1 in Las Vegas every day, and everybody loves an underdog. I still firmly believe that Grassroots can beat Money. (I can hear Lunsford laughing all the way up here.) And ya gotta watch those Unaffiliated votes.
And so, Readers, I will take a deep breath here and suggest that if you care about Raleigh and you want to make a difference in the “A” race and maybe the look of the City Council, then get your tail up to District A and help Paul Anderson articulate a (preferably progressive) position that will garner the winning vote. He needs people knocking on lots and lots of doors.
Now, about those seemingly absent issues in District A. I asked in an earlier
blog if Republican = Real Estate and I concluded that it just seemed that way
in Raleigh. But if I was a conservative Republican living in District A and
not so wealthy that I didn’t have to care I would have to conclude that
Craven and the real estate crowd were trying to hijack District A with a cynical
“low taxes” appeal to my values. That is why Craven’s handlers
didn’t bother with a website---they just assume conservatives will vote
in lockstep if the message from the Feds on down is uniform. And that would
make me mad and insult my intelligence. This is not about national policy; these
shysters and hacks want to continue to shift the tax burden for growth and sprawl
to my back. Hell, they floated a bill in the legislature at the end of the session
to give themselves even more of a break. Tried driving around District A at
about 6 pm during the week? Forget it. Democrats and Republicans need to stand
together, have a group hug, and say enough is enough: we’re ALL being
ripped off here, the real estate industry is only in the game for themselves,
and we ain’t gonna take it anymore. Read my lips: impact fees. Is Paul
Anderson perfect? No, but flip the money around: wouldn’t you be worried
about the special interest angle if churches had given 57K to him?
I didn’t know Hector Velasquez and you probably didn’t either. He was killed riding his bicycle at night in Raleigh a few weeks ago. For whatever reason his death has stuck in my head. I feel bad for the woman who hit him, but Hector’s bike wasn’t lit up and there was a question as to whether or not he was driving impaired. Believe it or not, but the way the statute is written technically you cannot be arrested for drunk driving on a bike in NC.
I have to believe that a bicycle was Mr. Velasquez’ primary mode of transportation in a city that, like lots of other places in the midst of sprawl, has been largely hostile to forms of transportation other than those conducive to the internal combustion engine.
Well, you say, we do have a Greenway system. Yep, it was conceptualized back in the early '70s, we have a pretty good grid, but it ain’t lit up at night. Sidewalks? Yep, but they usually only get built in front of new construction. Which is why you have streets in town where you have to cross the road every 150 feet to reach the sidewalk.
More importantly, we have a huge population of people here who use railroad tracks and medians for sidewalks until they get enough money for a bicycle and ultimately a car. People stream into downtown every morning using any means of transportation to do the low wage work. How many of you have driven home in your metal cocoon, CD player blasting Shania Twain, and chuckled as you passed a truckload of construction workers? One person with a vehicle in that community becomes the driver of the carpool—and taxi and bus for a half-dozen, at least. Until the others get on their feet and buy their own transportation...but they had the right idea with the carpool.
Of course, many of Raleigh's low wage workers, like secretaries and janitors, cannot afford to live in town. Those who do have a vehicle are spending a greater percentage of their disposable income on gas as they drive in from Angier, Youngsville, and Zebulon.
Many colleges dot the city, with students located in neighborhoods citywide. Is there any other way to get to school other than to drive a car? Hello, what is the obvious consequence? The terminal problem of “parking on campus.” There is the NCSU Wolfline, and some shuttles, but parking is at a premium around campuses.
With the North Carolina climate amenable to year round bike use, one would think that the universities, in conjunction with city planners, would map out a series of routes, creating miles of biking and walking trails that connect to campuses. This should have happened 20 years ago. And then the City Council, seeing that this infrastructure would lessen traffic congestion and parking issues as well as improve the whole alternative transportation idea, not to mention the byproduct of a healthier community, would pony up the dough to make it happen.
But no, we gotta float a referendum for Road Bonds to make sure V-8 engines (I got a V-6 now) can get anywhere at high speed and 12 miles to the gallon.
As for me, I don’t have to worry about infrastructure. Since the demise of the Buick 225, in favor of a minivan, I can afford $3 a gallon all day long and while it does put a dent in my wallet it won’t affect my lifestyle. Talk about callous and shortsighted!
I don’t need to ride my old 10-speed for my primary transportation, but if I did there is no way to get from home to work and back without riding on main drags with speeding drivers. However, to feel what Hector Velasquez must have felt every day as he moved around town, about two weeks ago I threw the old Schwinn in the back of the van and took it up to the gas station and filled the dry-rot tires with air. And then I went home and parked the van and went for a ride. I took off aimlessly into town, and found after a while there were numerous places where I had no choice but to ride on a main thoroughfare. Granted, it was Sunday morning so traffic was at a minimum, plus I was wearing a borrowed helmet, but nevertheless I cringed every time I heard a car coming up behind me. Actually, I was terrified.
And so, I want to challenge all members of the Raleigh City Council to ride their bikes to the next public hearing. Hey Y’all, bring a camera crew to follow your paths. See Jessie Taliaferro weaving between trucks on Capital Boulevard. See Tommy Craven and Mike Regan careening down Creedmoor past SUVs. James West will be cruising New Bern Avenue. Kekas on Wade Avenue, Isley on Wake Forest, Crowder on Hillsborough. And Mayor Meeker zooming down Western Boulevard in the Yellow Jersey. This spectacle would provoke howls of laughter as we watch the very people charged with addressing transportation issues dodging traffic in a situation they partly helped create. Every time they close off a road because the neighbors whine, a bike route is closed. Some ‘hoods do have an issue with connectivity, but a lot of ‘hoods are just plain sealed off to nothing but cars.
Newsflash: the News and Observer reported there is a current initiative sponsored by SmartCommute---calling on everyone to get to work in ways other than driving. Check out their website, they have a good thing going on and it is loaded with information. Dare ya.
So when you ponder that Road Bond referendum next month, ask yourself what a new or improved “road” should really look like. We have come a long way from wagon ruts on the Great Plains, but every road in town should be built or revamped with a bike lane and a sidewalk. This is actually discussed on the City website. Read through the proposal; the technical term for this is “multi-modal.” This means: drive, bike, or walk, with vehicles as the last consideration.. Think of a city laid out like the spokes in a wheel, sort of the “all roads lead to Rome” concept. How far would you be willing to walk or bike to work before time or distance became problematic?
Sound crazy? Unrealistic? Impractical? No Money? Go ahead, make your argument
to the relatives of Hector Velasquez.
When District E representative Philip Isley said in the News and Observer back in June that he was in for the political fight of his life and needed to raise a bazillion dollars for his warchest for the fall campaign, I suspected something was fishy. And then no candidate materialized so I gave him a hard time about that.
Recently it came to light in another News and Observer article that Barbara Ann Hughes, member of the Raleigh Human Relations Commission, had pondered a run and then bailed out after hearing what it would cost to run…$150,000 according to the paper.
Well that, folks, is what you call Bluffing, with a capital B, and apparently it worked. Nobody in Raleigh is spending over $150K unless they’re running for Mayor. Lunsford will tell you that Isley spent around $47K in 2003. Another 2003 example: Thomas Crowder knocked off District D two-term incumbent Benson Kirkman with about $36K total, and that includes a run-off which meant another month of campaigning and collecting dough. The 2003 At-Large races cost less than $50K apiece, with Neil Hunt raising around $42,000 and Janet Cowell roughly $27,000. But $150K for a District seat? Nah, not unless Isley was going to buy everybody in town a big bowl of Cherry Garcia ice cream.
Thanks to the Intern, who seems to have spare time to burn poring over Election Board results in between classes, we have a bit more data to pick over. BTB.org takes responsibility if any of these numbers above or below are wrong but we looked things over and they seem to be correct. If you have better numbers for any of this let us know. Below are the numbers from the last two District E campaigns:
| DISTRICT E 2003 | # votes | % votes |
| Isley |
7,889 | 75.13 |
| Roush |
2,589 | 24.65 |
| Write-In |
23 | 0.22 |
| DISTRICT E 2001 | ||
| Isley |
6,762 | 64.42 |
| Raybould |
3,706 | 35.31 |
| Write-In |
29 | 0.28 |
Okay, fair enough, Isley wins handily in both races. For all intents and purposes it looks like District E is solid Republican turf in 2005, no?
But now take a look at the number of votes by PARTY (in this officially non-partisan town) and we get a different picture of District E:
| District E 2003 Voters | # voting | # registered | # active * |
| Democrats | 5,774 | 19,607 | 17,352 |
| Republicans | 4,769 | 17,587 | 15,507 |
| Independents | 1,413 | 11,171 | 139 |
| Libertarians | 25 | 165 | 9,234 |
Wait a minute, you say, there were 7,889 votes for Isley in 2003, but only 4,769 of them came from Republicans. Even if we give Isley all of the Independent votes (technically these folks are Unaffiliated) AND all of the whopping 25 Libertarian votes that only totals up to 6,207. But wait again, you say, there were 7,889 total votes…Which means, folks, that at a minimum 1,682 Democrats voted for Dyed-in-the-Wool-Republican Isley. What the Hell is going on? So now we go to the Big Picture and look at all of District E voters in column 3, and lo and behold it is a Democratic Majority loaded with Independents, er, The Unaffiliated.
You know, when Mary Matalin married James Carville, I thought: all bets are off, the Democratic and Republican enemies are sleeping together, so from now on politics is just Spin.
Sure there is some cross-pollination between parties and ideas, but there has to be a fault line somewhere. So we have to ask several questions and you can probably think of more.
First, what made Isley, a Conservative Republican, so attractive to Democrats? Were these so-called “conservative” Democrats who swung to Isley and if so what were their issues that they couldn’t vote Democratic? Were Roush and Raybould simply unacceptable as alternatives? I could see partisan issues being key at the State or Federal level, for example abortion, but what issues at the local level would get normal Dems to vote Republican? Did Isley position himself in the middle that well with his aw-shucks grin that he snookered a bunch of voters? If so, hey Y’all, this guy is NOT a moderate, he is firmly on the Right. Was this an Inside the Beltline moneyed crowd who gave Phil a shot in order to preserve an atavistic vision of Raleigh? Is anybody listening out there?
The Intern didn’t do a breakdown by District E precinct votes but that would be interesting to ponder sometime. Plus, we didn’t do any research into Independent voter behavior other than to read what pollster John Zogby had to say a few years ago about the national election, and that didn’t really impact what happened in District E. Needless to say, with so many Independents in District E and a group of Dems that vote for the other team, this is a topic for sophisticated analysis. More than I feel like doing at the moment anyway.
No matter. Isley was able to scare off Hughes with his pronouncement about needing a gazillion dollars to run. If you ask me, and you aren’t, I will say his handlers looked at the hard numbers and realized that no matter what the history showed, Isley wasn’t even near a lock to win his district. So a quick strategy was cobbed together---get all puffed up and float something in the paper to look invincible.
For the Dems, think about it: all those Independents, plus a strong Grassroots effort to get out the Dem vote, plus a strong campaign on Progressive issues instead of Isley’s Law and Order shtick, and shazam, we’d have had a whale of a race against Isley and the Money. Get out the Vote, indeed. Thing is, where were the local Democratic Big Wigs on this? Surely hacks like us can’t come up with this so easily…Well, gang, you get two years to get your act together because now you know the score in District E.
Kinda makes you wish Ba-Ba-Ba-Ba-Barbara Ann would’ve gone for it, eh? Maybe the Beach Boys would’ve thrown a benefit for her at the Art Museum amphitheater and raised a matching amount of cash.
Lunsford and I have been sitting here tapping our fingers on the desk, waiting for the phones to ring, and sharpening our pencils in anticipation of a feast of blog fodder from the coming fall election campaigns.
But now we feel lonely and jilted: where are the candidates for the Raleigh City Council? Tomorrow, Friday, August 5th is the filing deadline…
As of right now, incumbents in voting districts B, C, D, and E have no opposition.
We were hoping for a Democrat to step up and challenge Jessie Taliaferro in District B, believing that a strong grassroots campaign could beat real estate industry influence, and thus gain representation that would push the Council towards better decisions about Raleigh growth. Looks like Jessie will get to play swing-vote opportunist for the next two years as we chip away at her veneer.
Perennial District C rep James West is running alone as usual, and that just speaks for itself. Sorry, District C, but we just don’t get what y’all want.
Thomas Crowder in District D seems safe for the moment, but he better watch his back. You never know when former Councilors will come out of the woodwork to rejoin the political fray, and if a Pirate Captain can capture the flag at NCSU who knows what could happen if 30,000 students actually gave a rip about politics? Given pathetic voter turnout they could get both At-Large seats plus District D, maybe even C, and control up to four votes on the Council. Throw in Pirate Captain for Mayor and it would be lights out for local politics… I’m laughing about the prospect, but it would be a Nightmare scenario for Republican and Democrat politicos. As it is, the kids don’t have any real ax to grind at the moment and given Crowder’s pro-neighborhood stance he is probably the best friend a student with a shyster landlord could have.
Philip Isley in District E got our attention when he Cried Wolf earlier in the summer in the News and Observer saying he was in for the Celebrity Political Death Match of his life. Nobody stepped into the ring, but Holy Chimera, we were hoping for a race that would force Isley and Five Points to sweat and maybe lose to a Democrat. Isley’s time to Play Tennis and Do The Laundry is coming, but we’ll comment later about the future of District E.
Of course, we knew there was an outside chance that somebody was secretly plotting an August Surprise - quietly lining up the money supply and the support network - and getting ready to file at the Board of Elections at the last second in order to catch an incumbent off-guard and start the race with a blitzkrieg. Looks like we got one in Steven Hilton, chair of the Wake County Libertarian Party, who filed to run for Mayor yesterday. The Libertarians aren’t known for spending a lot of money on campaigns, so Hilton’s late arrival is probably just a way to save time and money and means not much chance of winning. A candidacy like this is generally outside the political mainstream, otherwise we’d have heard about it by now.
Ahhh, yawn, the race for Mayor… Lunsford may comment on the other what’s-his-name-and-soon-to-be-forgotten opponent (don’t waste our time and your money) but I have nothing to say other than to congratulate Mayor Meeker on his third Mayoral win. We give you a hard time because we know you can do better, Charles, but you’re our guy. We hope The Checklist is progressive, and watch your back when it comes to real estate influence. BTW, Mr. Hilton, your late entry into the fray didn’t catch the Mayor off balance, plus he only has hundreds of thousands of dollars at his disposal. Not that we aren’t listening to the Libertarian voice, but I’ll refer you to Ed Clark for the history of their political success.
That leaves the At-Large races with Russ Stephenson, Joyce Kekas, and John Odom leading the league. So here is a quick and dirty take on this action because all the real estate money that would have flowed to Taliaferro, West, and Isley is now freed up. Odom will get some by default because he is a Republican and business supporter, but we’ll see just how much real estate dough gets thrown at Kekas in the hope that she will cave and take it in order to get traction. The R’s could do several things. Some will probably stay at home or vote for Odom reluctantly if they get a strong sense that Joyce is pro-business. I mean, just what is your position on just about anything, Joyce? The R’s and real estate money could split for Odom and Kekas to keep the more progressive Stephenson at bay. The R’s money and votes could all go to Odom as a single candidate, and then Kekas (read: female demographic + incumbent) and Stephenson would duke it out over democratic ideology for the other seat.
As it is, we’re betting on Russ Stephenson to win because the guy just plain knows more about urban (for that matter, suburban) issues than Kekas, plus money aside he’ll probably have a stronger grassroots network. The long view is that he’ll help solidify the Democratic majority on the Council. We’ll tell you why you should vote for him later. However, Russ’ll have to navigate tricky waters looking for support from the other Democrats and he shouldn’t feel too comfortable around the Mayor. Meeker might be in his corner, but if Kekas wins she is another “Democrat” in the majority so what the heck. Pray that Odom quits in frustration and Russ wins, Charles, even if you have a hard time openly supporting him. Joyce and Russ both At-Large - yeah, we could live with that. Stay tuned, because the At-Large seats will be the story this fall and everything I just said could be wrong.
You know, the thing about John Odom is he has the classic problem of all come-back politicians - once you leave the arena and then try to come back people question your stamina and your true desire to serve. Who needs politicians that want to take a break from the grind? Yeah, he ran for Mayor and lost, but he ran such a lackluster campaign that most doubted he really wanted the job. Who gives up power and then comes slouching back sheepishly looking for a way back to the top? As if any business, say brakes and mufflers, would let employees just take time off whenever they needed a break so they could come back refreshed. Sorry, John, once you’re out, you’re out, and the News and Observer is already questioning your statements and motivation. The only way back in is to try to move up and take another shot at the Mayor. Think Nixon.
I forgot, there is a race for District A. We have Tommy Craven vs. Paul Anderson, and earlier I said that if Tommy played his cards right he could fill the gap left by Mike Regan, (who had planned to run for mayor but is now out of the game). Truth be known, I want Paul Anderson to win. Pipedream: while we concede that a win by Mike Regan indicates the voting trend in A, and we have to do some digging for the numbers, we still have the long shot hope, sort of like betting on a race between raindrops on a window, that if Paul runs a good campaign he could pull it off. Not likely, as all that Big Real Estate money will flow to Craven to keep the A seat firmly in support of their interests. Anderson will need the stronger grassroots organization, no question about it. For example, how many Democrats live in A and who voted last time? Paul, get your buddy the Mayor to stump for you just like the Big Boys do. You’ll need the support, and good luck.
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Dr. WalterDe Gama was being buffeted by circumstances. He had bought Lunsford an Abe Lincoln top hat to wear to Mayor Meeker’s coronation ball, but no, Lunsford had to eat it because “Erin the K” made it back on the PC. BTW, nice job nailing that story, pal. And then Lunsford spent a few days out of town getting his kid squared away for college and forgot to give de Gama the key to his crib so he could feed his animals - which meant de Gama had to break a back window and then fix it. It was that or let them do their business on the shag carpet.
And to top it off, the Mother of all Toppers, during the heat wave de Gama was sitting at the bottom of a local lake with about 14 minutes of air in his SCUBA tank when there was a tug at on his finger. Inga was sunning herself in the canoe on the surface, and she had made de Gama tie fishing line to his finger so that she could contact him if the realtor called about a house he was looking at (which ultimately fell through.) De Gama surfaced, but Inga wasn’t holding the phone. Instead she was smiling, and de Gama said, What up, Baby? His beloved Inga, her flaming strawberry mane backlit by the sun, leaned over and, in the way only a woman can say it, gently said, Now that you’re really relaxed….I’m pregnant.
De Gama’s instant thought was to put the regulator back in his mouth and head back to the bottom…but he could only stare at Inga with a mixture of shock and affection... FOR SALE: Buick Electra 225, runs like a thoroughbred. Will trade for…gag…minivan.
Newsflash---Raleigh City Councilor Philip Isley announced today that he would propose a 100 million dollar moat around the Five Points area of Raleigh. The moat, with one drawbridge aimed at downtown, is designed to keep out the modern world. No gays allowed. No pregnant teens. No poor people. Giant screens at every intersection will broadcast pictures of Raleigh from the bygone days of the sleepy southern capital…On weekends the screens will run The Andy Griffith Show non-stop and all children will be required to whistle the theme song each morning at school.
The political career of Raleigh City Councilor Philip Isley is almost over… Okay, it may bump along for a few more terms. What the heck, why not be expansive and say Isley might even be mayor someday. But if you ask me, and nobody is, I’ll tell you that I see a guy who would rather be doing anything other than sitting at public hearings. Every time I see this guy on the tube he looks glum, like a kid being forced to sit in the living room with visiting relatives when everybody else is outside playing. I see a static political career in limbo, I see no fire, and I detect an unwillingness to pull the trigger and go for it. Sort of like some terminal holding pattern…oh well, might as well run for my council seat since two years have passed…
Think about it: all the ingredients for moving up the political food chain are in place for Isley. He is a white male attorney, a devout conservative family man, he married into a powerful family of lawyers, and works in a prestigious law office less than a football field away from the Capitol on the soon-to-be rehabbed Fayetteville street. He lives at an inside-the-beltline address connected to the largely conservative and wealthy Five Points area in his district. He has a solid conservative track record on the council and is now the senior Republican ideologue. His party controls all three branches of the federal government. He can apparently be the District E rep for as long as he likes because the cash is there, and if he decides to swim with bigger fish at the state legislature or the feds he has maybe the best political support network in town of any Councilor. Talk about a pedigree!
Maybe that’s enough for him, or maybe Isley just doesn’t have the time between work and family and politics, or maybe he is waiting for more auspicious circumstances. It is difficult to imagine that the planets could line up any better for a mainstream Republican looking to move on up than right now. I don’t see this as a grooming stage, but if it is, Isley won’t last long.
I innocuously asked some conservative friends over the last month if they could think of anything that distinguished Isley’s career on the Council. Any Initiatives? Proposals? Ideas? Checklist like the Mayor? All I got were blank looks, although one person called him “Councilor No.” Sorry, but that is a tad too much credit.
I went to The Attic (the city website, remember?) and looked up the minutes of the Law and Public Safety committee that Isley chairs. In 2004 they met regularly up until September 14. There was an agenda for the 28th but no minutes. The committee didn’t meet again until December 20, 2004. I checked the minutes for some of the other committees and they all met regularly. Of course, it is kind of tough to get excited over cops driving their police cars home, which BTB supports btw.
According to the News and Observer Isley was co-chair of Senator Burr’s local campaign last fall. Those things take some time, eh? Maybe there is another reason why the LPS committee didn’t meet, but for most of September, October, November, and December your elected chair of the Law and Public Safety committee was apparently busy doing more important things than minding city business.
Now here is the weird part that prompted this blog. I couldn’t find it in the archives of the N and O, but late last year or maybe really early this year there was a brief blurb saying that Isley wasn’t going to run for mayor. This was out of the blue, as if anybody cared about the race for mayor at Christmas, and it stuck in my head as BTB got up and running. You’ll recall that Lunsford’s first post was a jibe about Isley running, so that blurb must have been late 2004. I can see the Republicans basking in the warm afterglow of their victories last fall, brandy and cigars all around, or maybe lemonade and jerky, and the talk turning to local politics. Morale is high, and the victory buzz has everybody seeing more power just over the horizon… “C’mon Phil, you’re packaged perfectly and we have everything in place for a run at Meeker…”
But the guy wouldn’t step up to the plate and the N and O reported the same. How else to explain the early comment that he wouldn’t run?
Furthermore, Isley managed to attend the recent final Budget vote, which Lunsford has already commented on, but the N and O also reported that he would be out of town for the budget hearings---so frankly we were surprised to see he made it back. Feeling inspired by his service so far?
Isley’s political career trajectory is flat, but another way to look at it is that he hasn’t visibly screwed up. If he wanted to move up the food chain he would have no blemishes and no distinctions---at least not with the conservative crowd. He is a ready-made photo-op marketing campaign of blandness wrapped in the American flag. He won the District E seat vacated by Marc Scruggs two terms ago, and he won again in the last round. Both of his opponents didn’t realize they needed a lot more dough and a much stronger grassroots network outside of Five Points to win.
So how does a guy like Isley create any buzz about himself? He shows up first in line to file at the Elections Board like an immigrant eager to become a citizen. Dude, filing for office ain’t like campin’ out for Springsteen tickets. Can’t you get your name in the paper another way? Well, sure. Somewhere in early June the N and O reported Isley as saying something like he was in the political fight of his life and needed to raise 100 million, er, 100 thousand dollars pronto, presumably to fend off the liberal hordes in District E. We’re watching the candidate filings like everybody else, so excuse us, did we miss something? Where is this Mystery Opponent zooming out of the ether and making Isley nervous? Is this some kind of political War of the Worlds scenario? Is he kidding us?
Well, I could go into philosophical differences with conservatives but I am not in the mood and it would take too long. I told myself no more blogs over 1,000 words and I have already exceeded my limit. In the meantime, if you see Phil Isley cruising back and forth from Five Points to Downtown in his insulated elliptical orbit, holler at him to put a cardboard cutout in his council seat until November. For those of us on the other side of the aisle, it’ll do just fine.
What is this silly policy of Front Yard Parking (FYP) allowed by the Raleigh City Council? Since when is a lawn also a parking lot? FYP should be deleted from the city code.
(I don’t know how you handle the heat, but when I get off work all I want to do these days is wander down to the pool with a cold Mountain Dew, soak up some vitamin D, and watch Inga do her Flipper imitation. Lunsford and The Intern are in campaign finance hell, and blogging indoors in the a/c in the summer seems pathological. If you get bored and quit reading I completely understand.)
I’ll confess that I needed some help on this blog, and from what I could gather surreptitiously nobody has a complete handle on the issue. Anyway, two separate text changes are on the table regarding FYP: TC-10-04 and TC-10-05. Good luck deciphering them. Also, go read the May 11 minutes again to refresh your memory.
In order to understand where these items came from, I had The Intern do some rummaging around in The Attic, which is what I am going to call the Raleigh City website from now on because every time I go in there it is a case of, “I know that what I am looking for is in here somewhere, now where the @#$%& is it??” Below is a snippet of minutes from a 2002 Appearance Commission meeting that The Intern dug up:
RALEIGH APPEARANCE COMMISSION Minutes of the Joint Meeting and Regular Meeting Thursday, October 17, 2002 NEW BUSINESS TC-16-02 (Parking for Duplex Dwellings) [The Chair] gave a brief overview of the proposed text change. After discussion, the commission voted unanimously to forward the following comments to the Planning Commission and City Council: that the proposed text change will increase impervious surface runoff, that there is already a significant problem with the appearance of front yards that the proposal could worsen, and that the proposal could have a particularly negative visual impact in existing neighborhoods where infill developments are being considered.
The item in question, TC-16-02, was denied October 21, 2003 but we don’t know the details. Apparently only code changes that are adopted are kept online, the rest goes in the trash. I’m guessing that this quote is probably the beginning of the current FYP saga because we learned that residential parking as a “current” issue has been around for a while, years apparently. A city attorney said in the May 11 minutes that rules about parking in yards have been on the books since 1992---meaning the issue has an even longer history. So---between commissions, city staff, lawyers, public meetings with citizens, not to mention years of time, what do you suppose a conservative number of participants at all levels would be? This topic didn’t just drop out of the sky, folks.
Okay, I’ll bite. If I imagine a residential house on a typical lot, where
could I park ?
· Park in the back yard
· Park in the side yard
· Park in the front yard
· Park in the driveway, impervious or not
· Park on some addition to the driveway, impervious or not
· Park in the attached garage
· Park in the detached garage
· Park in the carport
· Park underneath the house if it has a walkout
· Park underneath in a garage or deck arrangement if it is a townhouse,
condo, etc. with multiple floors
· Limit the number of cars in the yard based on square footage, house
size, how many people live there, number of concrete gnomes in the yard, etc.
· Park on the roof (This was actually TC-12-25, passed by the Council
twenty years from now. 15 minute maximum, reduced limit on maximum tonnage of
reindeer due to widespread shingle damage, parking from midnight to 6 am only.)
Okay, so if I'm a homeowner and I don’t want to park in the yard, then
where can I park?
· Parallel park on both sides of the street
· Parallel park on one side of the street
· Meters and time limits depending on location
· Park with a permit for the ‘hood
· Park on alternating sides by day or time limit
· Park by time limit
· Park by making streets one way
· Diagonal or straight in parking if you have a townhouse situation with
no front yards to speak of, zero lot lines, etc., i.e., sacrifice the yard in
the plan
· Separate parking garage or deck
· Park in the garage coming in from the alley (with the added bonus that
the trash can stay out here, too, without reprisals!!)
· No Parking…
Maybe you can come up with some other ideas, but HEY, before sacrificing the front yard, there are almost 20 different options for the City to consider.
You don’t have to be a blogger to think through the history leading up to this FYP lunacy. People used to ride horses or had carriages or wagons attached to some animal to pull them around. They kept this mode of transportation out back in the barn or at the livery stable because, well, having a stinky place like that attached to the house didn’t exactly create curb appeal. Then Henry Ford starts cranking out Model T cars (raw materials to finished product in three days.) Go to any older town, including parts of Raleigh, and you’ll see older homes from the 1920’s on smallish lots with a singlewide driveway leading to a single garage at the back of the lot---the updated “car barn.” (Lots of alleys, too.) Front yards were a luxury to show off. Fast forward to the modern era and everybody over 16 has a car, and those cars have to go somewhere…
The last time I drove through Wakefield looking at Christmas lights I didn’t see anybody parking in their yard. In fact, when I am watching the Real Estate channel (only because I like the music) I have NEVER ONCE seen a new subdivision or an older home that had a blurb advertising “Great Front Yard Parking!” The homebuilders and most realtors get it, folks; they understand that the words “parking” and “driveway” and “yard” are NOT synonyms. What the FYP policy does is warp normal thinking to create a hybrid phrase of words that ultimately allows folks to use up to 40% of their front yard for parking. (There is a square footage limit.) Not only do the homebuilders know that they are separate words with separate meanings, but they would probably consider anyone who presumed that you could set aside 40 % of a front yard for parking a complete marketing amateur, or at least lacking in design sense. Drive around any typical new subdivision and tell me I’m wrong. To top it off, the latest housing fad is a three-car garage that is finished like a giant kitchen pantry with drywall, paint, cabinets, trim, racks, etc. More driveway and more space used, granted, but they are not carving up the front yard in a hodge podge fashion.
So where did this FYP thing come from and why all the stalling? Go back and read the excerpt from the Appearance Commission minutes. TC-16-02 was about parking for duplexes, which are considered by the City the same as single family homes. But aren’t a lot of duplexes rentals? Yeah, as are single family homes. Seems that laziness and neglect led to parking in yards of rental homes and got out of hand due to the lameness of the existing FYP policy---with the subsequent result of some homeowners adopting the same attitude. The luxury and beauty and status of a manicured north Raleigh front yard (and subsequent value to the ‘hood) has been supplanted by a utilitarian purpose in less expensive neighborhoods which somehow turns public streets paid for by taxpayers into vacant boulevards---and turns yards into parking lots. But what if those living in less expensive ‘hoods value yards as much as the wealthier ‘hoods?
Listen to what the committee members had to say on May 11: “Mr. Craven pointed out he too is aware of the problem we are trying to address and he feels we have a good basis for a solution, but it does need further work. He stated cars are not going away and we have to provide means for storing those cars. He stated we also have to look at the unintended consequence, that is if we limit the number of cars parked on private property we will see the cars ending up on the streets and the alternative to what we are seeing now maybe worst (sic) than what we have. Mr. Crowder stated in neighborhoods that allow parking on the street they have a built in method of traffic calming and it may look better to have the cars on the street. Ms. Taliaferro pointed out however every Council meeting, the Council receives requests to approve no parking on various streets. Homeowners parking on the street in front of their home or their neighbor’s home is one thing but students or outside people parking on the street in front of one’s home is another thing. The fact that this would be an ordinance that would cover city-wide and the consequences were talked about.”
Well, Tommy, what about the deliberate consequences of letting people call a front yard a parking lot? Is that standard fare in your neighborhood? FYP should be the last of the last resort. Crowder gets it right, more or less: neighborhoods have more “value” with lawns in front of houses. And Jessie’s comments are incomprehensible. “[S]tudents or outside people parking...in front of one's home?” Public street means public, no? And btw, turn down and rescind all citizen requests for “no parking!!”
Citizens quoted in the May 11 minutes were concerned about actual parking in yards, like 11 cars in a yard according to one speaker, and the detrimental effects of said policy. But as usual, Jessie Taliaferro’s priorities were elsewhere in her comment addressing the Home Builders Association input and infill. I had to read what everybody said several times until I got it: this is an apple and oranges issue, politically, in that what citizens want is not necessarily what politicians will give them because of pressure from business owners. Typical. For example, when the TTA light rail system starts rolling infill and higher density mixed-use will cluster around rail stops. Parking will play a large part in this and will definitely require careful planning. However, over the long haul citizens are worried that their properties and neighborhoods will lose “value” due to FYP. Too bad. In fact, they have already lost, and Council tweaking of the FYP policy, instead of abandoning it, is a mere bandaid. Was this Committee listening or were they ignoring the obvious?
You scream, “Property rights and changing times!” Go ask a realtor about curb appeal at a house with cars all over the yard. Or a neighborhood full of same. Think they’re thrilled about showing buyers this stuff? Split the question: do real estate interests care about a policy that limits parking or adds an expense like landscaping a parking area? You bet, and they’ll be sure to let the Council know these text changes are unreasonable regulations that somehow impede business. The City is talking about permits regulating residential parking: sounds like business to me.
I don’t know how it happened, but normal homeowners got lost in the shuffle of “infill and the HBA.” End of story, and so much for neighborhood appearance and that pesky “quality of life” parking issue that sets the hoity toity ‘hoods apart from the hoi polloi.
Maybe I have it wrong; maybe as cities grow lawns should go away to accommodate parking until it is just buildings and streets. After all, they require maintenance and it is one less chore. Is that what you want to see in Raleigh? I don’t think so, because for those who preserve their “yards” the seemingly hardwired feeling of “higher value” neighborhoods stays constant in the ever-changing concept of private property.
Can anybody send us a picture of a local politician parking in their front yard? Get it?
Today we are going to talk about Front Yard Parking, but I want you to think about that topic in the context of Eringate, the scandal du jour exposed by Lunsford.
Ask yourself: if Jessie Taliaferro had the opportunity to play the Bride of Frankenstein, then who would play Frankenstein?
Okay, stop giggling, this is serious business.
Below you will find excerpts from the May 11 minutes of the Comprehensive Planning Committee of the City Council, chaired by Thomas Crowder, with Tommy Craven and Jessie Taliaferro. Please go read this item carefully and then we’ll see you back here, the actual topic is:
78 – TC-10-04 - Front Yard Parking for Single-family and Duplex Dwellings
Item #03-79 – TC-10-05 – Surface Requirements for Existing Front
Yard Parking for Single-family Detached and Duplex Dwellings.
Okay, did you get all that? The comments from the minutes below are Ms. Taliaferro’s.
They are worth reading again because we are going to pull out the crystal ball
and interpret just what Jessie is trying to tell us here.
Ms. Taliaferro stated she hopes we can discuss the two text changes
separately. She stated TC-10-04 deals with existing conditions and questioned
how those are going to be identified, how the City can make sure of compliance,
etc. She stated it would seem that compliance would be very difficult and questioned
if we have the staff.
Ms. Taliaferro stated she understands the idea and desire behind this proposal and she fully supports the concept; however, she is concerned about the text change and the one size fits all approach.
Ms. Taliaferro stated she sees the problem and what generated the desire to have the text change. She stated she does have concerns about how the text change would work, how it will be interpreted, how it will be tracked, enforced, etc. She also talked about the City’s desire to have infill development and how that could be impacted by the proposals. She talked about the fact we are a card (sic) driven society so we have to accommodate parking in someway, it’s a delicate balancing act. She stated as far as the text change which is recommended for adoption she would like to know about how much input the Home Builders Association had and would like to get some input from them on the impact of these proposed ordinances.
What to make of Jessie’s comments? Put on your thinking caps and ponder politics in the general sense as we deconstruct the passage above. You may not agree with our analysis, but so what? BTB.org wants new representation from District B, so those of you in that district pay extra attention.
Ms. Taliaferro stated she hopes we can discuss the two text changes separately. She stated TC-10-04 deals with existing conditions and questioned how those are going to be identified, how the City can make sure of compliance, etc. She stated it would seem that compliance would be very difficult and questioned if we have the staff.
This is the opening salvo from Jessie: boy oh boy, this sure sounds complicated, how could we possibly figure it out? Gee, will the City of Raleigh EVER have enough staff? And good golly Miss Molly, this would be almost too hard to monitor…
These kinds of annoying “woe is us” statements are almost standard issue downtown; they could just play a tape of the above and insert whatever the current item is. It is reactive, not proactive. Flip it around in your head: front yard parking is a problem we want to solve and we don’t care how hard it is so what do we have to do?
One problem with this line of thinking is the silly assumption that folks won’t follow the law when in fact most people comply once an ordinance is in place. It is one of the beautiful things about the Social Contract that most people will do the right thing and change their habits. In essence, the statements above are a copout, a way to gloss over the problem by pointing out how complicated it is. Do us a favor Jessie and quit your office. We expect better from a Democratic majority and we don’t have to put up with these insipid comments that do nothing to solve the problem of Front Yard Parking.
Ms. Taliaferro stated she understands the idea and desire behind this proposal and she fully supports the concept; however, she is concerned about the text change and the one size fits all approach.
Now Jessie is starting to dig in her heels. All of the work on an item has been done, the committee is finally hearing it, and boom, the first real roadblock comes up with a comment like this causing everybody in the room to roll their eyes as in “here we go again.” It is one thing to sit in the Senate and have somebody just say flat out NO to some bill; you know their vote is lost. In this case, it is more subtle, as Jessie can nibble away at the meat of the item.
Once something comes to the table decision-makers start staking out their turf. Politically, the best time to change proposals is when things are down to the wire, as everybody has had their say so they feel comfortable, and then raw politics kicks in to determine the vote at the last minute. In a general sense, BTB calls this “The 11th Hour” gambit. It does not mean that politicians did not monitor things, it just means that they have a larger agenda that does not include debate at the lower levels. Also, if the 11th Hour gambit starts early it buys time to get behind the scenes, work on city staff, and get the word out that something is coming down the pike so folks will call and email in support or opposition. We’re calling the above comments 11th Hour so you understand what the tactic is; technically in this case it is premature. The final hearing on parking in 2009 (just kidding?) will tell the tale because that is when the deals will really get made. As it is, parking may not be the heaviest item on the Council plate, but never assume passage without some haggling because this is a real estate issue. You won’t see this and neither will we because the formal process is public. Even if it comes out of committee clean as a whistle that is no guarantee it will pass.
Wait a minute, you say. Is it not the prerogative of politicians to hear issues as they come to the table? Sure, and I guess for their whopping 10K salary we’re asking a lot like, for example, reading everything that crosses their desk. But if you think of the 11th hour as a gambit instead of statements aimed directly at a problem, sort of like slipping pork into some big spending bill at midnight, then it changes the tenor of the argument. For example, any councilor can attend any meeting at any time and listen to the debate at hand. Too bad for you if they only want to hear it at the table. I have to give credit where credit is due: Benson Kirkman was known for attending lots of meetings he could have ignored and thus was informed on the thread of the debate. Then again, Benson didn’t miss many free food public troughs either. Love those teriyaki chicken kabobs.
Taliaferro said “she fully supports the concept; however…”
LMHO…Laughing My Head Off. Please, we aren’t that stupid. This,
folks, is an example of the CLASSIC “Yes, BUT…” gambit, wherein
citizens are lulled into thinking that the politician is actually on their side
in support---when the truth is that they are being deflected with a supportive
smile and promised nothing of the sort…because who knows where the core
constituency stands? Call it stalling if you want but it is more than that,
it is part of a larger strategy to get sympathy for having to make a political
choice. …I am on your side but I just couldn’t give you what you
worked so hard for…you understand, don’t you? No, Jessie, we don’t
understand, and we don’t care that you fully support something---but not
really.
Now folks, if you hear a Council member say they are “concerned”
about “the one size fits all approach” IMMEDIATELY assume that the
vote for that particular item is in jeopardy, er, in play. The implication is
that there will have to be exemptions…but who gets them and how they get
them is political. Duh. No matter, the item in its entirety is not going to
pass muster; in other words, what concessions will have to be made in order
to get the vote? This is extremely important, because with a so-called “democratic
majority” on this Council (which BTB does not think exists) you would
think that a lot of items on the agenda would be slam dunk 5-3 votes, with the
Mayor riding herd and Craven, Regan, and Isley in the minority. But with the
influence of real estate interests filtering down from the State to the County
Commissioners to the City Council and to the Planning Commission it doesn’t
work that way. Go figure.
Well, you counter, so what if there is a councilor in the “majority” who is skittish? Don’t they all have concerns, doesn’t the debate carry the day, don’t they all hold out on principle sometimes, can’t they be wishy washy? Yeah, but they can also hold out and become the Swing Vote. And that folks, is where BTB believes Jessie draws her power and thus our ire because playing footsie with the other side of the aisle weakens the chance for a stronger Democratic majority. A swing vote on any issue, particularly real estate issues which are the bulk of the agenda, gives that particular politician a certain amount of leverage (perceived if not real power) as they try to ram something through.
Or conversely, the swing vote can try to extract as much as possible before voting in the affirmative---and then, to the disgust of those who watched the gutting of the item, CLAIM CREDIT because after all, they voted for it. You know, bipartisan compromise and all that. Or, the swing vote can kill an item.
This political position angers mainstreamers on both sides of the aisle, because the perception can be that the politician is playing both sides of the fence, etc. In business and casual circles this is called not being a team player, and you can get canned for less, but in politics it can be a turf. Nevertheless, folks will be cautious in addressing a Swing Voter because who knows which way the compass is going to turn? All you gotta remember is that real estate interests influence city councils all over the nation. Why get bent out of shape about it? Because it is not about progressive ideas in a proactive format for the Common Good; it is about using power to make decisions that favor the few.
And power, District B, has to be seized. It won’t be shared or handed over, and you will have to work long hours in order to get it. If you want change, then get off your butts, organize, and make it happen. District B is huge, and you have a lot of good people there. Do some digging at the Board of Elections, go after the Democratic base in District B, and reach out to them. Random thought: what if John Odom ran for his old seat?
Well, not that any politician cares if they burn a particular bridge because for most people their issue is a one shot deal with the City and they’re gone. For people who have been watching City Councils for years their disgust with influence remains strong but has been tempered by time and change. Nobody stays in office indefinitely, if only because they get tired of the grind, and Jessie’s day will pass, hopefully sooner rather than later. Politics is a pendulum that will eventually swing the other way, and believe it or not someday Raleigh will see the progressive light. Didn’t the nation just apologize for lynchings? And didn’t the Catholic Church finally let Galileo off the hook for being right about the nature of the universe after about 359 years?
So lighten up, will ya?
Naturally, this process can be exasperating for city staff who have worked on the item for days, weeks, and months, as in…oh well, I still get a paycheck. What do you suppose that does for morale when politics gets in the way? What do you mean, de Gama, policy is formed by politics. Right, which is why people pay big money to make sure the vote gets them what they want regardless of data or policy or precedent; that still does not make it right…. And for various council members who are pushing for passage of whatever the item is, it can be frustrating knowing that a member of your so-called team might shaft you in a heartbeat with petty politics.
All right de Gama, you say, we’ve had enough, you’re grasping at straws to give Jessie a hard time, yawn, got anything else? Only the Immortal Words from Ms. T enshrined forever in the Public Arena:
Ms. Taliaferro stated she sees the problem and what generated the desire to have the text change. She stated she does have concerns about how the text change would work, how it will be interpreted, how it will be tracked, enforced, etc. She also talked about the City’s desire to have infill development and how that could be impacted by the proposals. She talked about the fact we are a card (sic) driven society so we have to accommodate parking in someway, it’s a delicate balancing act. She stated as far as the text change which is recommended for adoption she would like to know about how much input the Home Builders Association had and would like to get some input from them on the impact of these proposed ordinances.
So there it is. Despite the reference to infill development and the context, does that phrase “how much input the Home Builders Association had” speak for itself or what? Sounds like for Jessie the Front Yard Parking issue boiled down to infill and the HBA.
I’ll dissect that statement more in the next blog, which I promise will be about parking, but if you’re on the progressive side of the aisle I hope you had a helmet on because you probably slapped your forehead saying, damn, why didn’t we see this before? If you’re a Republican, who in some bizarre scenario thinks “real estate = republican values,” you’re probably saying, damn, when is she going to come over to the Dark Side so we can openly boost her? If you’re a member of the real estate community, you’re probably saying, DAMN, why did she have to let the cat out of the bag?
Does “real estate” = Republican? No, they just seem to line up like that in Raleigh. For the record, BTB loves real estate, bigtime, we really do. But for now we want a progressive agenda and proactive leaders. Not hacks.
Sometimes I really have to wonder: if Jessie Taliaferro went over to the Dark Side and ran as a Republican candidate, would she lose a dime of campaign money? C’mon, Jessie, tell us, who loves ya?
--------
Dr. Walter de Gama slammed on the brakes of the 225 in front of Lunsford Lane’s
urban lair. He had been cruising the Outer Loop at midnight when he got a frantic
call from Inga to go to Lunsford’s house pronto. Seems The Intern had
called Inga from Lunsford’s in a panic; Inga was on the way to Lunsford’s
to get her.
Now what? Lunsford was known for his steady hand on the tiller of reality, but every now and then he got hold of some strange brew and zoomed off the deep end.
De Gama turned the corner of the house and stepped into a scene straight out of Heart of Darkness. The Intern was in a lawn chair sobbing, a foot high stack of files and papers at her feet. Inga was holding her and comforting her and de Gama could see she was wearing the necklace he’d recently bought her.
Ten feet away a huge bonfire raged, but that was nothing compared to the sight of Lunsford Lane, blogger extraordinaire, dancing around the bonfire wearing nothing but what looked like a loincloth made of old Food Kitty plastic bags. His face was smeared with guacamole, and he was throwing sections of the N and O into the inferno and chanting some gibberish about Mike Regan being a lame duck. De Gama laughed and started for Lane’s garage. The women were terrified, and Inga screamed, “Walter, don’t leave us, where are you going?” De Gama waved back with his hand and said, “Don’t worry, Baby, I’m just going to get the gas can, this fire isn’t big enough.”
You heard it here first, folks: listen carefully to Raleigh District B City Councilor Jessie’s Taliaferro’s campaign rhetoric if she tries to adopt a “business Democrat” label. Don’t buy it, Democrats.
A recent article in the News and Observer talked about “business Democrats” that vote to the right of the Democrat mainstream. They do this for several reasons, but the operative word here is “cover.” Don’t ever forget that word, COVER, it is a cloak and an excuse and a way out for politicians in a tight spot on a vote. What it roughly means is that you are placating your main base of supporters so that you can vote against their interests without alienating them. Or vice versa, you vote for your money base but somehow keep the voters happy.
This is tough work if you’re a Democrat in a Republican district, but I have no sympathy because it is basically a Faustian bargain to begin with, or in plain English, a Deal with the Devil. Do Democrats have to take loyalty oaths and vote in lockstep like the Republicans? No. But Democratic majorities are only as strong as the weakest link, so catch that clue, Democratic leaders.
When a lobby like the real estate industry has more power than government institutions you know we’re in deep trouble. And that lobbying angle is probably the most disturbing thing about what from now on shall be called ERINGATE, or the removal of Erin Kuczmarski from the Planning Commission. Lunsford smelled the stench of influence between members of the Council, the Planning Commission, and the Commissioners. THESE ARE ALL DISTINCT GOVERNMENT BODIES WITH SEPARATE CHORES SO WHAT IN THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING???
Apparently, this did not concern them. I mean, is it just one big club? As a teenager might, like, say, that is, like, major bad. In other words, it is one thing for the real estate industry to have a strangle hold on the Council AND the Commissioners, but then for them to IGNORE their separate charters and work TOGETHER to influence ANY other government body is beyond inappropriate, it is scandalous AND SOMEBODY HAS TO BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE.
If Taliaferro and Cutler got to the Commissioners as Lunsford reported, THEN THE COMMISSIONERS ARE CHUMPS AND SUCKERS for caving and canning Erin. Wouldn’t you think the same if the tables were turned? And what is the sanction or penalty for such activity? Do you see how serious this is? Imagine a casual phone call between chummy insiders who disregard The Firewall between governing bodies… we don’t like this Erin gal… she isn’t playing ball so get rid of her… not a problem… do you have somebody who can take her place… yeah. Talk about abuse of the public trust and cynical faith in institutions!!! Holy cow, the vast Right Wing Conspiracy is here in our own back yard!!! Nah, they ain’t that bright!!
Somebody do us a favor when you’re downtown next – go to the City Clerk’s office in City Hall and get us the memos (they’re Public Record) of Erin Kuczmarski’s attendance record etc.on the Planning Commission. They’re on the lookout for Lane and me right now, so we can’t march in. Send it to our email on the site, thanks.
Caveat: you can assume that most people don’t give two hoots about local government, including it seems the News and Observer, but that does not mean that government becomes the private playpen of the privileged.
The deal is sealed on the Dorothea Dix property and Mixed Use wins. If you wanted a better use for the land, go do something else for the rest of the summer and save yourself the aggravation. So much for Thinking Big, so much for listening to The Public, it was all a good show from the start.
How about we examine how The System more or less works here? First, you have a timetable for all decisions depending on a variety of variables like City Council Will, City Staff participation, what sorts of meetings are needed, and Citizen Input. In the Dix scenario, the decision regarding citizen input is set for Warp Speed - three meetings, three months - and then boom onto the table for debate by the decision-makers.
This is partly because this is a State/City deal, so this pace gave control of the information flow to the insiders and prevented things from getting out of hand. On Dix, citizens are sort of like “caller 77” to WRDU trying to win free tickets to a Talking Heads reunion show: Thanks, now get off the phone, you didn’t win. I don’t want to confuse you, but typically the process works in the opposite way - everything gets dragged out for years, but more on that in a future blog.
Next, the State and Raleigh hired an outfit of so-called experts, in this case LandDesign from Charlotte. When LandDesign sees a big chunk ‘o dirt, the first thing they think is: Mixed Use. This means office/retail/residential woven together into a pleasing plan so that people can live, work, play in a walkable community, yada yada. This is what they do, folks, and this is what they are good at; check out their track record.
For my money, they should have dug up Frederick Law Olmsted and got his opinion; now there was a dude who could take dirt and make a scenic panorama out of it. In other words, it is BTB.org’s opinion that this was the wrong consultant for the job and a waste of taxpayer dollars.
Anyway, the experts came in and showed folks successful Mixed Use Projects elsewhere in the nation. If you were perplexed at what you considered to be a disconnect between the rhetoric of what Dix could be and the reality of LandDesign’s ideas, you weren’t alone. Call it a sales pitch if you want; it is the current paradigm for land use--especially in the heart of a city, and it is something that your City Council sort of understands in terms of the Urban Design Guidelines. Most Council members don’t have a “design” bone in their body, they want to let “the market” figure it out and then vote. If that was truly the case, we’d have put a gaudy casino in the huge hole in the ground where the convention center is going. The Council members are like most folks: when somebody shows them a fancy presentation they are just like kids being handed a shiny new marble. HINT HINT, MIXED USE IS THE DIRECTION WE WANT TO GO.
Now we add public input, the typical workshop scene with groups and maps and markers and civilized debate. Citizens usually feel good about this process because they rub elbows with City staffers and consultants and politicians and they feel Their Voice is being heard. Sounds cynical I know, but The People gotta start somewhere. So, the public listened politely to LandDesign’s initial presentation, offered up an amazing smorgasbord of ideas, and the N and O cheerfully reported that “People’s Voices shape Dix Choices.” Little did the citizens know that The Truth was nothing of the sort, well maybe the word “park” was heard, either that or they were delusional in thinking that the Mixed Use presentation by LandDesign was just an accident.
All of this valuable input was then collated and presented again in Round Two in May in order to narrow the options, when in fact it was becoming a funnel for the Main Idea of mixed use. The Clue? Mixed Use didn’t go away. Next, and this will happen after the July 19 meeting and final input, the experts will put the whole shebang together, wrap it in a bow, and present it to the City. Then LandDesign will be off to the next Mixed Use planning hoedown.
When LandDesign does their pony dance for the City Council, rest assured that MIXED USE will be one or more of the options EVEN THOUGH NOBODY WANTED IT FROM THE START. This is when the gloves come off in the clash for power. BUT WAIT, you scream, hundreds of citizens showed up to offer input and tell the consultants what they wanted!!! There were a lot of people offering ideas!!! NOBODY WANTED HOUSING AND OFFICES ON THE DIX PROPERTY!!! Or rather, a small handful of folks did, heh heh, hardly a majority. Hell, all LandDesign needed was for one person to fart in the back row---hey, didn’t that sound like mixed use?---and they were off and running. Again, this is what they do for a living as consultants, it is the Idea du Jour, and that is what they are going to recommend. Yes, Raleigh will get a park out of it, but it will just be part of a larger mosaic of “uses.” Look, there is simply too much money at stake to give up the opportunity to build on the land.
So thanks for the ideas, gang, nice try, because the plan is already being formulated for the decision-makers... and when you go Downtown to be heard in the public forums of hearings and committee meetings they will nod politely and then do what they want in the context of Mixed Use. End of story.
By the way, seen or heard from the real estate community at the public meetings? No? Well, here is why: they won’t waste their time in public meetings because they know that The Game starts once the deal goes to a formal government body. They typically work behind the scenes--- so that’s when the phone calls and emails will come in supporting Mixed Use. The N and O reported “hundreds of letters and email messages” sent to LandDesign. How about we call your bluff? We suggest the N and O do an analysis of said input and report the results; then we’ll see what the level of support was for housing and offices on Dix and who it came from.
The N and O mentioned 1,000 homes on the Dix property. That, folks, will be one e-x-c-l-u-s-i-v-e address. Hell, why stop there? Why not another Levittown on the Big Field for the Bourgeoise? At 1,000 homes you can forget affordable housing, although there will be some serious guilt-tripping. No, this will be 500K+ stuff for new urban dwellers that will help Raleigh march toward an image of being hip. Sniff, sniff.
So kiss goodbye to the prettiest chunk of land in town…BTW, Central Park has a big field, too…
One last time, if the State really cared about a mental health facility or state offices they would have never let the dirt go in the first place and we wouldn’t be having this discussion. There are forces at work much larger than what even BTB.org can fathom.
Finally, you’ll note that the politicians are keeping a low profile because with so many constituencies in the hunt they can’t risk coming out in favor of one idea or another. The People had their say, we don’t have referendums for everything, this is a representative democracy, er, republic, elected reps make the final call…fair enough. Plus this is a state/local deal so the waters get muddied a bit, and that is really a shame. HOWEVER, imagine somebody taking the lead and saying, dadgummit, this time we ain’t gonna cave, we’re going to Think Big and blow a bunch of dough and it’ll WOW everybody and be a big draw and it’ll be our legacy. That was the Botanical Garden idea, or something similar, and even if they built on a smaller scale it would have been worth it.
Look for the Council members with ardent real estate industry supporters (like, practically all of them) to nod thoughtfully as they ponder the mixed use equation and then vote it in. In their minds it is simple: depending on my decision what is the damage with the voters or my supporters? Can a mixed use vote on Dix really hurt me? Smell the money here? Reeks of campaign contributions, don’t ya think? See, it doesn’t occur to these people that a truly public facility, like a botanical garden, could be a major league economic engine for the area. They react instead of thinking proactively and acting progressively.
Ya know, BTB.org might sound like a bunch of tree huggers, but we are definitely NOT anti-development. Mixed Use has a place in city growth and we support that. Again, let the real estate community concentrate on the area AROUND Dix in support of Thinking Big on the land itself. There is no ‘chicken and egg’ here so that you can’t Think Big unless you have decent neighborhoods and amenities around it or vice versa; they go hand in glove. I almost choked on my latte when I heard that the consultants said that access to Dix was difficult. Who were they kidding? That was a clue right there that these folks were out to lunch. Does any local not know how to get to Dix and the Farmer's Market from all points of the compass?
BTB.org shakes its collective head at the way this City/County/State does business in a backwater kind ‘o way. Unless you count Benson Kirkman running all over the City telling folks about Dix (and we don’t since Kirkman is not in office and not likely to be anytime soon), no local politician was out front being a champion for the High Ground.
The Dix property WAS a once-in-a-generation chance to do something really spectacular without caving to the private sector, and I’m sure LandDesign will win an award and put a picture on their website. Oh well, might as well get out the snorkel and flippers and wait to see what happens July 19. Nevertheless, the City Council better get ready to get their ears blistered by the public when Mixed Use happens on Dix.
As the LandDesign consultant said in the N and O, “We’re talking concepts here.”
No kidding.
I've been tired of the graffiti in Raleigh for a long time. Even a little bit of it is unacceptable, and a cursory look at the News and Observers archives shows articles mentioning graffiti for years. Folks, it was old to begin with, and it is really old now. The Raleigh Police Department has been aware of the problem for some time, but random graffiti is not high on the list of priorities unless a gang task force is involved. Fair enough, the cops are busy.
Durham has had a bigger problem than us for a lot longer, but so what? My City Council was behind the curve as usual, even with their recent announcement that they were not only going to crack down on gang activity but were going to set up a graffiti removal team. About time. Welcome to the 20th century, Raleigh. Yes, I said 20th. Graffiti and gangs may be handmaidens, but random people who scrawl (“taggers”) are proliferating like bunnies in spring and it has been going on a long time.
There are any number of rambling pieces waxing philosophical about whether or not graffiti is an art form and the fine line that constitutes freedom of expression and a public nuisance. But we’re talking spray paint all over the place: dumpsters, City signs, etc. This is not sanctioned art or murals and the City Council was not addressing it aggressively until they couldn’t ignore it any longer. Graffiti is nothing new; for example, it can be found in Pompeii (naughty stuff that can’t be reproduced in a family blog such as BTB.org)
Listen, Raleigh Council Councilors: like crabgrass, graffiti must be killed early and often. You didn't know this?
Never fear, BTB.org is here to tell you how to fix the graffiti problem. First look at what Los Angeles has been doing. Their program is called Operation Clean Sweep, and they have had great success in cleaning up L.A. The program utilizes volunteers and folks doing community service and is organized by council districts. L.A. provides the resources for cleanup.
Additionally, everybody knows that N.Y.C. had a big problem with graffiti on the subway trains for years, but they also address graffiti in general. A crucial part of success regarding graffiti is keeping good records and addressing things in a timely fashion. This is where a 311 complaint system is perfect. 311 systems are clearinghouses for complaints and information from a city. Basically, one stop government shopping for citizens. I just picked up the phone, dialed 311, and got nothing - so you know where Raleigh is at. Actually, Raleigh is developing their 311 system; it should be up and running by 2027.
Even more crucial than 311 is creating overlapping, coordinated, cross-referenced systems. In other words, no matter how the complaint about graffiti (or any thing else, for that matter) comes in to the city, it has a job number so it can be tracked. Just like sending a package with Brown. BTW, 311 systems have been running in other places for years now and are quite sophisticated. They save money too... hey, what a concept.
In a nutshell, here’s what the City needs to pony up:
You can also pass laws that prohibit sales of spray paint to kids under 18, etc. As it is, L.A. cut their graffiti budget…
The whole thing sounds easy to me, but given the glacial pace of action and decision-making in Raleighwood, BTB.org expects, NAY - DEMANDS, that the City Council have this program UP AND RUNNING no later than, say, 2010. Yeah, two more terms ought to be enough time for this gang to act. Actually, they can all pat themselves on the back for cracking down on graffiti come election time; "Law and Order" always works as a platform plank.
I cringed when I typed “graffiti” into the City’s website search bar, because you never know where you’ll end up on that website. Imagine my surprise when I got a link to the current City budget proposal; $115,000 is the amount of money requested by City Manager Russell “Sportster” Allen for an anti-graffiti program in his annual budget request for fiscal year 2005-06 (FY06.)
I guess some City staffers making 80K came up with the 115K figure after doing a bit of research for Mr. Allen, but for the uninitiated like us it took all of 30 minutes online to get all this together. The amount it is really going to cost taxpayers over time is anybody’s guess but scale notwithstanding, NYC estimates it needs $6,372,000 for graffiti removal. Per year. We’ll guess the 115K represents consultants fees to figure out a program for Raleigh, and so BTB.org would like to personally thank the City Council of Raleigh for the $115,000 dollar check we’ll receive from the City for setting up the new Raleigh Anti-graffiti (RAG) program.
Man, we could have a serious party with that moola, in fact we’d be willing to rent the house next door to council member Philip Isley and invite everybody we know. We’ll hire The Rolling Stones and spend 100K so they’ll drop by at midnight and play a 30 minute jam of “Satisfaction.” (The remaining 15K will rent the house and buy snacks.) Hah - then we’ll see if Phil wants to enforce the Nuisance Party Ordinance.
BTW, let the word go forth that the “growing” issue of graffiti occurred on Isley’s watch as Chair of the Law and Public Safety Committee of the City Council. ALL OF A SUDDEN we had to address graffiti in support of the state anti-gang bills? Next time you see a cop, ask how long they’ve been seeing graffiti spread with no help from the City. We’re not impressed Phil, you’ve been in office for years now, so start doing your job. Dude, you are so far behind the curve of progressive politics you make Droopy Dog look like a speed freak. Hey, Phil! Are you even paying attention? Here, no charge, steal this idea to burnish your image: a Citywide massive “Wipe Out Graffiti” day in Raleigh, the whole shebang at once, paint from the City, roving gangs of volunteers from all over, community service folks, cops and firemen and churches pitching in - and a great photo-op for the City Council as y’all paint over some mess on the side of a building.
And then stay on it, just like crabgrass.
The Hunt is over for the Schenck
Forest unofficial dog park. NCSU has announced that as of June 1, the forest
will be closed
in toto to Toto. No
more watching Lassie unwind through the
woods at full gallop. No more Benji landmines
as one walks the path. No more Snoopy
and Ol'
Yeller lifting their legs on the Memorial Oak.
The University didn't want to do it, and they had some help from the pro-dog
park gang, but the owners went to the dogs anyway. It all boiled down to keeping
Fido leashed, but most folks
ignored the request (actually, the law). NCSU also did some research on degradation
in the park AFTER they made an attempt to get dog owners to clean up their act,
no pun intended.
Pets like Droopy Dog are
mostly luxuries, and for the guilty who keep Augie
Doggie cooped up all day in a crate or the laundry room, it was nice guilt
reduction to have a place to go where the four-legged set could let it rip.
They just didn't think anybody was watching since Schenck, official college
land, has been Scooby
Doo turf for years.
Wait, you say, if the dog is on a leash it is still going to go to the bathroom
- so what is the diff? Well, just like NYC,
the dog owner can watch Spike
do his thing and pick up the poop and dispose of it. Hey, it all adds up, folks;
go to the bathroom on your front lawn for a month if you need help understanding.
Oh well, it ain't like dog owners didn't get Fair Warning. Now they'll pack
City Hall begging the City Council for quick action on current and new dog park
proposals. Or they'll find a new "out-of-the-way" place to run Clifford
the Big Red Dog - they've already got a pawhold on Umstead
Park and the new Museum
ArtPark.
Dog owners made a mistake calling the University's bluff, thinking they'd never
tighten up, and they blew it. Get caught a second time at Schenck with your
Heinz 57 loose and
you're both going to be in crates because the cops will arrest you.
Just one question: is Snoop Dogg still
allowed in the Walkman if Inga wants to go for a hike in Schenck?
----------
De Gama had a distant memory of walking home at night through a park in
the dark and suddenly from a ways off he heard the distinct clinking of dog
tags approaching at high speed. He crouched a bit, arms crossed out in front,
waiting for the attack as the clinking got closer. At the last second there
was a whistle and the dog spun on a dime and tore off. Who the hell wants to
be harassed by somebody elses Mutt just because they want to let him run free?
Dorothea Dix Round II is this week, Wednesday 6-8 pm at the Convention Center. Lunsford will be out of town, I’ll be at a soccer game.
Those of you attending will find that the Consultants and Experts will spring on The Public that despite everything said by everybody the consensus is - drum roll here - a mixed-use wonderland with some really nice (that is, expensive) housing. Just so you know, BTB.org hates that idea!!
Anyway, The Experts showed us their cards in the first round when they aired some nice salespitch examples from Mixed Use Elsewhere. So expect their tentative design to reflect that standard mod idea and The Fix already being in, which is the truth of it. Who in the hell is their point man anyway? He looks like a 1950’s actuary, style notwithstanding.
With that in mind, I spun the 225 down to the Dix campus last weekend and drove around, ending up on the Ridgeline that separates the property into roughly northeast/southwest halves. For reasons I can’t remember (or won’t divulge), I walked the Dix campus years ago, just to see it by foot, and my two favorite spots were the Ridgeline and the sloping meadow leading up from Western Blvd. I recall stumbling on the graveyard for The Forgotten and I sat on a bench for an hour and just stared at the field of the dead.
Anyway it hit me, the Ridgeline was also a Faultline, shazzam, and suddenly a bizarre syzygy of events lined up planet-style in my feverish brain and gave me pause as I looked for the common thread. So here is the thread, and the weaving will occur along the way: NC State got a whole lot more of the original Dix from the State than the City of Raleigh did in this land deal. Plus, tell me, what has State done for Raleigh lately?
And those questions impact what should happen with the remaining Dix land.
Halt right there, you say, declare your allegiance! Okay: GO PACK!! Correct-o-mundo readers, I bleed red, and testify regularly that the Tarheels and Dookies are just pretenders in the real world (although Carolina co-eds are cuter.) Now, this is partly bluff, because we all know that State has had a chip on their shoulder forever, a closet Inferiorty Complex due to Ag School Status instead of the prestige accorded schools with Sacred Cows like Law and Medicine.
Listen, you myopic zipperheads, Carolina and Duke still suck wind in the Technology Department (ignoring medicine); in the real world State is killing them globally because technology is driving all innovation. Lawyers and doctors are making money only because of all the technology developed by kids coming out of State. Like the old joke says, what did the Carolina English major say to the State computer major? “You wanna Supersize that?”
As it is, we here at BTB.org figure that the Dix campus will provide us with plenty of fodder over the coming months as local interests gnash their teeth deciding what to do with the remaining dirt. However, a recent article about NCSU's Centennial Campus, coupled with some Spring Hill trivia on a recent Council agenda piqued our interest. (The Spring Hill chunk will be some NCSU bland-o-rama mixed use that will be developed more or less along the Ridgeline; it was the most recent chunk given to NCSU.)
Anyway, the players in my current scheme include Raleigh, the Dix Campus, Centennial Campus, newly installed chancellor James Oblinger, and our favorite new boy-toy for our gay friends, the Pirate Captain, or PC, who recently fired up the normally moribund student populace into voting in a campus election. Just kidding, Most Honorable Student Senate President Pirate Captain, we know the truth, but we have to report our pals were salivating over the patch. AAARRRGH!!
The Pirate Captain managed to amuse us and annoy the political Status Quo at NCSU as he kicked the stuffing out of the stuffed shirts that have had a terminal lock on campus politics for way too long. I laughed my head off. Jolly good show, dude. Poor Young Republicans, can’t you just hear their wails of anguish as good, clean fun and a marketing plan straight out of a Yingling bottle blew away their “serious agenda.” I mean, just how do you rebuff a guy who says, “I’ll be keepin’ me name?”No doubt several YR members hung themselves with their cobalt blue “W” ties - which on our side of the fence is what us progressives jokingly call a good start. BTB.org keeps a pretty lazy eye on The Technician to monitor the New Journalism, but wasn’t that former Senate Prez Caravano guy something like 30 years old, like a 6-year plan gone elastic? Anyway, President PC has his work cut out for him because when you put “Pirate Captain” and “Centennial Campus” in the same sentence, the disconnect should be obvious.
Centennial Campus is for grad students and budding techno-geeks looking for their first patent (note to geeks: get yourself a newly minted patent lawyer from Carolina or an intellectual property lawyer from Duke because half the reason “business” is invading college campuses is to capitalize on, er, monopolize, er, maximize your cutting edge brainpower by partnering, pilfering, and headhunting).
Not majoring in the cutting edge? Too bad, Centennial Campus doesn’t want you around. Take note, PC, you and your minions aren’t part of that picture. Need some new cool on-campus housing? Forget it, better be a grad student unless Ma and Pa can pony up dough for a condo. Sure, you can visit once in a while as you jog around the lake… but I digress.
What exactly do we see from the Ridgeline when we look to the southwest toward Centennial Campus? A veritable Playpen for the moneyed, hobnobbing, elbow-rubbing classes thanks to North Carolina legislature land giveaways over the years. Soon you’ll see a three million dollar love shack for Chancellor Oblinger (thankfully Marye Anne “Crazy Like A” Fox didn’t get to live there; she would have had a peasant village installed out back so she could milk cows and pretend she was a member of the Bourgeoise.) Next, a 56,000 square foot Alumni Center for the red sweatered class-ring-and-beer-gut set! (An acre is about 43,000 square feet.) And naturally, both of these will overlook Lake Raleigh (!). Did you even know there was a lake back there? Plus there are a handful of 200K-400K+ condos for the smart set with more in the works, but who among the PC crowd can afford them? Finally, and this is where the gall and swagger combine to make me see pale blue and navy blue, they want a hotel and golf course! Damn, a brand spankin’ new golf course right in the heart of town for the PGM gang - Professional Golf Management majors. Remember, folks, we’re describing a college campus. Sure, universities always have nice features that distinguish them from their surroundings, but this is ridiculous. What will become of the current barely breathing 60’s deco University Club on the other side of the tracks all the way out by the vet school campus?
Quick segue to our fearless leader Mayor Meeker - let me ask you a question, Chuck, does Raleigh have a cheap, in-town municipal golf course? No? I mean, a staggering-can’t-believe-it-from-a-Capitol City NO? Not that we care that much about making par, but isn’t that sport exploding with interest? Well then, how about some of this vaunted “partnering” that gets everybody so hot. State gets their golf course, but only if it is also a Raleigh Municipal course. Imagine, you can hit the links in town after work, and they offer classes for underprivileged youth on the weekends.
HA HA HA HA, oh de Gama you’re killing us with your dreams, don’t make us laugh at such a preposterous notion. Well, you’re right, what State Alum in town for a weekend of spring rolls and tailgating wants to bump into some public hackers out learning the game? No way, pal, this golf course will be CLOSED to you and me. And what of their hotshot hotel? Local hoteliers threw a fit when the idea was floated a couple years ago not because of the competition for rooms, because we all know Raleigh isn’t exactly awash in four star swanky digs, but because of the Exclusiveness of what State could offer - a pricey little oasis in the heart of town, located near downtown, just off the highway and a quick shot to the airport, in a bucolic setting, with a golf course across the street… locals need not apply.
So what do the Pirate Captain and his ever-increasing Unwashed Masses get out of all this? Nothing - unless you call part-time jobs a sop to undergrads: serving spring rolls at Alumni center functions, playing caddy for a chubby electrical engineer from Detroit, manning the desk at the campus hotel at midnight, or fetching rental cars from the parking lot… Note to PC: don’t wear the wig to the interview.
No, dear Undergrads, you don’t fit anywhere in this picture. Got that?
In fact, you are just there to pay your tuition and maybe if you’re incredibly
lucky or focused you’ll survive to graduate and miracle of miracles go
to grad school and if you’re in a really cool major then Centennial will
welcome you with open arms. Either way the big boys at State need your tuition
to keep the public/private techno-go-go image going.
As usual, we get to the part where we exhort the leaders of the City to step
up and do the right thing, in this case maybe giving us a public golf course
which is all the City might get out of the sweet deals that forked over the
best in-town land to the University. Yo, Mayor Meeker, just what can State do
for Raleigh instead of vice versa? Maybe the question should be phrased differently.
How can the largest economic engine in the City make regular citizens feel like
they are part and parcel of the organization instead of outsiders looking in?
From recent history, the State folks usually do whatever the hell they please, plus there is a history of nothing but a poor relationship between town/gown. This is old news all over the nation… So Mayor, take a Dem delegation and get up with newly “installed” Chancellor Oblinger, who was pulled from the rank and file of the faculty and seems a decent fellow, I bet he’d drink a Yingling, and build that relationship that has been so tenuous and so fragile for so long. And Mr. Mayor, be sure to wear a helmet if you take golf lessons with Councilor Taliaferro - her slice might be deliberate.
So what if the City now has the power to determine zoning decisions regarding State land? Does that mean no more rubber stamping their requests unless the City can get some quid pro quo?
When you stand on the Ridgeline of the Dix property and look southwest you’ll see that State got theirs BigTime, and none of us will benefit in a visible, daily way unless you want to settle for the indirect benefit of a nebulous “economic engine.” Valid? Yeah. Money and Jobs? Yeah. Sexy? Yeah. Tourism? Forget it. Cultural Magnet for locals? Huh? Undergrads and Citizens? Who?
Awright, enough ragging on State. Centennial Campus is cool, unique, and will make us all proud as businesses move in and zzzzzzzzz….
Oh yeah, now for the Big Contrast and the Main Point. Did we forget that poor little piece of dirt over the hill from Valhalla called the Dix Campus? Say it isn’t so: the State steadily gave away land until about a fifth of the original parcel was left and Raleigh got to watch it vanish? No!!
Plus the incentive is there for the State Government, if not by the most politically popular route, to just sell the land off to the highest bidder and run with the money. Again folks, the City of Raleigh got nothing but the opportunity to watch the University prosper. Duh, you got the Farmer’s Market, didn’t you? Okay, we’re cool with that, especially in late summer when we need peppers, but it hardly compares to the Playpen over the Ridgeline.
So with about 300 plus acres left to burn, Mayor, line up your Dem votes and let’s not let a spec of that land go private or to some use other than the benefit of All Citizens. Consultants, to paraphrase any number of Council members, are merely like the Comprehensive Plan: they are only a Guide. Which leaves stuff like parks and botanical gardens and cultural amenities on the table - and takes privatization and mixed use off. Let the developers scout the surrounding area for dirt and buffer Dix with mixed use instead of depending on state and City largess…
And I apologize to the ghost of Dorothea Dix. I am afraid that when it comes to the mentally ill, taxpayers will fund services but they are going to tell you where you can get them. It looks like Dix ain’t gonna be the place.
- - - --
Inga informed Dr. de Gama that he had a phone call from local friends asking
for some last minute help fixing up their nursery for the latest arrival. De
Gama cringed. You know how you go to some houses and they have a shrine on the
mantel to their Alma Mater, like pennants and pictures and bobble heads? This
of course in addition to the requisite booster flag hanging outside by the front
dorr. De Gama groaned, grabbed a Yoohoo for the road, then fired up the Buick
225 and rode on downtown.
Once inside the room, yikes, he had to bite his tongue: this nursery was like stepping into a NC State Wolfpack store. Red walls and wolves and you name it on the walls. Well, Dad was a hotshot in technology pioneered at State. After chiding him for faking out his spouse with the “Wolfpack motif” gambit, as this room would become Dad’s shrine during ACC basketball season, de Gama said, “What do you think about the Dix land going to a botanical garden or some other cultural thing?”
And his pal, without a trace of irony, said, “Let them eat cake.”
PROLOGUE
Inga came bombing into the driveway with her gal-pal posse. They were going mall-hopping on a Triangle Town Center-North Hills-Crabtree-Brier Creek-Southpoint mega-jag in search of cutting edge Italian fashion. And lunch. Then back towards home for dessert at some restaurant posing as a Cheese Factory?
Our boy de Gama shrugged off their laughter and catcalls as he stood in silk pajamas and boots astride a 650 cc Japanese motorcycle with a dead battery. He had been kicking the thing for half an hour because he wanted to cruise the outer fringe of Raleigh, hair flying in the breeze a la EZ Rider. He was going to check out the outer suburbs of Raleigh for himself and hunt for the fault lines that mark the Metropolitan Statistical Area. It was de Gama's opinion that there was a huge, almost delusional disconnect between what folks thought constituted "Raleigh proper" and what constituted"elsewhere," meaning not urban Raleigh.
................
Okay, Inga: the Wake County tax rate is 60.4¢ per $100 of property value, and the City rate is 39.5¢ per $100. From 2000 to 2004, Wake County grew by 86,295 people. Inga's point is that there is a group of folks, not necessarily newcomers, who are not paying the same freight as the rest of us “in-towners”, yet yet enjoy much of the same services, amenities, and quality of life. Not only that, but some folks are actively resisting the inexorable and inevitable growth of Raleigh and other cities. The Triangle isn't getting any smaller, folks, and the overlapping issues of services and resource allotment and protection are coming to the fore. A lot of money is involved, and there is a direct correlation to quality of life. Is the Raleigh City Council anticipating the future?
Remember when Capital Boulevard was lined with orange barrels and cones for miles up around Wake Forest Rolesville as they widened it from two lanes to four? Man, it was like driving through a twisted Christo sculpture as you ran the gauntlet of lane changes. Getting to the airport from this neck of the woods was a bit of a drag in those days. Sure, you could haul down Capital to the Beltline, etc. but the locals would go the back way - 98 to 50 to Norwood, Leesville, and finally Westgate to 70 and end up at the Angus Barn. Others went Six Forks to Pleasant Union to Norwood.
Nothing was out there in those days but a lot of rolling land and a few pioneer subdivisions like Black Horse Run. But those days are long gone what with 540 arcing across the top of the City and the growth of Wakefield and other subdivisions.
It was dark and threatening rain as the big Buick idled on the side of the entrance ramp to I-540 at Capital. Steve Miller was singing about "Livin' in the USA." Dr. de Gama was done looking at north Raleigh; it was time to see the rest of the area. He waited a bit to give some cars a head start and then held his foot on the brake and revved the V-8 until it roared. Tires smoking and squealing, de Gama shot up the entrance ramp and hit the highway going about 75 - but since the pedal was to the metal it wasn't long until the speedometer pushed past 110...
Well, now, that trip that didn't take long... So tell me, what do places like Wake Forest, Brier Creek, Holly Springs, Knightdale all have in common? They are suburbs that need absolutely nothing from "Raleigh" or inside the Beltline other than some overlapping and connecting infrastructure. Jobs? Food? Shopping? Fun? Work your schedule and job right and you can live, work, and play - without ever coming into town. "Raleigh proper" has ceased to exist, except in the news, and who cares about issues? What happens when the competition for resources kicks in as the tug of war between urban and suburban cranks up?
(BTW, I went through a bunch of intersections on my rounds; I never understood the logic of loading an intersection with 867 similar sized signs aiming you to some new subdivision, apartment complex, or mattress sale. I mean, everybody is going 50 mph, how do you read or distinguish these as anything but visual litter as you zoom by? No wonder L.L. Cool Lane was annoyed about signage. Well, that'll all end soon, or at least until the Law and Public Safety Committee finds some city with a sign ordinance that successfully thwarts the Constitution.)
What to make of these various places on the fringe of town? There are three traditional theories for how cities grow. The first model is called Concentric Zone, the classic bullseye with urban core, transitional zone of industry, and suburbs. Chicago is the classic example. The second is called Sector - basically where development follows the lay of the land or transportation routes or industry. Think San Francisco and places constrained by topography like rivers or mountains. The last is called Multiple Nuclei, where smaller cities grow at different rates and sizes, and eventually bump into each other to form the quilt of the urban area. Think L.A.
What is Raleigh? The urban core is surrounded by suburban living, the formal boundaries of nearby towns and cities are bumping into each other, and we follow the lay of the land in that we develop along transportation routes and bump into Falls Lake. (They are bumping into Jordan Lake on the southwest side.) You make the call, but I'll say its more Multiple Nuclei than Sector as the Triangle cities grow, or maybe vice versa. Certainly City planners are made aware of all this at one of those annual powerpoint and workshop deals, but it is unclear what the long-term implications are for Raleigh City Council policy.
One of the big fat clues to this trend is that any four lane road in these parts becomes a corridor for development: Capital Blvd., 64, and 70 northwest and southeast come to mind. The principle is the same whether you build a road through the Amazon with cheap World Bank money, or extend Duraleigh Road through Umstead Park. The Western Wake Expressway will open up the east side soon, and I'll bet you don't even have clue in your mind's eye what 540 will look like as it starts to loop south around the City.
I was looking for what might be called White Flight and I may have found it in Holly Springs. Congratulations to Holly Springs, they recently won the honor of having the lowest crime rate in the state. Gee, why is that? Seen the intersection of Holly Springs Road and Sunset Lake Road? You wouldn't recognize it. It will continue to become Traffic Hell as the two lane country roads take on more load, but no more schlepping up to Kildaire Farm to get groceries. Take Holly Springs to the end and you'll find more suburban living in Fuquay-Varina, possibly one of the weirdest place names in the nation.
The spillage ran southeast a long time ago; Highway 70 to points southeast is traveled heavy every day. If you knew where the Outer Loop was going to go and could buy up land near the corridor you could make damn good money down the pike. Not that the Average Joe can do that...
Well, we got problems right here in River City. Seems the idea of growth and taxation is something folks disagree on. Today there will be two rallies downtown. The formal one will be Town Hall Day sponsored by the NC League of Municipalities. These folks are pro-City and work the legislature to make cities strong. The informal rally in opposition will be Stop NC Annexation, an anti-annexation group with some traction at the state level. Turns out annexation, or the absorption of land into a city's limits and tax base, has got a lot of folks panties in a knot and there are a variety of bills before the legislature to remedy this so-called outrage. Only in North Carolina....
The recent border skirmish between Holly Springs and Cary is a case in point. The Dutchman Downs subdivision was caught in the middle and raised hell. For crying out loud, this is not some weepy hand wringing over 5th amendment property rights and taxation and precious quotes from Founding Fathers. The "donut holes" of county property surrounded by city property are not beleaguered bastions of freedom from the tyranny of taxation. The cities are growing. You are in the path. You will now become part of the city. If you need another clue, what do the years 1857 and 1907 have in common? They were both years the City of Raleigh grew through the annexation of property.
Look at a map of Raleigh and the Extra Territorial Jurisdiction, or ETJ, and you'll see that Districts E, B, and C are expanding into new territory. Districts A and D have some room to grow, but not like C, B, and E. All of these districts have an "urban core" component and a "suburban component."
For Dr. West in District C, this juxtaposition is especially pronounced in that the urban core of C usually has one of the highest crime and poverty rate in town, but once you get outside the Beltline folks are building new homes in middle class neighborhoods.
Jessie Talliaferro in District B has an urban component with hip folks near Five Points, but considering that she has Wakefield on the north end you know who she really has to worry about when it comes time to make decisions. The bookends of wealth in B sandwich a lot of middle class and lower income folks and what do they count for in the big scheme of things?
Philip Isley in District E more or less has the most homogenous of these three districts as his Glenwood/Five Points area is the most desirable real estate in town, starter castles to the northwest notwithstanding. For Isley, it is suburban money and wealthy urban money competing for resources, not like C, where the poor are up against it and the fringe prospers.
Having said all that, what does the future hold? We simply need to turn back the clock to see what Oklahoma City, OK and St. Petersburg, FL did, oh, about 40 years ago. They planned ahead, and stuck their city limits out on the fringe, as in way out, miles out of town. Oklahoma City was something like 56 square miles in 1968 (!) and St. Pete was like maybe the largest city in the country. Should Raleigh do the same?
One school of thought wants small towns grow at their own pace. Another idea says that small cities will wither and die without a tax base. See what is happening to the town of Eureka in the Tuesday, May 9, News and Observer. It costs cities a lot of dough to provide cops, firefighters, roads, sewer and water, garbage collection, etc. and Eureka is dying due to no tax base. For big cities here is the quick and dirty on how this works: the urban core slowly decays in the competition for resources, the suburbs clean up and prosper, and the poverty and problems accumulate near the urban core. I won't waste your time proving this point with maps and data, just know that this is old news in cities across the land. The poor gotta live somewhere, and expensive condos downtown are not an option.
If we take the long view, the whole argument about annexation becomes a footnote in the history of a city. The donut holes close up, the boundaries between municipalities become firm, the laws apply as municipalities cooperate regionally, and the tax base and services become uniform. Of course, those opposed to annexation don't want to take the long view. Strong cities don't mess around with this issue, they just wave off the petty worries and move on.
Oh, so you want to live in your donut hole or the ETJ or the urban fringe but don't want to pay the same taxes as the rest of us - but still receive the same quality of life amenities and services? I mean, you can cross a street in some places and your taxes will double or halve depending on which way you're going. Case dismissed. The League of Municipalities has it right: strong cities make a difference and how they get money is crucial. 150 years ago the bulk of the folks in the nation were in rural areas, now it is the reverse and they are in the cities.
Pay attention, Raleigh.
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EPILOGUE - PARALLEL UNIVERSE
de Gama skidded into the stall and turned off the 225. He took a look in the rearview mirror and pinched himself. Did he really exist? Holy Plato, was he just another figment of the Independent's incredibly vivid imagination? And if he didn't exist, what of his beloved Inga? What of her cats Muffin and Tipsy? What would Chalmers out in CA say? What of the non-academic materialists who favored Ken Wilber and trans-rational thought? Don't even start with neuroscience and the inroads into consciousness. What a great question, do I exist? For de Gama's money, nothing could replace the physicists/mystics of yore at the 1927 Solvay Conference; this batch of dudes would go on to create Quantum Mechanics. In the end, Werner Heisenberg probably had it right about de Gama: you can watch him zoom by in space in the 225, or you can fix his position - but the Uncertainty Principle means you can never pin him down. Why bother?
Non-negotiable statement: Every human being deserves clean, safe drinking water.
I’m not talking macro/global paradigm, I really mean it in the micro sense of the Neuse River Basin, the Falls Lake watershed, and the faucet in your kitchen sink. Here’s my conclusion after many years of observation: unless you start screaming at your local officials, Raleigh will someday (soon) have a water supply that is not pristine and will cost taxpayers (you and me) a TON of money. Call me Chicken Little, but when you next buy a pint and a half bottle of water at the store for a buck, do the math and realize that water costs a lot more than gas, even with today’s oil prices.
Let’s posit a Big Picture question that impacts our local take on things: Does political compromise ever work with moral issues? Specifically, is there a “right” to clean water?
Think hard on this, because the Water Wars have already started, and the Future of Water is not pretty. It is something many have pondered for decades and the seeds of long-term problems are have already sprouted in Raleigh.
Small caveat - I confess to a head full of useless trivia that is of particular interest to no one. Don’t ask me why, but I carry a 50 gallon drum of water tidbits around in my head. I guess growing up surrounded by water I would subconsciously gravitate toward water issues; like an Eskimo who has a bunch of words for snow, I am familiar with water in various forums: depletion of the Ogallala aquifer, competition for water runoff from the western side of the Rockies, folks in New Mexico collecting every last drop of water from the sky, saltwater intrusion, recent and current drought conditions, the Central Arizona Project, history of water usage in mill towns, the New York City water system, the idea for a water pipeline from the Great Lakes to the Breadbasket states, the idea for a water pipeline from Kerr Lake on the VA/NC border... You get the idea, anyway...
A 770 square mile area drains into Falls Lake. That is a box of about 26 x 30 miles. To understand the gravity of your watershed, fly to L.A. at night sometime and look out the window. It ain’t like flying up through the Northeast Corridor where the land is lit up for miles. When you look down at night over large parts of the nation, it is blank, dark, and uninhabited.
Two points: one, we have a man-made water supply for the region that drains everything like a big sloping pan, just a big ol’ open bathtub, and two, your water supply is not a bunch of deep wells into pristine filtered underground lakes called aquifers that are mostly safe from contamination. Raleigh and friends are packed into a space the size of a postage stamp - so we damn well better make sure the water supply stays clean.
And North Carolina's Water Wars have begun. A process of trading “pollution credits” from downstream so that Butner can dump more nitrogen into your water supply is in the works. This area on the north end of Falls Lake is growing and got the “credits” from way down-river in a shell-game-shuffle that will be contested before a judge. If Raleigh fails in court, maybe they can suggest to Butner to keep the “credits” in exchange for development controls. But, oops, since Raleigh only controls a portion of the whole watershed, it has to clean up its act too.
Or be hypocrites - can’t tell everybody else not to develop when the local builders are building Starter Castles and McMansions on big lots with nutrient runoff right at the Army Corps buffer now, can you? Say, didn’t those Wakefield folks want a marina once upon a time, too? (Some Realtors are still selling the marina idea.) Sure, a mile or two of protection around Falls Lake is fine, but, oops, don’t those big lot requirements encourage sprawl? And what do we do about higher density outside of the buffered area…blah blah. The point is simple: who will set the bar for good stewardship, and will municipalities start shafting each other as the watershed fills with people?
So how do you protect the resource? One answer is natural buffers, with special protection in the headwaters. When we talk about streams feeding a watershed, there are two kinds: perennial, meaning year-round flow of water, and intermittent, meaning “dry” but when it rains they drain and take any particles and pollution with them. For example, yards and agriculture operations have fertilizer runoff. But it is the intermittent streams to watch for because this is the very beginning of the problem. And we all know what happens when the bottom of the food chain gets damaged. In addition to this kind of runoff, the News and Observer reports, “At the lake’s upper reaches, tributaries carry treated sewage loaded with nitrogen and phosphorus from Butner, Durham, and Hillsborough” which “act as fertilizer to stimulate growth of aquatic plants.”
The technical term for “nutrient rich” water is eutrophic. Ever tasted water that has this problem? Rotting cucumbers, yum. Anyway, these issues are prompting the push to create a “lake strategy that includes development regulations and limits on pollution from sewage treatment plants and other sources.”
News alert: your water supply has “eutrophication” problems. Guess what? All that algae is good for fish growth. Hey, Bassmasters!!
Enter Bob Slocum, a shrill shill for timber interests who last week published a position piece in the N&O whining about buffers. Naturally, Slocum wants to whack trees wherever he can and bemoans any effort to curb logging. Sure, we need wood, lots of wood to fire all those pig cookers for good ole NC barbecue, but we need clean water more. So sorry, no logging near the water supply, pal, find someplace else to chop. So Johnston County has now has a 100 feet buffer along some streams. Cary has a 100 feet buffer. Raleigh has a 50 feet buffer, which really isn’t Raleigh’s rule - rather, it’s state law.
Back to the Big Picture: these are political decisions regarding a moral issue. Cary people don’t care what the Slocums of the world say about it, they are going to protect the water resource, and they figure 100 feet should do it. But it does get a bit dicey. Slocum says, “Research shows that the bulk of sediment and nutrients are captured within the first 30 feet or so of the buffer, depending on the slope of the land." Tough to argue with the science of the 30 feet, I've actually heard that before, but 30 feet hardly justifies an entire buffer policy. The “depending on the slope” part is a serious problem, and hardly the only variable in Slocum’s one-horse idea.
Where do we adjust for slope and why doesn’t he address it? The one-size-fits-all Raleigh 50 feet buffer is something that no carpetbagger builder has to care or worry about whether the slope is flat or 60 degrees…“Aye, Joey, all ya gotta do is put up silt fence at 50 feet and fuggetahboutit.”
You tellin’ me the runoff will be the same depending on the slope?
Seen some of the silt fence work around these parts? Pathetic.
Some fences are left in place and decay, some are put in poorly and not maintained. There was a $50,000 stream cleanup due to shoddy work at the RBC center, and naturally the City and State don’t have enough folks to monitor things. As for research, I’ll bet that you can find studies for Coastal Plain water issues being used for Piedmont decisions and any other manner of contradictory science. The problem is that by reducing the complexity of “buffers” to a formula to strike some political “balance”, the moral issue of clean water gets muddied. Council members have to live with their temporal decision regarding lobbyists and voters, but the wallets of the taxpayers pay for the water resource itself, and the long-term health of the populace can suffer over the long haul.
So where is the City Council on this? Raleigh mayor Charles Meeker has stepped into the batters box (see the last goal here), recently commenting on watershed protection that “…current restrictions really haven’t gone far enough.” No kidding? Good work, Mayor, that is both a shot over the bow and a top-notch item for the fall campaign checklist.
Nevertheless, Falls Lake should never have gotten to this point, two year study and Chicken Little aside. Strap in, Mayor, and stick to the moral high ground, because this is one topic that will get hot with the development industry from the State on down to the City, as they’ll want to know what kind of curbs will occur on development. You’ll need every Democrat and Environmentally Moderate Republican at your side, plus the issue is regional so local folks should back you up. I want to think that most everybody is hip to the issue, but the truth is that most would rather go shopping. Still, you shouldn’t balk, Mr. Mayor, voters and contributors won’t line up for Herb Council even if he promises them all boatramps; follow through and use the bully pulpit.
The bottom of the bottom line is that failure to get a handle on the watershed now will mean more expensive water down the road for the taxpayers. You, gentle reader, will pay more for clean water due to a political decision - that pesky Big Picture moral issue again. The News and Observer says “…the population in the watershed will grow 50 percent by 2025, to 280,000.” That is inside your 26 x 30 mile “watershed box.”
According to Slocum, a 100 feet buffer means 24 acres of land lost for every mile of stream. Nice stat, Bob, but I could care less. If you have land with streams in the box, too bad, it should get absolute protection. Thinking of buying land with a stream on it? Think 100 feet of no use, both sides. Actually, if all the folks moving in are homeowners, a big buffer means less lawn to care for, more wilderness to appreciate, and more time for that great water-saving activity: golf. A trifecta of benefits!
So Bob, don’t give us a load of effluent about “buffers” when the damage is already apparent and the Legislative Fix has been in for years for development, timber interests, and the like.
If none of this inspires any confidence that decision-makers from the State to Raleigh will do the right thing, then quick, name the Chair of the City Council committee that keeps an eye on your water supply. That would be the Public Works Committee, chaired by Councilor Jessie “I kiss Republican Real Estate Heinie” Taliaferro. Yes, she'll talk about “balance” and “fairness” and her abiding concern for the environment - but if not watched, she'll turn around and stab the Mayor in the back by voting with the other conservatives for whatever the real estate interests want.
Or worse, claiming that she is or isn’t convinced by the “data” and doing the same?
Jessie is from New Jersey, so is new Councilor Joyce Kekas, so we’re guessing they’re familiar with the “Cancer Alley” moniker of their home state. (Maybe the Joisey Goils miss home, and that explains why they are hell-bent on making Raleigh into Trenton.) When it comes to the Water Wars in your adopted state, watcha gonna do if your vote means stepping on those precious real estate toes when restrictions are imposed? Plus, there is too much evidence to the contrary that they'll not break ranks with the Republicans; for example, the recent Joisey Goils vote for handouts to Republican "lobbyists".
Gentle reader, remember when Perrier hit the discos back in the ‘70’s? Of course you don’t, because you were in some blues bar swilling Wild Turkey and listening to Willie Dixon. Okay, I’ll admit it - we BTBers hit the discos a bit too, but only because that's where the girls were.
But a bottle of Perrier? It was laughable in a contemptuous way:
Who in the hell would ever pay for water???
Mayor Meeker: make sure that our water supply stays pristine, such as it is, and crack the Progressive whip on your fellow "dems".
----
Inga was inside buying Twinkies; Dr. de Gama was pumping gas for $2.18 a gallon for the 225 on Capital Blvd. when he remembered a long ago memory:
He was laying low in Loreto, a long morning's drive from La Paz. Baja California, Mexico, the sun scorching at daybreak - he swung out of the bed in a sweat and put on shorts, t-shirt, and flip flops. 5:30 am, but the temperature in those parts at that time of year was routinely in the high 90’s early. He went across the street to the little restaurant, a 10' x 10' cinder block cantina with two tables and some rickety chairs. The chicas were already out back in the kitchen that sported a dirt floor, rough sawed boards tacked to poles for walls, a tin roof, and open flame cooking. de Gama was parched, dying of thirst and damn, he couldn’t even brush his teeth with the local water.
He coughed out “agua mineral, por favor”. The waitress laughed “No. Hoy no, ayer no, y manñana, no." de Gama smiled and shook his head. “Okay, huevos revueltos y pan tostado solamente.” The girl nodded, as he always ordered scrambled eggs and toast, and waited silently because she knew he was thirsty too.
de Gama stared at the scorpion on the ceiling as he pondered his choices: warm super-sugared “naranja” soda pop - or warmer Corona?
Today was the Grand Opening of the pedestrian bridge linking Meredith Campus and the NC Museum of Art - and ultimately linking alternative commuters from downtown Raleigh with all points west. And where was de Gama last night? He tapped this out on the Underwood before first light of dawn this morning... L. Lane.
T’was midnight, and damn windy for an April evening. Your fearless hero, Dr. Walter de Gama, and his intrepid sidekick, Inga, were bombing down the Beltline in de Gama’s Buick 225. de Gama was lost in thought as he steered with one finger; he had been mulling government spending the last few days and was curious about a brand new structure in town.
Tangentially, he was pondering multi-modal infrastructure like bikelanes and sidewalks that make a city less dependent on cars. Why in the blazes was government more egg than chicken? Typically, leadership thought of multi-modal infrastructure as an afterthought, if they thought of it at all, instead of proactively planning and paying for it.
Blasting out of the beatbox into the night was ZZ Top’s “My Head’s in Mississippi.” One thing about that gal Inga, she loves any variant of The Blues. With her window down and her fiery mane blazing, Inga danced all over her seat and sang at the top of her lungs:
“Last night I saw a naked cowgirl...
She was floatin’ across the ceiling...
She was mumblin’ to some Howlin’ Wolf…
About some voodoo healin’..”
de Gama gunned the Deuce and a Quarter past their usual exit. Inga squealed over the tunes, “Hey Waltie, you missed our turn…” but de Gama only smiled. Some time passed… and then de Gama swerved onto the Lake Boone exit and wheeled into the parking lot of a shopping center. Leaving Inga to her designs, he dashed into the Food Kitty and picked up two pints of chocolate milk.
Back in the car Inga put the milk in the cooler and said, “Where are you takin’ me?” The good Dr. replied, “Baby, we are going to commemorate some most excellent government spending.” Inga, pedigreed more than the average bear with an arsenal of sheepskins, was momentarily stunned. She was used to de Gama’s ravings, but with a comment like that it could only mean her good buddy was on a Mission.
The Buick engine was ticking from the heat as de Gama and Inga walked onto the grounds of the North Carolina Museum ArtPark. There was just enough ambient light as they made their way past the cool new Woven-Out-of-Branches-Art-House-Structure near completion and down past the Funky-Bamboo-Poles-Staggered-In-A-Curvy-Arc piece.
They said little as De Gama led her through the grass to a paved path; he carried the milk in one hand and held her hand with the other. “How did you know this was here?” Inga half-whispered. “Read it in the paper today.” They made small talk about nanotechnology as they wandered the curvy ribbon through woods getting ready to bloom; at one point de Gama pointed off into the trees and said, “There’s a cool camera obscura over there in the shape of an igloo, the dude calls it “Cloud Chamber.”
On they went: across a wooden bridge over a stream, around a curve up a hill, and there it was - 660 feet of spankin’ new pedestrian bridge across the Beltline, longest in the state, connecting the museum grounds to the Triangle Greenway and providing a crucial link heading to Umstead Park and beyond to a larger network of trails. The Great Outdoors connected to the heart of the city. Inga squeezed Walter’s hand as he pulled her out onto the span. It was a new spark of consciousness for them as their mental maps, in an area mostly restricted to driving, connected Meredith College and Inside the Beltline to the Art Museum and Beyond.
Inga was grinning as they stopped in the middle of the span looking north at the hissing traffic. De Gama opened a bottle of milk with his teeth and handed it to Inga, then opened the other for himself. He held his pint up to toast and Inga did the same. De Gama solemnly intoned, “3.2 million from the Feds for this thing….cool, 600K from those dingbats that run Raleigh….VERY cool, long term value to Quality of Life from a bridge that has absolutely no value - other than to improve Quality of Life..." Inga shook her head and cut him off with, “Cheeseball.”
Holding hands our explorers clinked plastic and chugged as zooming headlights disappeared under their feet.
The Gold Rush for the Dorothy Dix Hospital land is heating up.
One idea comes from a group of folks wanting to put a botanical garden on the site. A letter writer to the Editor of the N&O imagines a “flora corridor” between Downtown and Dix. Well, gardening is the largest hobby in the world. This latest idea for transforming Dix may be getting just a bit of traction.
Alas, I live in Raleigh, where the avenues of bland, homogenous, and dumb meet at a 3-point intersection called “Mixed Use”. Sure, the Urban Design Guidelines are great, but... this is a Capital City where local political leaders have a Filene’s Basement view of the world instead of a Neiman-Marcus shoot for the stars vision. Look at the Liveable Streets portion of the City website and you'll see lots of "Possibilities" for what could be. And these Possibilities are mostly predicated on market forces taking advantange of infrastructure. That is fine, too, but it is still a gamble and misses the Big Picture.
Nevertheless, I took a look at Raleigh's Comprehensive Plan (found it on the second try, the City’s damn webpage is still mostly unusable) to see what it says about Dix. A one page explanation of the small area plan says that the tract itself is approximately 1,500 acres, about 400 of which are devoted to the Dix Hospital facility. 780 acres are devoted to Centennial campus; the Farmers Market and related activities get the remaining 328. That leaves about 400 acres of Dix to play with, and every level of government plus every developer and every dreamer in town wants a piece of the action when the bidding starts. Lots of "Possibilities."
Years ago I read an article that said one of the true measures of long-term health for any society is the level of government support for culture. All of the empires and all of the big time cultures of history left behind gardens, museums, libraries and edifices, etc., devoted to elevating Man above the mundane. In older cities around America, we can thank the Robber Barons and Philanthropists of yesteryear for Thinking Big and leaving us places that inspire.
So what the hell, I might as well do some Donald Trump-style dreaming since it doesn’t cost anything. First, we renege on all the deals because we want the entire 1,500 acres. Forget The Blob called NCSU, let them consolidate space on campus and build up, not out. This land is too pretty and too valuable for some private/public suburban office facility.
Next we get rid of the current Dix mental institution facilities, as in raze them. Pull out all the stops: Central Prison is an ugly eyesore and a distasteful reminder of the fact that the state kills people in Raleigh (never mind that it costs less to house somebody for life than to execute them). Move Central Prison to an eastern North Carolina where they need jobs. Voila: build your new mental health facility where the prison is now, keeping mental health care in town. Because the site is down in a hole, you build up, not out, and step the structure up as it goes north.
Then go wild on the 1,500 acres: botanical garden, aviary, arboretum, libraries, contemporary art museum, planetarium, etc. In other words, wow the southeastern U.S. with Seven Wonders of the World stuff ; our own version of the Smithsonian. Talk about creating an economic engine!
See how that works? No market involved, just pure culture for the hell of it and because it is good for the soul and for kids. Plus every cultured individual coming to town will gravitate there. Conservatives would scream communism, or worse, a jobs program. Don't be silly, the whole thing could be done with old-fashioned Pork Barrel spending in a heartbeat if we had a Robert Byrd in town. Who needs a Robber Baron?
Okay, enough hallucinating. NCSU will get their turf, and some of Dix stays devoted to mental health. If the state gets to consolidate services on the remainder, blandness reigns supreme. And if developers get a piece of Dix, rest assured that instead of Painting the Town Red, we will paint it Mixed Use Taupe. My fear is the poor little chunk of 400 acres will end up a monument to petty horse-trading.
If there is one thing I know about politics, money is never the issue. Folks claim it is, but I am here to tell you that money is all over the place and always has been. Need $40 million in bonds for local roads? No problem. Anyway, what is usually missing is political will. Considering the make-up of the current City Council, we're keeping pace with the nation - these are unremarkable times for political leadership. This Council couldn’t think out of the Urban Design box if you paid them, and most members will only do what their supporters scream at them to vote for.
If Councilors Jessie Taliaferro and Mike Regan were solely supported by BMX racers, believe me they’d be screaming for a dirtbike track at Dix. Meeker and Isley are Lawyers, and like Paul Coble (an insurance broker) before them they are paid to minimize risk, not think big. Kekas and Craven are too new to the game, but will likely support developers who will push mixed use with high density housing. Dr. West... is he still breathing?
That leaves Crowder the Architect. Two years ago, the Independent Weekly asked "Can this man make Raleigh a real city?". Now'd be a fine time to find out, though he's gonna have to scream to be heard above a cacophony of yelping.
If Raleigh wants to compete with Real-Deal Cultural Centers, then get out front, dream big, and just spend the dough. In the Big League, Infrastructure and Waiting for Possibilities are for sissies. When was the last time anybody stood at the doors of a botanical garden or downtown library or an art museum and complained about what it cost 80 years ago? If anything, people are grateful for the legacy and marvel at the vision of their predecessors.
Where is P.T. Barnum when you need him?
Well, I’ve been reading the news for over a month now as the local punditocracy weighs in on the ascension of Jerry Meek to the Catbird Seat of the NC Democratic party. Historical precedent and the "smart" money, at least locally, were favoring Ed Turlington. BTB.org has been pondering this in the context of local politics, but we’ll get to that.
In my mind, this was the nut: if Turlington won, the Status Quo would expect that Meek would continue to be a good soldier and fly all over the state on his own dime drumming up traditional grassroots support. In addition, they probably wouldn’t offer to share any power with Meek as a nod to the insurgents and the winds of change. After all, power is never handed over, it is seized. In other words, we’d have business as usual and caving to the Middle. Now that Meek won, he’ll meet with Boss Easley and the rest of the Pols, but that either doesn’t seem to have materialized or I missed it.
Several bizarre things have happened recently: Easley wanted to cut the top individual tax rates so CEO’s would move business to our state, and Emperor of the Senate Mark Basnight bypassed Easley and cuts deals to sell land in his home district and in Charlotte for $1 a pop at a time when the state needs dough. If that ain’t infectious Conservative Weirdness within the Democratic party, what is?
So the question remains - will the local Democrat Bluebloods work for Meek? Or will they fold their tent, close ranks, and let Meek flounder - at the peril of the Party?
This is all preamble to what I suggested in my first blog entry: that the new leader of the NC Democratic Party could sharpen his skills on the Raleigh City Council race as he gears up for the Midterms. Grassroots politics is still the coin of the realm; when candidates only shake hands for a photo-op, you’ll know we’ve shifted to a pure ad campaign election system.
But now I’m worried. The City Council trends to the right of middle in decisions, and this with a majority of so-called “Democrats.” Perry Woods, local political consultant and architect of Mayor Meeker’s campaigns, openly endorsed Turlington in the Independent, but played the middle saying progressives win both ways. I’ll believe that when I see it. If the local Dems remain plugged into the Turlington Blueblood mentality, meaning courting business for campaign money and Moving To The Middle (read: conservative) no matter the cost, they may perceive Meek as an outsider to ignore.
Mr. Meek, we want a well-oiled progressive Democratic machine here in the Capitol City. The Cutting Edge, not a dull knife with no teeth. Who knows what the Wake County boys are saying over martinis at the Cardinal Cub? There is only one way to find out: rent a Big Tent and invite every Democrat in the county - and find out who shares your passion for Progressive Politics at the local level.
P.S. Here's a link to a column Maureen Dowd wrote. Those insisting that Democrats need to keep moving to the center to accommodate the right need to read it and then answer this question: DO YOU REALLY WANT TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH LYING AND THIEVING?
Last week, the Raleigh City Council and the Wake County Commissioners approved a long-term plan on homelessness. Talk is cheap, but it sounds like Wake County and Raleigh are going to make the effort to end homelessness in ten years. In doing so we become the 100th community in the nation to take the pledge.
And that, folks, is a Progressive idea that BTB.org applauds.
In discussing homelessness, any health professional will tell you that the most lethal combination of factors for an at-risk individual is mental illness coupled with substance abuse. For these folks, their life becomes a Revolving Door: the person has a mental illness, they also have a substance abuse problem, they don’t take their meds. So they break down, get thrown into detox to dry out, get stable on meds again, then get out and live on the margin…they start to get high again, don’t take their meds.....
We need look no further than Dorothea Dix (the woman, not the place) to see that government intervention for the truly disadvantaged has a long history - and can be a winning proposition. In Dorothea’s case, it was separating mentally ill folks from the criminals by taking them out of the jails and putting them into their own facilities.
Again, talk is cheap, and we’ll be watching to see how the ideas come to fruition. Estimates of 3 to 50 million dollars in funding raised our eyebrows. Who is going to pony up the dough? Who gets to build the affordable housing? Are you going to put some housing in Wakefield or try to dump it all in south Raleigh as usual? 100 communities across the nation means a lot of brainpower invested. Who is going to monitor this national effort to mine the good ideas and avoid the pitfalls? Is there a website clearinghouse for information and if not, ho ho, can Raleigh or Wake County put one together that would be slightly more coherent than the current City website trainwreck?
With 1,200 homeless folks in Raleigh we don’t have the same problems other cities do. The good people doing the heavy lifting in this field deserve your support and respect as they do one of the more difficult jobs in society. Naturally, we gloss over this aspect of the culture. Naturally, mentally ill substance abusers have few people in their corner.
The 60’s and the 70’s saw a variety of attempts at reform, but Ronald Reagan accelerated the problem back in the early 80’s by nullifying helpful legislation and cutting funding for services. Fiscal policy dined at the banquet table and social policy begged on the street as they privatized the mental health industry. Public mental health facilities took a hit, and mentally ill folks with no insurance had to hit the streets. Reagan had the gall to suggest that some folks were homeless “by choice.”
In many ways, “homelessness” and “mentally ill” became synonymous. President Bush said years ago he would offer about 8 billion a year to launch his “faith-based” initiative - they’re still waiting for the money.
Enter Mike Regan, the sole “nay” vote on the Council for this initiative. The issues are real, but this was an easy throw-away vote - even for conservatives. Sort of like funding immunizations for babies, how can you miss? Everybody looks good, even if the initiative doesn’t pan out. BTW, the Wake County Commissioners voted unanimously in favor. Jolly good show. Regan offered up a lame, stale party line in the N&O:
"I don't want my vote to be misunderstood," Regan said. "I want to help the homeless. I just don't feel comfortable with government being the vehicle. I think private charities and churches should do the job."
You’re right on one point, Mike: there is no misunderstanding that you are a dime-store moron. Complexity is not your game, and your penchant for quoting history probably doesn’t include the particulars of this issue. Maybe you were quoted out of context, but your comment is nothing more than half-baked Reaganaut ideology and empty Bushisms - both of which have shafted folks on the bottom rung for 20 years. One last time: talk is cheap.
At the end of its February 24, 2005 article on homelessness, the N&O inquires: Could homelessness be ended in 10 years? In 1962, JFK challenged the nation to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. We did it in seven years.
-------
IN MEMORIUM
This blog entry on homelessness is dedicated to the memory of Lance, a childhood
buddy. Lance was a gifted businessman who, despite the downturns of the 70’s
and 80’s, and eventually going bankrupt, made more money in his short
life than I’ll ever make. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed as manic-depressive
in his early twenties, what we now call bipolar. He got therapy but didn’t
like taking medication because it made him sluggish. His illness stalked his
whole life, and it wasn’t something he could will away.
To compound things, Lance became a cocaine addict and an alcoholic. His life became the Revolving Door. He would periodically hole up in a motel room with a credit card and run it to the limit drinking and drugging. He would be evicted, thrown into detox, and luckily had family with the resources and patience to cover most of his lapses.
One time in a manic state he flew to Dallas - and took a cab to Houston… Maybe that life raft should have been pulled, but they couldn’t do that to their son and brother. If they done so, he would have been on the street and that was unacceptable. Eventually, Lance’s fortunes took a turn for the worse. He called me one night at 3 am, his usual m.o., and after listening to the same sad song for 30 years I finally got annoyed. I said, “Look, you’ve been an addict since we were young. You’re at this Huge Fork in the Road at mid-life: either you’re going to quit and move forward or you’re going to continue this spiral downward. You have to stop.”
He said, “I can’t.”
And that was that. Our contact dwindled, we spoke less and less, and since there was nothing I could do except listen, and I was sick of that, I wrote him off. I knew a terrific man prior to the drugs and mental illness, but he didn’t exist anymore…
Several years later I got a letter from Lance’s mother. The landlord had found his body after three days. Lance died at 43 in classic fashion: alone and broke in a cheap apartment in the bowels of a city. He was swilling cheap booze at the end, and his heart just plain gave out. If not for the life raft his family provided, over and over, he would have been on the street.
For those without family in Raleigh, a life raft is on the way.
I woke up yesterday morning to the news that Hunter S. Thompson, with .45 in hand, had shot himself Sunday. I got out of bed, went right to the liquor cabinet, and, not finding any Wild Turkey, took a long pull off a bottle of Old Crow to commemorate and memorialize over 30 years of books and essays from a guy I never met.
It seems odd to have “heroes” at mid-life, and it is damned hard when you lose someone that you have admired for decades. Heroes can mark your life in a mythic way, possibly setting the course for future behavior.
I have written only one fan letter in my life, and it was a card thanking Thompson for all the laughs and political insight. It would take a reader some time to wade through HST’s literary fireworks, but you’ll gain a clarity and wisdom about politics and culture from Thompson’s voice that you won’t find anywhere else.
I did get his autograph once: in a pack of wild beasts I jockeyed for position with flyer in hand and screamed, “SIGN THIS OR I”LL TEAR YOUR LUNGS OUT.” My buddy Raoul has it framed on his wall. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people that I know who have been paying attention to Thompson over the years. I called most and gave them the news.
When Thompson’s chronicle of the 1992 presidential election campaign was released, “Better Than Sex,” I was alarmed to read the final two sentences on the back flap of the dust jacket: “Better Than Sex” is his final book on politics. He will be gone by the year 2000.” Thompson dead? Literally, or figuratively? If his pen wasn’t around, who could we turn to for help comprehending the events of our time?
Well, 2000 came and went, and the truth is that “Sex” was Thompson’s lamest political screed. After that his writing started to fade as he published archival material, letters, etc. He did write a “sports” column for ESPN; there was the usual snap and crackle but a lot of time the pop was missing. Every now and then a true curveball would appear. For example, HST was talking about sitting at a pro football game in the LA Coliseum in the 2004 book Hey Rube. He says, “It is like sitting in a traffic jam on the San Diego Freeway with your windows rolled up and Portuguese music booming out of the surround-sound-speakers while animals gnaw on your neck and diseased bill collectors hammer on your doors with golf clubs.”
Stuff like that made me laugh, but in the same book, when discussing the support he got for a girl sitting in a CO jail for murder, he quoted Edmund Burke: “the only thing necessary for the triumph of Evil is for good men to do nothing.” And that statement, as Thompson would say, is the nut of it. It is the duty of all to participate in the civic events of the day. Vote. Campaign. Protest. Run for office. In the case of BTB, it is pushing for a progressive vision for Raleigh.
Thompson was a gambler, and gamblers need action. HST never found peace or satisfaction through politics. Maybe he sensed that The Game was hopelessly rigged against him now: his lone voice against a Blizzard of Electronic Gibberish. The Culture he despised and had high hopes for was in a “Downward Spiral of Dumbness.” Maybe he thought he was losing his audience and fading into irrelevance as his fan base aged along with him. For a champion like Thompson, living on his own terms in isolation in the shadow of the Rockies, it was probably impossible to simply drop out for good and “Tend your own garden.” When a General falls on his sword the troops rally and push forward. The Good Fight is always there waiting for the next standard bearer.
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” We should be so lucky. It would be easy to hitch our BTB wagon to Thompson’s gonzo star and rant and rave as mere sycophants and wannabes. We have no illusions about our influence, we lost our innocence long ago, and we started BTB in the spirit of Progressive Politics that Thompson espoused. I know that he would applaud our efforts to create a Better Political Reality here in Raleigh. Then again, maybe he would shrug us off, as if to say, Good Luck, you’ll need it.
P.S. The News and Observer ran a brief blurb on belowthebeltline.org in last Saturday’s paper. Gee, our first advertisement. The N and O chided us for being inspired by HST but not fessing up about our identities: “But surely Thompson has never been worried about burning any bridges, or britches.” Well.
Yesterday, a local newspaper reporter inquired as to just who is this de Gama and this Lane.
What perfect timing for her question, as the following appeared on the Op-Ed page of her newsrag on exactly the same day:
Jefferson supported the French Revolution; Hamilton was horrified by its excesses and preferred the British tradition of constitutional monarchy. During the controversy over Jay's Treaty with Britain in 1795, Hamilton used the pen name Camillus (a famous Roman general) to publish 21 essays defending the treaty in The Argus, a prominent New York newspaper. Not satisfied with his efforts, Hamilton at the same time began writing columns under the name "Philo Camillus" praising the arguments of Camillus. In other words, he was using the freedom afforded by one pseudonym to endorse points he was making under a different one!
Cripes, Hamilton and his huggy buddies even published the Federalist Papers under a pseudonym.
If we here at BTB.org thought for a New York minute that Raleigh, NC wasn't led on a ring through the nose by a crony-filled bastion of patronage, privilege, and parochialism, we'd be right there in the public fight over the issues. Unfortunately, we're too familiar with how the game is played here and elsewhere (like maybe, New Jersey) to think that anybody without connections can get anything done in Raleigh. And we don't want to burn our bridges or our britches.
Remember: you can't negotiate with terrorists and you can't fight City Hall on its own turf. Therefore, we mean no disrespect when we decline your request to identify the origins of BelowTheBeltline.org.
Out here at the electronic edge of free speech, we bloggers play by our rules, not theirs or yours. Ask any cartoonist: making fun of politics and politicians has a long and noble history. NC and Raleigh politics are not complicated: pay up and you'll get your vote for your pet project. Surely you have spent your fair share of time deconstructing City Council vidoetape trying to decipher what those "elected officials" were saying as they tried to cover their derrieres before a vote.
The operative word is "cover." Yeah yeah, this happens all over, right? Wrong, it doesn't, or at least it doesn't have to, and we refuse to rationalize away the failure to move forward in this Capital City. Anyway, regardless of who we are, the "mainstream" will marginalize us as kooks and chastise us as cowards for not going to City Hall with hat in hand begging for crumbs.
Fair enough, they have the power and the newspaper has the lock on information (or whatever comes off the wire). Frankly, we'd rather watch public hearings on the tube in the living room with a trendy glass of ‘46 pinot noir - sort of like sitting around in the old days watching Mystery Science Theater 3000. If you're looking for a method to our madness, hark back to the Megatrends series of books that were so popular years ago. Go back and look for the origins of the megatrends idea, and you'll find that during WW-II intelligence folks sifted through (enemy) newspapers looking for clues to the future. Add videotape playback and that's us in a nutshell.
The papers can report the news; let the other pundits prognosticate, and we'll just let 'er rip because we can.
Who are de Gama and Lane, you ask?
We are two lions
litter'd in one day?
Twin sons of different
mothers?
Just two lost souls swimming
in a fish bowl?
We are two wild
and crazy guys?
Are we not men? D-e-v-o?
We are what we wear?
We are the World?
Only our hairdressers know for sure.
Thanks for asking,
Dr. de G.
p.s. - This week, the BelowTheBeltline.org Local Hero Award goes to Rachel Harper of Enloe High School. Rachel published in the 16 February 2005 edition of the News and Observer an analysis of Louisana's legislative attempt to subvert the First Admendment by using license plate messages to promote an anti-abortion message, yet refusing the same platform to pro-choice advocates. The First Amendment is under serious assault. North Carolina is next, set to jump on the same license plate bandwagon.
But as Rachel concludes in her article, "The government should not be allowed to limit the right of dissenting citizens."
Mature words from a young mind - You Go, Girl!
And kudos to the N&O for giving her a soapbox to stand on.
If Jefferson were talking back to Regan, he might say, “I’ve never driven a car - what's a Chevy Bel Air anyway?” Or Adams: “What does it mean that I never flipped a light switch?” Hamilton wants to learn about AK-47s, the better to get the jump on Burr. Naturally, Franklin wants to know if the babes are hotter at The Office or Club Oxygen.
The reality is worse. BTB has been reviewing video of City Council meetings over the last year, and we found that when Mike Regan decides to mount his high horse, he invariably invokes the Dead White Guys as he tries to make his point. And now he wants to be Mayor. Then maybe President, and then maybe Emperor.
This guy writes books about teamwork, then after getting elected stakes out the far political fringe where nothing gets done. Regan’s Council votes and diatribes are a scorched earth policy that get him no support at the council table - count on Mike to speak his mind, howling nobly in the wilderness to no avail. Okay, so this is a bit dramatic; this council is a mess, and every now and then Regan says something reasonable, like the City Council should uphold the laws.
And then Regan, ta da, becomes a Realtor (see cheesy cartoon), which everybody knows is the best way to generate campaign contributions in this town since the real estate community controls the political process.
The local Independent weekly recently wrote that Regan is only interested in cops and sewers. I’ll drink to that, but even Libertarians are wondering what kind of bizarre mayoral platform he will cobble together to capture votes from the masses. We got a glimpse when he announced his “gays and gangs” platform that co-opts the recent federal campaign themes of Scare Tactics. Great, local politics in Raleigh gets a campaign based on Homos and Security when we have a raft of real issues too numerous to mention here. The truth is that nobody (sane) gives a damn about gays. But rest assured, Regan will whip up an anti-gay frenzy, fundamentalist churches will jump on the bandwagon, and the News and Observer will take the bait. It'll sell papers, reminding us of the long ago campaign of (gay) former mayor Tom Fetzer, who ran for office opposing gay Sunday school teachers.
Worse, Regan mentioned the ever popular Fear Gambit linked to Security (ala Richard Nixon, 1968 or George Bush, every day). Instead of terrorists, it's gangs running wild and chasing after the women. In the immortal words of a buddy, “There is no security, only security guards.” Sorry Mike, but crime is down, and gangs are on the radar screen of the local Cops. Maybe you can go after illegal immigrants in the Triangle doing all those menial jobs.
The quick and dirty of it is there are any number of people banging the gong that evangelicals and neo-cons are the worst threats to civil liberties since Attila the Hun. Mass marketing, ignorance, and fear-based propaganda are classic ploys to achieve control. The correct term for the current political climate is Reactionary, defined as “opposing progress.” It's about turning back the clock 127 years in any number of areas. However, there is a larger umbrella movement over this domestic agenda: America is exporting Democracy abroad - “government by the people” - while slowly but surely trending towards Theocracy - “officials claiming divine sanction” - at home.
This may all sound alarmist, but you can’t ignore the nascent weirdness in people wanting to put the Ten Commandments on the wall of City Hall as a“historical” reminder of where laws come from. Throw in a dash of boilerplate conservative hypocrisy, a pinch of 1980’s Reaganaut ideology, a teaspoon of 1990’s talk-radio vitriol, and shazzam, the cauldron cooks up True Believers with Reganesque ideas. Those of you looking for a little light reading should check out The True Believer by Eric Hoffer, a blue collar longshoreman who nailed down the gist of mass movements back in the early ‘50’s.
Which brings us to the Local Political Reality. Regan voted for Tommy Craven for the At-Large seat Neal Hunt left warm. Mike, did it occur to you that the Republican Party Faithful set you up, knowing you’d have to “move to the left” and cave in for a mainstream conservative? This means that Craven, at-large but from District A, will have a track record as a council member and candidate for six months. (Note to Tommy: be like Neal - keep your mouth shut.) When Craven runs in the fall, either at-large or for District A, he’ll win. (Note to Republicans: take District A with Craven to eliminate Regan and either run a fresh conservative female realtor with a moderate slant or former Councilor John Odom (name-brand recognition) at-large.
Listen up Mike: the City of Raleigh will get a two for one deal this fall: you will not be mayor, and you’ll be off the council. YOU'RE TOAST!
The Republican mainstream isn't interested in the Fringe, and real estate license aside, they’ll back anybody but you with their campaign money. No real dough for you, folks already paint you as a whacko, no track record of getting anything done other than voting no, and it's too late to move to the center just to pick up votes. Sure, you’ll have some pals who will stay faithful, and you can go to the churches to dip into their collection plates for some money and votes. But do yourself, us, and them a favor - quit now, and save the church folk their dough and energy.
Mike, the real estate community is happy with Meeker. Five-term conservative councilor John Odom took a run at him with a giant billboard on wheels and failed, and now he's back with hat in hand. The other Councilors have tolerated you for one term. They used you when they could under the guise of “conservative,” and now they are going to freeze you out in the cold.
It's easy to pigeonhole Regan as a right winger, religious fanatic, or plain old dumbass. But bottom line, he's just another of rancid snake oil hucksters at a time when we need more than a “strict constructionist” interpretation of the Constitution that takes us back to pioneer days. Study the 9th Amendment, Mike. It gives everybody the loophole to move forward with new ideas.
Maybe I’m wrong about Regan, but I couldn’t help thinking about him the other day. I was watching an old movie and Abe Lincoln, talking politics, said, “Ignorance is no obstacle to advancement.”
Or maybe I was thinking of Councilor Taliaferro instead.
Lecture 1 - Downtown
Today we discuss downtown parking in Raleigh. There are tangential issues of meter maids, towing, fines, and parking in neighborhoods, but those are for another day. Before we get started on the topic we need a serious reality check, so let us look beyond our fair horizons to the northeast. Read the below first, sent to BelowTheBeltline off the net from a far flung correspondent, and we’ll see you at the bottom.
BOSTON - As real estate spaces go, it's quite small. Still, it comes with heat and valet service, and costs a mere $160,000. The escalating cost of parking, long a premium in Boston, hit home for many when it was learned that a 180-square-foot parking spot sold last month for $160,000 at the Brimmer Street Garage in the Beacon Hill neighborhood. As prices for some spaces exceed the cost of a single-family house in other parts of the state, even seasoned real estate agents are muttering, "Whoa." "I've said that on a number of occasions," said Richard Phipps, owner of Boston Real Estate Agents. Since January 2003, seven spots have sold at the Brimmer Street Garage for at least $140,000, with one spot selling for a record $167,500 last August. By comparison, a three-bedroom home in Westfield was listed for $159,900 this week, one of several listed under $160,000 in that western Massachusetts city.
And check just how much people are willing to fork out for a parking space:
BOSTON - BACK BAY - Parking spot. August $250 #67 as-28078
A & S Realty Company (617) 267-3485
BTB HERE, AND HELLO AGAIN: ARE YOU BACK ON THE PLANET OR STILL IN SHOCK ?? Now THAT, folks, is supply and demand at work. Who's kidding who? 160K for 180 square feet to PARK?? Our intrepid Boston reporter notes that Back Bay is Ground Zero of Parking Hell and recalls a friend who used to drive to see him when he lived there instead of taking the Red Line subway---only to give up and call an hour later saying he couldn’t find a place to park in an eight block radius. He also reports that his wife’s Parking Karma is excellent.
Okay, on to the next reality check. Next Friday night drive down to Glenwood South EARLY with a friend and find a place to park as near Peace Street as you can get. If you don’t know where the deck is down there and park on the street, be sure to read all signs like an intelligent driver (see cheesy cartoon), because, after all, only morons get towed in this town by the towing vultures. Bundle up, because we’re doing this in the winter. Now, here is the task: I want you to WALK from Peace and Glenwood over to Moore Square. That is correct---WALK. You pick the way---down Glenwood and left at 518 over to Second Empire and then past the Capital, or down past Jillian’s to The Office and over to Davie Street, I don’t care.
Don’t worry, you won’t die and because of the chilly weather you’ll not only walk briskly but you’ll burn lots of calories. Talk to your friend, explore, and see the City up close and personal instead of damn driving through it. If you are feeling adventurous wander on down to the BTI Center and double-back up the Mall (while you still can walk on it). Time yourself rigorously, we’re not saying you can’t eat and drink along the way, and you’ll find it pleasantly surprising that it DOES NOT take that long to get around downtown Raleigh ON FOOT.
Been there, done that, and folks, a little trip like this is nothing if you know how to enjoy a city. Imagine how pleasant this would be if the weather was nice and a few shops and cafes were open. If you don’t do this for yourself so we can compare notes, or you can catch a clue, then never bitch again about downtown parking.
I’ll try to be as gentle as I can here: RALEIGH DOES NOT HAVE A DOWNTOWN PARKING PROBLEM. However, it does have a classic FISHBOWL problem. Plus a bunch of people with fat asses who get winded running to the bathroom. Plus an undeserved rep blah blah that not much is happening or that it is dangerous. Plus growing pains, lots of growing pains.
But parking? That is easy, no problem 24/7. The idea of a walkable city with multi-modal options (walk, bike, bus, train, car) practiced by cities all over the world is like looking at methane rivers on a Saturn moon for many city leaders. Their response is a big fat “HUH?” as they just don’t get it and insist that more “parking” is needed instead of encouraging the alternatives. (Parking in Manhattan is actually pretty easy if you’re willing to walk a few blocks, believe it or not. Downtown Tokyo has multi-story outdoor car garages with elevators that stack and store cars like sardines).
Finally, there is a bizarre sense of entitlement in this town of mostly educated suburban dwellers of 300K + that, just like home, people should be able to just drive up to the front door and park their SUVs, yeehaw. So if it ain’t that way downtown we ain’t going cuz I ain’t walking three whole blocks to see “The Nutcracker.”
Hey, City Council: is every parking deck open and full? Did the City do an inventory of all downtown street parking to remove or add signs in order free up space on every street in a twenty block grid for day and night parking needs? Are businesses and developers paying their share for the parking they are going to need for projects instead of the taxpayers paying for more decks? Could the coming Fayetteville Street have accommodated more parking while keeping the sidewalks wide enough for outdoor cafes and a pleasing streetscape? Are you insisting on a walkable city and creating the infrastructure to support it? Earth calling Saturn, hello?
Here is the nut: cities are about walking, not driving. Cities are about lots of feet creating lots of urban paths that weave the fabric of the city as people work, shop, eat, drink, and play. This is old news and there is no need to quote the literature. Cities are not about the perpetual issue of being able to park a vehicle. When Raleigh has cars bumper to bumper for blocks like Boston, and when people are buying parking spaces for 160K, then you’ll know we have a parking problem.
Until then, park legally---on the fringe---and go for a walk.
Dear Ed,
Happy New Year, and welcome to BelowTheBeltline.org.
Congratulations on the nomination for the top spot in NC Democratic politics. Looks like you’ll have some competition. God knows why anybody would want the job, then again, over 40 million got sucked out of wallets in the fall election cycle and somebody has to figure out a way to spend it, eh? The Democratic Party is in disarray across the board and this local infighting is symptomatic, DUH, but the Sisyphean task of creating a hot rod political machine to thwart Guns, Gays, and God is something I don’t envy.
Chances are excellent that the person who takes that job will fail. I noticed in the N and O article that you are 47 but were active in precinct politics at 15 - meaning that you came into political consciousness around 1972? Who knows what was happening in Sampson county in those days but it was probably still Democratic turf. Maybe you were anti-war, or maybe you smelled the coming cesspool of Watergate, or maybe you knew Sam Ervin personally. Those were heady times, Ed, when genuine rock ‘n’ roll ruled the airwaves, not this pabulum that passes for music now. No matter, I applaud your youthful efforts. Too bad 15-year olds today can’t even spell Watergate, much less understand what happened.
Now Ed, you’ll need a warm-up before you start plotting for the midterms in 2006. Something to rediscover that rural grassroots attitude of yore in the precincts that Meek is talking about. That is where the rubber meets the road. How about the Raleigh City Council as a good place to start?
Why? Because Mayor Charles Meeker presides over a so-called “5 vote Democratic majority”---but it ain’t. The notion of a non-partisan council is just so much b.s., and this fall a number of council seats will be up for grabs. Plus, two seats will be vacated in the coming weeks and the fight will be vicious. The truth is that in order to get anything done Meeker has had to move to the middle, often too far and within his own party, at the cost of watering down initiatives. Sure, he has his Checklist and he’ll take what he can get. But he shouldn’t have to budge Ed, and that is the nut: his “Democrats” are suspect (see cheesy cartoon).
It is no secret that real estate money dominates campaign contributions, and being Democrat does NOT mean being anti-development. But when the influence of the money ruins progressive chances to make a real difference in quality of life, something is wrong. The opposition is happy with Meeker, but YOUR job is to make HIS job as a Progressive easier. Raleigh should be the flagship of the Democratic Party, Ed, and whoever ends up as NCDP top dog will be expected to crack the whip that establishes the Democrats as the party that doesn’t just hold the line.
BelowTheBeltline.org will be watching and commenting along the way…
So there is the task: tighten up the local ranks of the Democrats, create a pipeline for viable candidates and solicit the party faithful to put up or shut up, and master the maps for grassroots efforts in the ‘hoods. Good Luck, because I can’t help but think that when it comes to NC politics The Fix is in and Political Whoring will still rule the day. Well Ed, that about sums it up and thanks for listening. Check out William Greider’s Who Will Tell the People? for a fuller explanation. And remember - if you want to find the buttered side of the bread on the Raleigh City Council, just revert to one of the mantras you heard in the early ‘70’s: Follow The Money.
Editor’s Note: Dilettante, wag, and all around fun guy, Dr. de Gama can be seen cruising the Beltline in a navy blue Buick Electra 225, the famed “deuce and a quarter.” Naturally the tank is full of premium, the top is down year-round, and a cinder block is on the accelerator since de Gama insists on cruise control. You can’t miss it: look for the I-beams (spray painted orange) welded to all four sides at bumper level - this is for the errant morons talking on the phone in their Cayenne “Porsches” as they stray out of their lanes. As The Boat zooms by, listen for ZZ Top blasting from The System. The dead giveaway is of course the infamous bumper sticker: “Jesus Saves, Esposito Scores on the Rebound.” And if all that doesn’t fire a few neurons, you can’t miss de Gama’s faithful partner in crime: Inga, she of the flaming mane of strawberry blondeness and Hungarian/Irish/Swedish stock, riding high in the jump seat, manning the cooler, working on her freckled tan, and wondering how long it will take to pay off the loans from Stanford Law. Look for de Gama's exploits in future postings on BelowTheBeltline.org!
FLASH - BelowTheBeltline
beats the Independent to the punch.
