LUNSFORD LANE IN 2006

SIXTY MILLION FRENCHMEN CAN’T BE WRONG
(or can they?)
Lunsford Lane
December 5, 2006

In and around the lake, mountains come out of the sky, and they stand there. But on Hillsborough Street, college kids dart out from between parked cars, bikes hop from sidewalk to street to sidewalk again, and pedestrians zigzag to give wide berth to the most prominent fixed objects that stand there - the bums (a very non-pc synonym of the only slightly less derogatory “panhandler”).

With Fayetteville Street open, attention has turned to the only true pedestrian oriented public thoroughfare outside of downtown - Hillsborough Street. The plans have drawn every critic out of the woodwork, but no one seems to be presenting any factual basis to support their case, pro or con.

Dennis Rogers says in the News and Observer "Roundabouts, my foot. They're traffic circles, and they make me crazy", and “Roundabouts are fads, not solutions.” He’s wrong on both counts. A quick check of the wiki would tell him that the modern roundabout is not your father’s traffic circle - the differences are important. And a fad is a fashion that is taken up with great enthusiasm for a brief period of time; a craze.

The first roundabout in the U.S. was built over 100 years ago, the first modern roundabout decades ago, and the things are bloody common throughout Europe. Roundabouts have been around almost as long as cars, so Rogers probably sees the automobile as just a passing fad, with the horse and buggy surely to fall back into favor when the crazy youth of today tire (no pun intended) of burning rubber at every stoplight (note from de Gama: some boys never tire of muscle cars).

Chiming in next in the News and Observer - the John Locke Foundation. A PhD candidate at UNC who is also a “program assistant” at John Locke says that roundabouts on Hillsborough Street will give little benefit at a heavy cost. Sadly, she gives scant evidence that this might be true, as if invoking the name of the pre-eminent European philosopher of the 17th century is all that is necessary. That, and she is a PhD candidate at Carolina.

Lucky for us, our PhD candidate has posted a more lengthy analysis on the John Locke Foundation website. Here’s the crux of her argument - on average, roundabouts increase response times by emergency vehicles. For argument's sake, let's accept this as true, and certainly not a good thing. But that is a mighty simplistic analysis - one detriment that trumps all possible benefits, so benefits are never considered. A real analysis would have considered, for example, that roundabouts significantly reduce the incidence of accidents (more on this and other benefits in a bit), thereby significantly reducing the overall need for emergency response. And that the largest population center around these proposed roundabouts - NC State University - has its own fully accredited police department on site to handle emergency response. Surely that will affect response time for many (though certainly not all) in the area, and for sure that was never factored in the averages cited. And the crackups that occur in roundabouts tend to be far less violent than those at conventional intersections, again increasing the overall health of the population.

Our John Locker dismisses most of the benefits out of hand, but is nitpicky to the extreme when it comes to the costs side of the equation. She postulates that each roundabout will run us $400 per year in landscape maintenance - "this includes watering (needed for the first two years until plants are established), pruning, mulching, fertilizing, weeding, and plant replacement." Ignoring the fact that initial establishment of plants is a startup cost, not a recurring maintenance cost, there is no law that says any roundabout has to be landscaped. Nevertheless, it is darn hard to find anyone outside of the John Locke Foundation that does not believe that providing roadside beautification is a legitimate function of local government. What kind of sourpuss drives past the beautiful poppies and lilies planted along the beltline and scowls with revulsion?

Simply unable to confine herself to dispassionate academic analysis, our PhD candidate ends her diatribe with this final note: “Perhaps the city council should hire a person whose full-time job is to throw cold water on every fantastic fad that the city staff supports. Then and only then will the council be able to make truly informed judgements.” Again, you can debate the merits of roundabouts, but it is plain fact that they are not a fad. That's blog talk there; try submitting that tripe to any academic journal, and your school will likely think twice about granting you real credentials. Any serious analysis out of any real think tank, something like the Rand Corporation for instance, would have weighed ALL the costs and benefits. But then again, the John Locke Foundation is really nothing more than the mouthpiece of arch-conservative Art Pope all gussied up as a think tank to create an air of legitimacy that Pope on his own could never hope to achieve.

Before we here at BTB.org make up our minds on an issue, we want the facts, Ma’am, just the facts. Where to turn? Who is likely to have done the most unbiased analysis of roundabouts? Think now - who has the greatest economic interest in your safety as a driver, excepting your family and your employer? Your newspaper? Your state’s leading venal right-winger? Your mild mannered Mayor or city councilor? Your insurance company? Bing bing bing, we have a winner! So what do insurance companies think of roundabouts?

The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety says:

Several features of roundabouts promote safety. At traditional intersections with stop signs or traffic signals, some of the most common types of crashes are right-angle, left-turn, and head-on collisions. These types of collisions can be severe because vehicles may be traveling through the intersection at high speeds. With roundabouts, these types of potentially serious crashes essentially are eliminated because vehicles travel in the same direction. Installing roundabouts in place of traffic signals can also reduce the likelihood of rear-end crashes and their severity by removing the incentive for drivers to speed up as they approach green lights and by reducing abrupt stops at red lights. The vehicle-to-vehicle conflicts that occur at roundabouts generally involve a vehicle merging into the circular roadway, with both vehicles traveling at low speeds (15-20 mph).

A 2001 Institute study of 23 intersections in the United States reported that converting intersections from traffic signals or stop signs to roundabouts reduced injury crashes by 80 percent and all crashes by 40 percent. Similar results were reported by Eisenman et al.: a 75 percent decrease in injury crashes and a 37 percent decrease in total crashes at 35 intersections that were converted from traffic signals to roundabouts. Studies of intersections in Europe and Australia that were converted to roundabouts have reported 41-61 percent reductions in injury crashes and 45-75 percent reductions in severe injury crashes.

The Institute’s overall conclusion - the modern roundabout is the safest and most efficient form of intersection traffic control available today. The National Highway Safety Administration seems to agree. The folks at the The Southeastern Transportation Center at the University of Tennessee used case study analysis, statistical analysis, and simulation analysis to analyze pedestrian safety at the intersection of Hillsborough and Hornes Streets when redesigned as a roundabout.

This intersection has the fourth highest frequency of pedestrian accidents in all of North Carolina. Skip all that calculus describing the model if you have (or just want) to, and focus on the conclusion: if traffic diversion occurs at a roundabout with fewer lanes than the conventional intersection it replaced, it can also produce a reduction in pedestrian accidents, at least in terms of measured pedestrian capacity, a surrogate for safety. In particular for typical pedestrian reaction times and walking speeds, when a 30% traffic diversion occurs, a single-lane roundabout can handle more pedestrians more safely than a four-lane signalized intersection.

And back to that pesky Insurance Institute, which has many other interesting things to say about roundabouts:

Roundabouts generally are safer for pedestrians than traditional intersections. In a roundabout, pedestrians walk on sidewalks around the perimeter of the circulatory roadway. If it is necessary for pedestrians to cross the roadway, they cross only one direction of traffic at a time. In addition, crossing distances are relatively short, and traffic speeds are lower than at traditional intersections. Studies in Europe indicate that, on average, converting conventional intersections to roundabouts can reduce pedestrian crashes by about 75 percent...

Several studies conducted by the Institute and others have reported significant improvements in traffic flow following conversion of traditional intersections to roundabouts...

A recent Institute study documented missed opportunities to improve traffic flow and safety at 10 urban intersections suitable for roundabouts where either traffic signals were installed or major modifications were made to signalized intersections. It was estimated that the use of roundabouts instead of traffic signals at these 10 intersections would have reduced vehicle delays by 62-74 percent. This is equivalent to approximately 325,000 fewer hours of vehicle delay on an annual basis...

Because roundabouts improve the efficiency of traffic flow, they also reduce vehicle emissions and fuel consumption. In one study, replacing a signalized intersection with a roundabout reduced carbon monoxide emissions by 29 percent and nitrous oxide emissions by 21 percent. another study, replacing traffic signals and stop signs with roundabouts reduced carbon monoxide emissions by 32 percent, nitrous oxide emissions by 34 percent, carbon dioxide emissions by 37 percent, and hydrocarbon emissions by 42 percent. At 10 intersections studied in Virginia, this amounted to more than 200,000 gallons of fuel per year...

Roundabouts are appropriate at most intersections, including high crash locations and intersections with large traffic delays, complex geometry (more than four approach roads, for example), frequent left-turn movements, and relatively balanced traffic flows. Roundabouts can be constructed along congested arterials, in lieu of road widening, and can be appropriate in lieu of traffic signals at freeway exits and entrances...

Local critics claim that large vehicles can’t navigate a roundabout. O Rly? Two-thousand square foot houses seem to have relatively little trouble driving through them, so you gotta figure that fire engines and moving vans are gonna figure them out as well.

Perhaps the most preposterous statement so far about roundabouts on Hillsborough Street sprang forth from District E City Councilor Philip Isley. He tells the N& O, "I can't get over how reducing four lanes to two helps reduce congestion. I may just be dense."

Uh, I’m not gonna argue that last point with you, Councilor, but former city planning department head honcho George Chapman probably says it best, "It’s not been prospering for 10 years." At least. The whole idea is to revitalize a street so that it is once again a destination, not a thoroughfare. If, like Mayor Meeker, you think that the only parts of Raleigh that really matter are downtown, the RBC Center, North Hills and Crabtree Valley, and the airport, then you design all roads to lead as many folks as possible to Rome as fast as possible. But if you happen to not live in one of those zones, you just might see Raleigh as a collection of small communities, each with inherent value of its own, where you just might want to stop and smell the roses.

No doubt there are those that will choose to buy local spin from shill mills, but we here at BTB.org still believe in the power of the profit motive, so we're casting our lot with the (very profitable) insurers. Once again, Raleigh's pseudo-controversy du jour isn't centered around facts, it’s 110% pure power politics. In the next day or two, Dr. de will lay out the political landscape littered with roundabouts. Until then,

I will remember you.
Your silhouette will charge the view
Of distance atmosphere......
Call it morning driving through the sound and
Even in the valley......

PARK IT
Lunsford Lane
November 29, 2006

Do you really want to build John Kane a $75 million parking deck for his North Hills shopping center?

Is it even constitutional for you to do it?

Some thoughts on the matter from NCSpin.

HISTORY IN THE BREAKING, Part 2
Lunsford Lane
November 19, 2006

So the ancient remains of the Wake Courthouse community from which the original City of Raleigh was assembled are probably lost forever. For us Raleighites, it's history as an expensive surplus of knowledge and a luxury, because we lack what is still most essential to us and because what is superfluous is hostile to what is essential. (Nietzsche, not Lane.)

So condominums rise ever skyward over an anonymous past that sinks deeper into the abyss of the C horizon. But surely we are not so languid as to permit those remnants of our past that remain relatively intact to also become just more food for worms.

Oh gentle reader, if you know nothing by now, you know to never underestimate the apathy that is the Raleigh City Council.

At the October 3rd meeting of the Council, in the middle of what I thought was to be a routine public hearing of a routine road widening project, emerged a test of our duty to history.

Tryon Road cuts across southern Raleigh, from South Saunders Street south of downtown, to the Cary border and beyond. The entire length is being widening from two lanes to four and five; I’d guess about half of it is already done or close to it. Sitting precariously close to the road is the Adams-Edwards house, and its soon-to-be owner and restorer was before the Council pleading for mercy. He explained how the home was built by his great grandfather in 1850, and how he is in the process of having it listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

And he brought along the experts.

Andrew Sprouse, the Preservation Planning Manager of Capital Area Preservation, submitted to the Council a letter supporting the efforts to save the Adams Edwards House.

Cynthia de Miranda, Edwards-Pittman Environmental Inc., explained the historical significance of the house and efforts to restore it (for reference, she also did the analysis of historic buildings at Dorothea Dix). Turns out that there are only three examples of this general style of farmhouse left in Wake County, and this is the only one with its distinctive three-room layout that still exists. Whodu thunk, looks just like any abandoned and boarded house to me.

The problem is that the new road will be only 32 feet from the front door of the house. Add in the need for grading beyond the right of way, and you’ll just walk out of the front door onto a highway. Compounding the problem is the large oak out in front of the house, that adds to its history and character - its branches already extend to the side of the existing road, and road widening will surely take it out.

But there is a solution! The guy who is to buy and restore the house owns the property across the street. He’s willing to give the City the extra right of way it will need to curve the road slightly south and protect the integrity of the house. Of course there is additional cost to the City, because it has ignored the house and already spent money on designing the road through the front yard. But the fix is doable, and while not free at least affordable. The fella with the option to buy the house says he needs it to be usuable - rentable - or he can't afford rescue it, and a highway at the front stoop makes the house a hard rent.

But the City Council wasn’t interested. The best it could muster was to consider a retaining wall to allow grading to end an additional five feet from the front door. And it didn’t even commit to the wall, only to “review the benefits of a retaining wall.” District D (which includes the house) City Councilor Thomas Crowder asked what that meant. Nobody knew, but the resolution passed unanimously.

Here’s the kicker. If the road widening project is funded in any part by State or Federal dollars, then all historical elements would have to be properly cared for. But the City claims that this stretch of the road will be paid for only out of local road bond funds, so there is no legal obligation to consider historical sites.

Contrast the Adams-Edwards house with the historic Carolina Pines Hotel along another stretch of the road (it’s the big frat house that sits directly across from the RGA golf course clubhouse).

The Colonial Revival-style building opened in 1933, as the centerpiece of a 450-acre resort on the outskirts of the City (read a history of the hotel here). Unlike the Adams-Edwards house, the Carolina Pines Hotel sits more than 300 feet from the current road. But the widening of this stretch of Tryon Road is funded not only by local bond money, but State and Federal Funds as well.

State and Federal regulations require attention to history. For example, when the NC Department of Transportation widened Louisburg Road (US 401), they contracted an extensive study of the banks of the Neuse River where the road crosses it. Because it was thought that some Indians had camped there at one time - and they had!

So because it is using other folks money, the City must take unusual care to protect the integrity of not just the Carolina Pines Hotel building, but the entire site (only about seven acres are still attached to the building). The City signed a memorandum of agreement requiring:

• a variety of tree protection measures,
• a landscaping plan to replace the landscape elements lost, with a one-year guarantee on all plants,
• reconstruction of the stone wall along the road, including wiring each stone entrance pier for light fixtures, and
• before any of the above are attempted, a Certificate of Appropriateness from the Wake County Historic Preservation Commission.

Only City money used to widen western section of Tryon, so the integrity of the Adams-Edwards house is compromised. State and Fed monies to widen the eastern section, so unusual attention to the much less threatened Carolina Pines Hotel. At the Adams-Edwards house, the one tree protection measure being considered by the Council, a retaining wall, violates City tree protection standards, as it lops a huge chunk of the tree's critical roots. It's is a common complaint about Mayor Meeker's wacky tree policy - save a lot of scrappy young pines, but let the City Council lumberize an historic oak. And when the once-mighty oak falls over in a stiff breeze and whacks a car going much too fast down Tryon Road, the City will surely claim the responsibility lies solely with the property owner.

Folks, the sad sad truth is that it’s all a sham. It’s one road - Tryon Road. And it’s all being widened, from one end to the other. If we didn’t have the State and Fed money, we wouldn’t have widened any of the road. Breaking it into artificial sections and apportioning funds from different sources to each section is nothing but an elaborate shell game designed to avert unwanted attention to culture, environment, and aesthetic. At the very least, the impacts on the Adams-Edwards house are secondary and cumulative effects of the widening of other sections of Tryon Road, made possible only by outside funding. Secondary and indirect impacts would normally be considered, but the City used some funny accounting to exempt the Adams-Edwards house.

What unnatural forces must act upon a City leader, such that he or she has no sense of history, no sense of place, no emotional attachment to the past, scant regard for the future?

But the stronger the roots which the inner nature of a person has, the more he will appropriate or forcibly take from the past. And if we imagine the most powerful and immense nature, then we would recognize there that for it there would be no frontier at all beyond which the historical sense would be able to work as an injurious overseer. Everything in the past, in its own and in the most alien, this nature would draw upon, take it into itself, and, as it were, transform into blood. What such a nature does not subjugate it knows how to forget. It is there no more.

---

HISTORY IN THE BREAKING
Lunsford Lane
November 15, 2006

I’ve had a lot of history on my mind lately. I hoped you enjoyed our historical postings last week for Veterans Day. How many Raleighites know that Our Fair City was home to a US Army tank training school during WWI? The easternmost edge of the camp was on Meredith College land, and much of the land eventually became Polk Youth Resort. Seventy-five years prior, much of Camp Polk was Camp Mangum, where Confederate soldiers trained. Picture in your mind the State Fairgrounds, N.C. State’s Faculty Club, the School of Veterinary Medicine, the North Carolina Museum of Art, covered with the squalid rough cut pine shacks and canvas tents of the Confederate War Department.

Is there any monument anywhere commemorating any of this history, either the glorious or the ghastly? If you stop in the tiny buildings on Heritage Circle at the State Fair, you can sometimes find several turn-of-the-20th-century photos of the area. I can’t even find one of those ubiquitous highway historical markers dedicated specifically to either camp. Wouldn’t a city that embraces its history at least have a small monument, say an old WWI tank that the kiddies could climb on?

At its last meeting, the City Council heard a fascinating report on an archeological assessment of the site the new Bloomsbury Estates (condos as estates? who are they fooling?) site on the southwest corner of West Hargett Street and South Boylan Avenue. The site was part of the Wake Courthouse community. It surrounded the home of Joel Lane - from whose lands the City of Raleigh was established - in the late 1700's.

Back in March, the City ‘rents appropriated $10,000 to contract an archeological study. The developer of the new condos was down with that, as long as it didn’t cost him anything and it didn’t delay any of the work he wanted to do. District E City Councilor Philip Isley, never one to let history impede progress (or anything impede a developer), set the stipulation that the work be completed in less than five weeks. The Mayor and others fretted over whether they should pay, couldn't the County Commissioners chip in too? In the end, the Councilors ponied up the 10 g’s (< 1% of what they spent to build themselves a white tablecloth restaurant), with the stipulation that (Lord forbid) NO city equipment dare be used to uncover our storied gloried past.

Of course, this small dig to uncover Raleigh’s birthplace cost much more than the pittance allotted, with the archeologists sucking up much of the actual costs themselves. And the findings were fascinating - hopefully soon the City will post the full archeology report on its website:

The Wake County Courthouse community (also known as Bloomsbury) developed in the early 1770s around the home of Joel Lane. By the early 1790s, the community included Lane’s house and outbuildings, a tavern, the Wake County courthouse and jail, and an unspecified number of other buildings.

The exact location of all of those structures except for the Lane house is unknown, although the 1792 Christmas diagram shows what appears to be at least four structures in the location of Lane’s house, which at that time was about 250 feet northeast of where it is today. The Wake Courthouse community declined in importance following the founding of Raleigh in 1792 and Joel Lane’s death in 1795. By the early 1800s many of the structures had presumably been removed, although in 1803 H. H. Cooke was living at and advertising accommodations at “Wake Old Court-house.” After Lane’s death, his house and plantation changed hands until it was bought by William Boylan in 1818. It remained in the Boylan family until the early 20th century.

We began by stripping off the concrete that covered the site, to expose the soil underneath. We were able to only strip a portion of the site, given time and budget constraints, but decided to concentrate on the top of the hill, since that logically is the most likely area to contain archaeological deposits (it’s a continuation of the same hill that Lane’s house sat on). Next, we began stripping the soil a few inches at a time down to the undisturbed clay subsoil, looking for soil discolorations or “features” that would indicate some sort of human activity. Each identified feature was flagged, numbered and at least partially excavated to determine its function and possible date. (Because of time constraints, we focused solely on the early historic period remains). A 1 by 1 meter test unit was also excavated to look at the soil layering at the site. We found an old plow zone in the soil – this showed us that the area had been an agricultural field at some point, which is actually shown on the 1872 aerial map of Raleigh.

We identified 49 cultural features including two associated with the late 18th-or early 19th-century occupation of the site, and foundation remains, post holes, tree holes, and artifacts associated with the two early 200th century houses, as well as a small number of prehistoric artifacts.

The two early features – a cellar and a possible cistern base – were excavated producing 590 artifacts from that time period. The cellar was rectangular and measured about 6 ½ by 7 ¼ ft., and extended down 8 inches into the clay. It was filled with building debris (building stones, bricks, nails, window glass), kitchen artifacts (different types of ceramics, wine bottle fragments, wine glass fragments, animal bone, shell), and a few other items such as tobacco pipes, a gold-plated brass button, a brass furniture tack, and a few prehistoric stone artifacts.

The possible cistern base was circular and measured about 5 ½ ft. in diameter, extending about 8 inches below the clay. A metal fence post and plant intrusion disturbed the center of the feature. 180 artifacts were found in the feature, including a small amount of architectural debris, kitchen artifacts (ceramics, bottle glass, crystal stemware, animal bone, shell), tobacco pipe fragments, the bone backing disk of a fabric-covered button, and a few prehistoric stone artifacts.

Other early historic-period artifacts were found during stripping the site, most being more architectural and kitchen-related artifacts, but also included a mid-to late-18th century silver-plated men’s shoe buckle with flowers!

After analyzing the artifacts and features from the early historic period, we’ve concluded that this most likely had been the site of a small frame structure used as a dwelling house that had a cellar beneath the building, with a water cistern that may have stood immediately outside of the structure. Dateable artifacts from both features point to an occupation from the 1770s to the first quarter of the 19th century, when the features were filled with debris during or following the destruction of the building. This evidence is contrary to what you would find in archaeological deposits of public building – a courthouse, jail, tavern, and the like – but is more similar to domestic dwelling houses of that time period. Who lived in this building is unknown, but most likely it was associated with Lane’s plantation, may be an overseer’s house, craftsperson’s house, jailer’s house, etc. (the artifacts found were reasonably expensive for that time, and – along with the sizeable cellar – were not typical for slave quarters).

Although the work did not locate evidence of the Wake Courthouse building or associated jail, it was successful in discovering the first substantial archaeological remains associated with the Wake Courthouse Community. We were able to find intact, relatively undisturbed archaeological deposits in this highly urbanized neighborhood, showing that evidence for early Wake County and Raleigh exists beneath the modern-day city.

Severely limited by time and money, the history pros could sreen only a fraction of the site. Soon the entire tract will be covered with building and asphalt. It will be at best decades before anyone gets another look below ground at the birthplace of our City, if any of the subsurface can even survive the excavation for the new high-rise condos. For his part, the developer thanked the Council by inviting everyone to a "lighting of the Santa" on the construction site.

Here's an idea - how about a City Councilor or three and maybe even a Mayor forgoing tacky plastic Santa Clauses and heading down to the NC Museum of History instead?

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BIRTH AND DEATH OF A CAMP:
Armistice Puts an End to the Feverish War Activity of Camp Polk, at Raleigh
Fred A. Olds
Jan. 17, 1919

When the writer was a little fellow, in the days of the civil war, which goes down into history now as the War Between the States and which to tell the truth is dwarfed and set much further back in the past by the Great War, now just expiring, he delighted to go into the camps of the soldiers. How rude they were, yet there was a charm about them. There was, you might be very sure, music of some sort, often by a band, with but few instruments and those well battered and yet, a band! And then too, the war over, the writer used to see the abandoned camps, both Confederate and Federal, and in the fires, now so cold, found many a pound of lead from the bullets of the cartridges of that day, in which the powder was held in paper. With this lead shot were made, by pouring the lead into a groove in a plank and so forming a long bar, very slender, which was pressed into a V-shaped opening in an iron bar, heated greatly and laid horizontally. The melted lead, in little pellets, fell into a bucket of water and there were your shot. This particular youngster can truthfully say he killed hundreds of squirrels with shot thus made.

One of the Confederate camps which was deserted, when that side in the conflict gave up in April 1865, was at Camp Mangum, at what is now Method, three miles west of Raleigh, and now there is another deserted camp, at the same place. It was Camp Polk, the only Tank camp in this country, but when the armistice came, like lightning from a clear sky, the camp simply died a natural death.

Thousands of acres of land had been leased for this vitally important war purpose, for tank fighting is one of the really big things in war today; the landowners who lived on the site had made an exodus to other parts and many were the moving scenes, if a pun is permissible, when they departed to "fresh fields and pastures new."

A small army of workmen, soldiers and civilians, took charge of the construction work and a wooden city had just begun to rise and crown the height. All day long there was a wild rush of construction, of barracks and all the many other things which now mark one of your Uncle Sam's canonments. Steam shovels clattered, mules by the hundreds toiled and moiled, locomotives dashed here and there, and men by hundreds worked their hardest. The writer and his "kiddy cotton pickers" worked several days in the heart of this activity, the children taking it all as the most natural thing in the world. Great trucks dashed by them; train after train, loaded with cheering troops bound for France, the beloved, roared past in those wonderfully brilliant October days. It was a scene never to be forgotten.

And then came the fateful 11th of November and in a few hours the erst-while busy hands of the clock stood still. Orders came for the stoppage, the ending of all work on the camp, and the workers faded away like a mist of the morning.

The State Fair was not held last year, for the tank fighters had been quartered there, the war department having leased grounds and buildings, and having 4,000 picked fighters in tents. Then came the miserable influenza, and caught soldiers and citizens alike in its clutch of death and suffering. But Raleigh, mourning her own, worked day and night for the sick of the camp.

In 1917 Miss Congressman Jeannette Rankin made the address of dedication of the Woman's Building at the Fair Grounds. Little did she or her thousands of auditors dream that in less than a year that building, with its "Better Babies" annex too, would be the quarters of scores of Uncle Sam's officers. Time is whirling, sure enough. In the spacious grounds were rows and rows of tents, each large enough for six men, each tent heated and electrically lighted and with wooden sides covered with tarred paper. Long mess halls, of wood, with tarred paper roofs, were put up, with kitchens attached, and all available space was utilized. There was an overflow camp outside the fair grounds, and at Method, a mile away, there were two temporary camps, one for white engineer troops, the other for colored stevedore troops.

Under the grand stand was the strangest exhibit ever seen in North Carolina, a row of tanks, some like giants, others of medium size, and yet others, the "whippets," tiny indeed. One was an English tank, the "Brittania," which has done plenty of fighting in France. Some carried two cannon, six-pounders, that is firing a shell of that weight, while the little fellows had only one gun. There were "tanks" black, dull gray and some camouflaged, but all grim and warlike in the extreme.

Near the fair grounds was the temporary drill field, carefully graded by the stevedore battalion, used also for aviation purposes. Near what was to have been the main portion of the cantonment was the school of pistol instruction and beyond this the six-pounder gun school and tank fighting zone. The sharp crack of the heavy pistols, calibre 45, and the angry boom of the guns was heard much of the day.

At the pistol school there was built by the busy stevedores a complete system of trenches and dug-outs, like those in France today, only of course in the small. Into these went the men under training, and at the signal began the advance, "over the top." Angle upon angle marked many of the trenches and at the sharp turns there popped into view a "Boche," made of paper, who had to be shot. So the sides of the trenches at the angles are marked by thousands of big bullet holes. One would think hundreds of wood-peckers had been busy there.

At what was to have been Camp Polk there are now piled over 15,000000 feet of lumber, brought there on many a train. Vast piles of it, laid out by the ever-busy stevedores, strike the eye. Now it is to be reshipped and will go to France, it is said. The partially finished railway sidings hold long lines of freight cars. Storehouses, and barracks, in all stages of progress, are before the eye, a lofty observation tower rises beside a highway. But all is still; where there was so much busy life there is now death, for already Camp Polk is little more than a memory.

It makes you think of the epitaph the Irishman placed on the tombstone at the grave of his baby, who had lived but 24 hours:

"Now you were so soon done for,
I wonder what you were begun for."

But when the cantonment construction was begun this country did not look for an end of the war before the summer of 1920. Plenty of people will now step up and gravely assure you "I knew all the time it would end by Thanksgiving day." You do not have to reply to these people; all you have to do is to think of Ananias and his successors of the edition of 1919. The liar, like the poor, "we have always with us," and so it will remain until the end of the world.

And so today, there beside the railways, the Seaboard and the Southern, is the camp which is dead, never to be tenanted; there are the spaces cut in thick woods, which were to have been roads; there are cotton-fields, yellow-white with the hanging locks, only picked here and there; with farm houses which but lately were surrounded by tents full of Uncle Sam's men, and the busy scenes, now gone forever, make you think of a man who dies suddenly; one moment so active, so strenuous, so virile, the next a mere inert mass.

Signs are all about, "Laborers wanted;" in the big corrals the contractors' mules had their homes and frolicked like children on their Sunday holidays. Gone are the contractors, laborers and mules. The camp is dead. It was to have been for 16,000 men. A few of these had come, and now these, except a handful, are at Camp Greene, Charlotte; the stevedores are removing everything from the fair grounds except the original buildings; the tanks go to Camp Benning, at Columbus, Ga., where the U. S. owns a large reservation and it is to become the permanent tank camp for the whole country. The emblem of the Tanks is a black cat, the slogan is "Treat 'em Rough."

There could not possibly be a finer lot of men, all "hand-picked," to use a phrase, than the Tankers. They represented all the United States. Some had come thousands of miles to get in this exciting department of fighting; from Australia, from Alaska, and other far-away places. There was in the brigade here a great-grandson of General Robert E. Lee and a grandson of General U. S. Grant. Men of all professions, but all brave fellows, were in the ranks, or rather in the Tanks, as privates and proud of it, wild to go to France and have it out with that most odious, treacherous and cruel of all beasts--the Boche. Death is a trifle to the "Tanker," whose cry is "Give 'em Hell, Boys!" You can hear it, as you can hear ringing, ringing, that other cry of the American troops as they rushed the German positions and beat their proudest picked troops, "Remember the Lusitania!"

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with thanks to UNC's Documenting the American South

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THE LORAX SPEAKS
Lunsford Lane
Novermber 1, 2006

OK, so maybe they are environmental whackos, but they're still right. Looks like Mayor Meeker's much self-heralded tree protection scheme still isn't making much of anyone happy.

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	CAPITAL GROUP P.O. Box 6076 Raleigh, NC 27628
	NEUSE RIVER FOUNDATION 112 South Blount St. Raleigh NC 27601

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: TIM REED
October 31, 2006 919-749-9994

Opposition to Proposed Crabtree Village Plan at Kidds Hill Grows
Raleigh, N.C.

The Capital Group Sierra Club joined by the Neuse River Foundation, announced today continued opposition to the proposed Crabtree Village project at Kidds Hill. While the organizations support high density, mixed-use development as one element to curb sprawl, it only works if combined with the right mix of uses, well-thought-out parking systems, and good access to existing transportation networks. Unfortunately, these other elements are absent in the area surrounding Kidds Hill, where the retail cap has been exceeded, the intersections are operating at a grade F, and the area is subject to severe flooding.

The opposition is further fueled by the proposed site grading, which demonstrates complete disrespect for a natural landmark. Removal of approximately 50 feet off the top of Kidds Hill is comparable on a smaller scale to the mountaintop removal associated with coal mining. Tree preservation is also a concern with only the 10% minimum allowed and most of the “preservation” where there are little to no existing trees.

According to Tim Reed, Conservation co-chair of the Capital Group, extensive grading and tree removal plans directly contradict the Crabtree Small Area Plan, which clearly states: “To protect the special character of the area, hillsides should be retained and not graded down for incongruous, large foot-printed buildings, and new structures on the hillsides and hilltops should fit into the terrain … The preservation of trees should be encouraged, especially on Kidds Hill …”

Mr. Reed also cites the City’s Urban Design Guidelines saying the plan contradicts the section that states: “All development should respect natural resources … The most sensitive landscape areas, both environmentally and visually, are steep slopes greater than 15%, watercourses, and floodplains any development in these areas should minimize intervention and maintain the natural condition except under extreme circumstances. Where practical, these features should be conserved as open space amenities and incorporated into the overall site design.”

According to Dean Najouks, the Upper Neuse River Keeper for the Neuse River Foundation, “the extensive grading, tree removal and plans for parking lots in the floodplain will all contribute to existing stormwater runoff, erosion and water pollution problems.”

The City of Raleigh obviously wants to encourage good urban design and good environmental preservation as demonstrated by the Small Area Plan and the Urban Design Guidelines. The Capital Group and Neuse River Foundation encourage the City of Raleigh to go beyond these guidelines and implement strict ordinances that prevent steep slope destruction and ask the Raleigh Comprehensive Planning Committee to deny the plan for Crabtree Village until such protection is afforded Kidds Hill.

If you have questions about this release or would like an interview regarding this release, contact Tim Reed, Capital Group Sierra Club, 919-749-9994, conservation-cg@sierraclub-nc.org; Dean Najouks, Neuse River Foundation, 919-856-1180, dean.nrf@worldnet.att.net.

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A PROBLEM SHARED IS A PROBLEM SOLVED
Lunsford Lane
Friday the 13th, October 2006

The letter below, emailed today to the Raleigh City Council, describes a fine solution for siting an active recreation center in North Raleigh. The writer is married to a member of the Horseshoe Farm Master Planning Committee.

We thank her for sharing it with all of us.

We thank At-Large City Councilor Russ Stephenson for taking a leadership role; that’s what we expect of at-large councilors.

Kudos to the developers of this project. It will take significant contributions from builders to provide sufficient schools and parks and infrastructure for an expanding population.

We thank Councilor Taliaferro for exploring this alternative. We have no indication that she knew of this option before her recent appearance at the North Citizens Advisory Council.

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Subject: Perfectly reasonable alternative site for active rec - please consider
From: Mdeans@-------
Date: Fri, Oct 13, 2006 2:58 pm
To: Charles.Meeker@ci.raleigh.nc.us, James.West@ci.raleigh.nc.us, Joyce.Kekas@ci.raleigh.nc.us, russell.allen@ci.raleigh.nc.us, Russ.Stephenson@ci.raleigh.nc.us, thomas.crowder@ci.raleigh.nc.us, tfcraven@nc.rr.com, jessie.taliaferro@ci.raleigh.nc.us, pisley@boyceisley.com, charlesmeeker@parkerpoe.com
Cc: mpaul@-------, cmartin@-------

Dear Mayor, members of the City Council and City Manager,

On Sept. 11, 2006, Russ Stephenson met with the principal parties for a proposed new development on US 401 to advocate for a city park with active recreation on to be included in the development. The parties in attendance at that meeting were Mack Paul, Carolyn Martin, Steve Stroud and the project architect. The name of the development is 5401 North. The 5401 North project is a Planned Development District, 259 acres, at the intersection of US 401 and I-540, very close to Horseshoe Farm Park. It is about to go into the public hearing process to seek approval to build from the City. It will be a mixed use community with housing, shopping, a movie theater, a public elementary school, a greenway and shared facilities with the new northern Wake Tech campus, their next door neighbor.

On October 10, Jessie Taliaferro followed up and met with Jack Duncan and Carolyn Martin for further discussions about this possible new city park.

Last night at the NECAC meeting, the developer told us that they will make available a 16-18 acre parcel of buildable land to the City parks department to be used as a neighborhood park. Additionally, the developer is willing to contribute financially to building either a gym or a community center. The developer is already building all the infrastructure for a Wake County school - Riverbend Elementary - on the 5401 North site, that is scheduled to open in August 2008. The park site is near the school site and would use this same infrastructure.

The text from the 5401 North Proposed Master Plan reads: "Tract 2 is proposed to contain open space for a city neighborhood park, which park may include a gymnasium or community center not to exceed 50,000 square feet of floor area gross." (Please recall that the proposed double gym/community center for Horseshoe Farm was to be 24,000 sq. ft.) At the NECAC meeting, the developer confirmed they will offer financial support to build the facilities at this park.

Some of the reasons that make this such an appealing alternative site: are:

1. A gym and a community center can be put on this park site. The land is flat and buildable and the developer is agreeable.

2. Since the developer is contributing, funding for this park would be available soon.

3. There will be no costs to the City to build the infrastructure of roads, water and sewer. Although the details are not set, the developer is motivated to help with the cost of the land and the facilities.

4. WCPSS intends for the elementary school to open in August 2008. Roads, water and sewer need to be in place for this to happen. The park land is situated near the school.

5. The park is not in an environmentally sensitive area.

6. The park will be within walking distance of residences, a large elementary school, Wake Tech, a shopping center, movie theater, offices, daycare and hotel. In this development, sidewalks will be built on both sides of all streets.

7. The site is just off Highway 401 and near an exit of I 540 so it is easily accessible by other city residents via car and public transportation.

This is an ideal "alternative" site for the "active rec" facilities some want put at Horseshoe Farm.

Please, let's get this proposal out in the open and on the table for discussion as a solution to the issue of where to put the active recreation instead of putting it at Horseshoe Farm.

Thank you,

Marcia Deans

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HORSESHOE FARM CIVIL WAR BATTLEFIELD
Lunsford Lane
October 10, 2006

The last time I wrote about Horseshoe Farm, it was to recognize a reader who corrected an error she thought I had made. Former County Commissioner Merrie Hedrick was lamenting to the City Council that she felt like Scarlett trying to save beloved Tara. The Hedricks used to own Horseshoe, and I lamented that they sold it to the City for a bunch of money, with no restrictions on its future use. The reader told me that we missed the conservation easement on Horseshoe Farm, placed on the land when it was sold to the City at a bargain price, and I promptly noted the correction in my next post.

Well, it turns out I was right. The Hedricks sold the farm to the City for a cool $1.1 million. They did donate to the City one small part along the Neuse River, which would allow them to take advantage of the Conservation Tax Credit. Not only did they not restrict development with a conservation easement, (which would have reduced the value of the land), they didn’t include in the deed of the donated parcel restrictions on development required by law for claiming the tax credit. So the Hedricks have their dough, and the City has unfettered rights to do whatever it damn well pleases with Horseshoe Farm, thank you very much.

For the moment, there seems to be agreement among the City Councilors that the property should be used for a park, the contentious issue being what kind of park. The majority of the public favors a nature park - what park planners call passive recreation. The City Parks Department, the City Parks Recreation and Greenways Board, and District B City Councilor Jessie Taliaferro want a park developed for active recreation - basketball, that kind of stuff. So they have been actively working to stifle the public process and impose their will. Former Parks Board Chair Jan Kirschbaum infamously wrote off the hundreds of citizens that expressed their sentiments for a nature park as not the enigmatic “real public,” which to this day remains elusive and incognito.

Mayor Meeker confounded the situation when he made a motion at the September 19 City Council Meeting to direct the Council’s Public Works Committee (chaired by Taliaferro) to consider building the active recreation components at Durant Nature Park. This was a particularly boneheaded move, as that Park was partially paid for with federal funds that restrict its use to passive outdoor recreation. Nevertheless, not a single Councilor voted against the Mayor.

Both the State of North Carolina and the National Park Service would have to approve the new facilities at Durant, and that ain’t gonna happen. The City would have to demonstrate, among other things, that there are no suitable alternative locations in the area for active recreation. It can’t do that, as there are plenty of good alternatives; if you want to see a couple visit the Friends of Horseshoe Farm website.

With virtually no public sentiment for active recreation at Horseshoe Farm, the fight of Taliaferro and Kirschbaum versus the Real Public of Raleigh is particularly troubling. Taliaferro is tenacious, and has adopted a win at all costs stance at the Council table, no matter what the issue. She picked the two Councilors who replaced former Councilors now State Senators Janet Cowell and Neal Hunt. She determined the current rates of impact fees. She controls who gets appointed to what committee or board. On any issue outside of Downtown, the Mayor serves as her figure head. And Taliaferro will get her active recreation at Horseshoe Farm, nature and public be damned.

Ms. Kirschbaum has generated so much public animosity that she has become a liability in Taliaferro’s war on nature. So Taliaferro has enlisted Kirschbaum’s husband, former City Councilor Ron Kirschbaum (1972-77).

Mr. Kirschbaum fired off a widely distributed letter to WakeUp Wake County, the new progressive advocacy group: “rather than an intelligent and well-intentioned debate, it appears that the voice of dissent is being shouted down and winning has become the goal... A confrontational, take no prisoners approach guarantees that there will be a winner and a loser, whether it be in the arena of schools, parks or many other issues needing careful attention.”

Gentle readers, nothing could be further from the truth.

First, Park proponent and Northeast CAC chair Bob Mulder asked for two minutes at the September 26 meeting of the City Council’s Public Works Committee, which is studying the Horseshoe Farm plan. With the backing of ten local organizations, he wanted to propose a facilitated seance which all parties interested in Horseshoe Farm could attend, to work towards a consensus plan for the park. Committee Chair Taliaferro rebuffed him, because he wasn’t on the agenda. So he filed a citizen’s petition and appeared before the City Council on October 3rd. No surprises there, the Council snubbed him.

In the ultimate irony, Councilor Taliaferro and Mr. Kirschbaum showed up unannounced at the North Citizens Advisory Council meeting last Thursday night. Though not on the agenda, they demanded face time, and presented their slant on active recreation. After presenting only their side of the story, they called for the CAC to endorse their recommendation. The CAC voted 19-4 in favor of placing active recreation at either Durant Nature Park or Horseshoe Farm Park (remember, Taliaferro knew by this time that she can’t put active recreation in Durant Park). A textbook case of how to shut out any voice of dissent. You'd think a woman who wants to be the next Mayor of Raleigh would spend her time uniting, not dividing.

Second, the ultimate proof that Mr. Kirschbaum is completely off base can be found by examining the master plan proposed for Horseshoe Farm.

The dirty little secret that no one is talking about is the “nature” part of Horseshoe Farm has already been largely bargained away. An arts center and an environmental center, with 200 parking spaces. Two 100-person picnic shelters, with another 175 parking spots. A road through the woods, down to the river, with a kayak launch and an office building and showers and restrooms and 20 parking spaces. All parking lit with bright lights, for safety (from the nature?). A huge pond flooding the woods, with a Wetland Interpretive Station where the kiddies can learn how to kill wild forests with fake lakes. A paved one lane road (aka a Raleigh greenway) through the whole thing, with not one but two bridges crossing the Neuse River, volleyball courts, a playground, a climbing wall, camp sites in the woods, the list goes on and on.

Toodle-oo Tom Turkey, buh-bye Bambi, adios rare vos and everything else wild that the hundreds of people and their pets will surely run off. Hello Pullen Park North, all we need is a mini choo choo train around the fake pond, just like at the original. Oh, and a statue from Mayberry, maybe this time Otis and Ernest T.

Somebody hook me up with a quarter of what those folks who think that the proposed Master Plan isn’t a compromise are smoking, ‘cause that is some killer chronic.

It ain't too late, nature lovers, nothing has been built yet, indeed, nothing has even been decided yet. Here is how you build a nature park at Horseshoe Farm.

Parking at the entrance, restroom facilities off the sewer and power grids, no cars, no bikes, no dogs allowed beyond the parking lot. A place to commune with nature, mano a mano, corazón a corazón. The pole barn, the farm house, the pastures, cultural relics beckoning images of pre-20th century Wake County. The deep woods, the lazy river, relics of a nature that existed prior to European conquest and colonization. A place for personal reflection, spiritual healing, and good old fashioned fun in nature. Wanna picnic? Pack a hobo sack with some sardines and saltines and carry it in. Want art? Pick up a cheap portable easel from Artarama and draw to your heart’s content. Kids wanna play? Teach 'em to climb trees or play capture the flag. You read it on page 3 of yesterday's paper - it's time for kids to be kids again!

How 'bout that kayaking, and even those hoops that Councilor Taliaferro so desperately desires? Not a problem. You put your boat launch where the river shore has already been destroyed. As luck would have it, Louisburg Road has two twin spans crossing the river, just a half-mile away as the river flows, half that as the crow flies. There’s plenty of room for river access in the wide road right of way. Where to park? As luck would have it, the City of Raleigh already owns 107 acres at the crossing (shaded in blue below). Plenty of room for a recreation center as well, not to mention a doggie park and a few jungle gyms for the active kiddies.

Imagine the excitement of putting your kayak or canoe in the water and paddling up into the dark woods of Horseshoe Farm. It makes a real adventure of the outing, getting there would be half the fun.

Alas, this fight is no longer about nature and nurture, it’s all about one City Councilor, with a General Sherman complex; her confrontational, take no prisoners approach guarantees that there will be a winner and a loser.

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Note on Friday the 13th - N&O chimes in with a good story

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ACCOUNTING ARTHUR ANDERSEN STYLE
Lunsford Lane
October 6, 2006

I guess it should come as no surprise to any Citizen of Raleigh that the Capital Area Sports Foundation is bleeding red, since it has been for quite a time. Why, the Greensboro News and Record alerted us over two years ago:

"We're not losing money, but we're not making enough to cover all of our expenses and support the schools as well as we'd like to," said Joselyn Williams, event coordinator for the CASF. "We're trying every avenue we can."

The foundation isn't crying poor yet, but it says its tax returns, which show a $45,000 profit from last year's game, are misleading. Lawrence Wray, the assistant city manager who heads the organization, said the profit appears because creditors have been lenient in requiring immediate payment for goods and services.

"If we were to pay everybody at one time, we would not have any money," he said. "When we get short, we start pleading for forgiveness."

(September 5, 2004)

1. To generate financial support for programs and services provided to young men and women pursuing an education at North Carolina Central University (hereafter known as NCCU) and North Carolina A&T State University (hereafter known as NCA&T) and other institutions of higher learning with particular emphasis on supporting the administration and operation of intercollegiate athletic programs, and
2. To promote and sponsor the athletic programs and activities of NCCU and NCA&T and other institutions of higher learning among graduates, friends of the institutions, and interested businesses.

WHEN THE SHARK BITES...
Lunsford Lane
June 21,2006

It’s a bit hard to say exactly when it happened. Perhaps it was yesterday, though it could have been sooner, but yesterday it was crystal clear - Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker has jumped the shark.

How do I know? Where to start? At it’s regular meeting yesterday, the City Council gutted the PROP - the Probationary Rental Occupancy Permit Ordinance. You might recall from previous posts here that the PROP was created by the Mayor when he balked at implementing the recommendations of the Neighborhood Protection Task Force.

These “tweaks” to the PROP ordinance were the brainwork of Bart White and John Miller. White is an attorney with Hatch Little & Bunn, and he represented the interests of the Property Management Group. This is the loose band of local slumlords whose two main goals seem to be to kill the PROP (they continuously threaten to sue the City) and kill the Avent West Neighborhood Association (they now devote even more of their webspace to this neighborhood group). John Miller is a local mortgage specialist who in early ‘03 was appointed by then Councilor now Senator Janet Cowell to the Neighborhood Protection and Housing Task Force to represent the “property owners” stakeholder group.

Those Councilors beholden to the Real Estate special interest never much cared for this ordinance anyway, and now the hoods were really up Crabtree Creek without a paddle. Thus it was incumbent on the Mayor to pull out the stops to save his pet legislation. Yes, he voted against the changes, but he certainly made no effort to sway any votes his way. The best he could muster was to suggest a couple of essentially meaningless changes to the ordinance revisions recommended by District E Councilor Philip Isley’s Law and Public Safety Committee. Isley was having none of it. First, Isley opposed the whole idea of neighborhood protection and the Neighborhood Protection Task Force from its inception. Second, Isley makes a sport of sticking his thumb in the Mayor’s eye. He knew the changes the Mayor requested were meaningless, but he also knew he had the votes to pass his changes without Meeker, so he refused to relent.

The Mayor having capitulated, District D’s Thomas Crowder and At-Large Russ Stephenson put up a spirited defense of the Mayor's PROP. In the opposite corner, District B Councilor Jessie Taliaferro and District C’s James West did the heavy lifting for Isley and the Real Estate crowd. West said that derelict landlords are the least of Southeast Raleigh's problems. What is he smoking? The historic African-American neighborhoods of Southeast Raleigh are gasping their last breathes, and it’s slumlords who have their necks in a death grip. If he hasn’t seen it for himself, then he should read about it in my old blog posts.

The City recently clamped down on problem nightclubs, in an effort led by Taliaferro, and Stephenson made an interesting comparison of slumlords to nightclub owners. We now hold the nightclub owners responsible for the behavior of their patrons, even though they usually don’t know who they are and have no contractual relationship with them. Yet Taliaferro and crew refuse to hold landlords responsible for behavior on the their properties, despite having a clear contractual relationship (a lease) with them. This sent Taliaferro into a nonsensical tirade, claiming the comparison was ludicrous. Crowder and Stephenson held terra firma, but in the end, Big Real Estate had bought their way out yet again. With only five votes, the changes won't become law until their second reading at the next City Council meeting, but it's all but done now.

Just how burdensome is the PROP? So far there are a grand total of nine properties that require this rental permit. Got it? Nine out of tens of thousands. There would probably be more, but over the past year, the Council has chosen to excuse many of the scofflaw landlords who shed crocodile tears in the Council Chambers. Of the nine that stuck, four are in West’s District, three are in Taliaferro’s, and two are in Crowder’s (both Meeker and Stephenson live in Crowder’s district). So West and Taliaferro sold out the peace and property values of thousands of their constituents just to let a handful of the worst actors off the hook.

Pitiful.

Shameful, really.

And shame on the Mayor. This whole PROP thing was his idea to begin with, his compromise of the Neighborhood Task Force recommendations. Follow this now - landlords and homeowners on the task force negotiate a proposal, everyone had to give something to get something. Then the Mayor compromises that compromise proposal by creating the PROP - only the homeowners have to give up ground and get nothing in return. A year later, we now get handed compromise to the third power, with homeowners losing up so much that what remains is meaningless.

While the Mayor did vote against the changes, he did nothing to bring any of the recalcitrant Councilors to his side. It was the perfect time to apply a little muscle - the Council passed the City budget just the day before, and when money is being doled out is when the Mayor has maximum leverage to get his way. So why no arm twisting? Because the Mayor has completely abandoned those neighborhood interests that elected him to his original District D Council seat, and made it possible for him to run for Mayor.

Think not? Look at another decision yesterday. The Council voted 6-2, Crowder and Stephenson dissenting, to rezone a property to allow fraternity and sorority houses. I took a hard look at Greek Life on NCSU’s campus a few months back when two frat brothers died in a fire that consumed an illegal frat house off campus. Bottom line is this - the fraternities and sororities want to be off campus where the rules don’t apply, and the neighborhoods want them on campus where the rules do apply. Both Crowder and Stephenson live near the University, and both have first-hand experience with unruly Greek organizations off campus - Stephenson could see the fire that killed those two frat boys last year from his front stoop. But the Mayor stiffed his home district constituents once again, voting to allow the rezoning. Expect a tsunami of frats and sororities rushing to fill Stephenson’s and Crowder’s hoods.

And then there’s the Mayor stiffing the Hurricanes. I told you last week that the Canes would win the cup, and that they would win it at home in game seven (folks, when BTB.org says it, you can take it to the bank). And I told you that Raleigh was incapable of throwing a real celebration bash. When I posted my bit of sarcasm on Thursday, I didn’t know that the next day the News and Observer would really hit the nail on the head - if you missed it, read it here:

This is Raleigh's reputation -- bureaucrats and businessmen who can't agree, coming up with watered-down compromises in attempts to make the most people happy. And so the most people can park conveniently.

In other words, what we have in this town is a failure to lead.

Humiliated by the collective booing that the best Raleigh could muster was a parade around the RBC Center parking lot, the Mayor created a second parade today. In his mind, two half-fast parades equal one whole parade. But in everyone else’s minds, two almost-parades only makes it twice as apparent how lame this City’s leadership is. I was at the RBC Center parade last night. Supposedly there were 30,000 people there. I wasn’t in the blimp, so I couldn’t count. But this I know - the first 18,000 fans were to receive a commemorative pint glass. When I left, after the parade, they were still giving glasses away, and there was no line. And I left with three, so did others. So how could there be 30,000 people there?

And it really wasn’t a parade. A parade has marching bands and drum majorettes and floats and krazy klowns in mini-cars raising a ruckus for the celebrities. And it's on a real street, where the backdrop of the buildings and the surrounding streetscape create the ambiance of a City. The knock-off Zambonis notwithstanding, this was a procession. Through a black asphalt parking lot. In 90+ degree brilliant sunshine. To be sure, the fanatics were crazy to praise their heroes, and the players were more than appreciative and gracious, high fiving everyone with a hand in the air, and signing hats, shirts, and sticks as fans jogged along next to their cars. But if this was Detroit or Edmonton or any place in North America besides Raleigh, the Canes would have gotten the real parade they deserve. Hell, the students at NC State have done a right good job of parading down Hillsborough Street for homecoming the last two years, the Mayor should have just asked the student council at State to organize a real parade for the City, instead of the "professionals" in the City public affairs department.

So the Mayor repeats the exact same parade today, at noon. Crowds are thin, then comes the inevitable summer thunderstorm. Embarrassed doesn’t begin to describe how I feel to be a Citizen of the first North Carolina City with a team to win a professional sports championship. This win has increased every Canes players’ market value, and I won’t be surprised if some jump ship for real sports cities, that really know how to appreciate a winning team.

Mayor Meeker is Raleigh’s Arthur Fonzarelli. A guy with a lot of talent, plenty of opportunity still ahead of him, but for all practical purposes this particular show is oh-vah.

What’s on next season? Hint - the Shark takes the lead role in this sitcom (Jessie Taliaferro as Mayor).

EYE OF THE STORM
Lunsford Lane
June 15, 2006

Today, News and Observer, June Fifteen, Two Thousand and Six:

Areas around low-lying Crabtree Creek flooded as water reached a depth of 23 feet near Glenwood Avenue, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The creek was 5 feet over flood stage, and about 18 feet higher than average.

Mall officials evacuated Crabtree Valley Mall in northwest Raleigh about noon after the parking lot started flooding.

Yesterday, News and Observer, June Fourteen, O-Six:

With the Stanley Cup in sniffing distance, talk in Raleigh is turning to fireworks, parades and confetti -- but not downtown.

Should the Carolina Hurricanes win the Cup, they'll take a victory lap later around the RBC Center parking lot in a daytime celebration, the city and the Centennial Authority said Tuesday.

But Cup fever aside, that idea fell flat for some fans, who thought any celebration ought to have the Raleigh skyline as a backdrop.

Flashback, News and Observer, November Thirteen, Two Thousand and Five:

The idea for Soleil is to bring luxury to spots where it hasn't existed before. They want their tower for traveling CEOs, for hockey teams playing the Carolina Hurricanes, for performers at the RBC Center.

Me, I don’t go in much for the non-motor sports, and even there I take my poison undiluted. Straight line racing, top fuel preferred but not required, hit the accelerator, go super fast. John Force, Smokin’ Don Schumacher, Shirley Muldowney, Big Daddy Don Garlits. For all other sports, I follow a simple rule - root root root for the home team come fair weather or foul.

And you just gotta root for the Canes - superb skating and the true grit to win yields non-stop edge-of-your-seat excitement. The series is 3-2 and there is no doubt that the Canes will be skating the silver bowl named for Frederick Arthur Stanley, Lord Stanley of Preston, Earl of Derby, Governor-General of Canada in the 1890's. “I have for some time been thinking that it would be a good thing if there were a challenge cup which should be held from year to year by the champion hockey team in the Dominion of Canada. There does not appear to be any such outward sign of a championship at present, and considering the general interest which matches now elicit, and the importance of having the game played fairly and under rules generally recognized, I am willing to give a cup which shall be held from year to year by the winning team.”

So you just know that it’s gonna really hurt Canadian hockey fanatics to watch their beloved cup fly south for summer vacation, to the last of the eleven States of the Confederacy to secede none-the-less. (To reside at the RBC Center, as in Royal Bank of Canada Center, so you see the cup won't really be leaving Canuke terra firma now will it?)

And as much as I love a parade, I just can’t fathom the many news stories over the last week in which our local pols lament the lack of a suitable venue Downtown to welcome the Stanley Cup to Our Fair City. Fayetteville Street Mall is history, and its heir apparent isn’t open yet. The Convention Center is rubble. Pols whine that we will have to fete elsewhere, out of the heart of the City, out on the highway at the edge of town. Lord forbid, at the RBC Center.

Which is where the party belongs. It would be pretty damn cynical to host the Canes downtown. A dozen years ago, what passes for leadership around here was having none of a Downtown arena. Revitalize downtown, are you kidding? The thinking was that Downtown is snoring in a permanent coma, don’t bother trying to wake it. Meadowlands Of The South, piped local real estate sage Steve Stroud. Out along the highway at the edge of town. And our Local Pols, like innocent little lambs led to the slaughter, blindly followed the grim reaper of urban planning off the edge of the cliff.

Now fast forward nine years since the RBC opened its doors. The Whalers are the Canes (New Englanders from Boston to Hartford are really crying foul now), and Downtown is waking slowly from its coma. Still groggy and off balance, now Downtown wants to be Canes Central? A Downtown Arena would have really synced with hip Downtown nightlife. What has the RBC Center brought to West Raleigh? A Damon’s rib joint and one roadside motel? Talk about economic development for our roughly quarter-billion dollar investment in the Arena.

But it’s too late. The RBC is where it is, most Canes live in the outermost burbs like Wakefield, and have you tried parking Downtown lately? If you’re careless, you’ll be towed, and if you are careful you still run a 50-50 chance of a parking ticket. A victory party Downtown? Who needs it? Downtown doesn’t deserve the Canes.

So what do we do about the lack of services around the RBC Center? That’s where Dickey Walia and Sanjay Mundra step in to save the day, with their Westin Hotel at their Soleil Center, to be built “for hockey teams playing the Carolina Hurricanes, for performers at the RBC Center.”

Bear with me for another couple of minutes while we work through this improbable hypothetical scenario. Let’s assume the Soleil Center was already up and running. Now pick a day, any day, heck let’s pick June 14, 2006 (like, yesterday). The Canes lead the Oilers in the run on the Stanley Cup 3 games to 1, they can win it all tonight. The Oilers team, press folk from NBC and dozens of other outlets, and hockey fans from across the US and Canada have filled the Westin Hotel to capacity. Suddenly, and this is just hypothetically now, ‘cause this could never happen in real life, a remnant tropical storm rolls into Carolina on the morning of the big game (for fun let's just call it Alberto, since it's fashionable right now to blame most everything bad on illegal Mexican immigrants, like those who did much of the heavy lifting to build the RBC Center).

Rain starts to fall, and before day’s end, the gage has accumulated, oh let’s just be absurd and say 7.6 inches of rain. In a matter of hours, Crabtree Creek rises over 18 feet (just being absurd again, no?), flooding Crabtree Valley Mall and the Soleil Center. The Oilers have to be extracted by boat to get to the game, and they're plenty p-o-ed at having missed their practice session at the IcePlex. Many fans are simply left stranded as their rental cars haven’t dried out from being under five feet of water. Across the U.S. and Canada, Raleigh is portrayed as a backwater town run by inbred bumpkins.

The whole Meadowlands of the South thing was one of the dumbest ideas floated around the Triangle in the whole 20th century. Approving the building the Soleil Center in a notorious floodplain under the guise of supporting the RBC Center will likely go down as one of the most asinine decisions local politicians made in the 21st century.

Do not doubt it, the Hurricanes will bring the Stanley Cup to Raleigh, they will win it in game 7 in the RBC Center, and yours truly will be at the big bash the City throws for the Canes. At the RBC Center. As even Mayor Meeker admits, “It makes sense to pack tens of thousands of people in a spot with plenty of parking and a large gathering space.” Which makes one wonder why the Mayor thought it made sense to vote to pack thousands of people into the Crabtree Creek floodplain. Oh Raleigh,

You are like a hurricane
There's calm in your eye.
And I'm gettin' blown away
To somewhere safer
where the feeling stays.
I want to love you but
I'm getting blown away.

NO PORK ON MEEKER’S FORK
Lunsford Lane
June 7, 2006

Last night, the City Council held its annual budget hearing. The main event is every nonprofit group in the City reminding the Council of the good works it does, and then asking for a pot of money.

This year however, that was preceded by an opening act by former Raleigh City Councilors now State Senators Neal Hunt (R) and Janet Cowell (D). It appeared that they had been summoned by the Mayor of Raleigh to update him on the prospects of the State repaying the City the $8.3 million it stole in 2002.

Remember way back in 2002 when the State was going broke? Easley recently had taken over as Governor from Jim Hunt, who forgot to tell Easley, or anybody else for that matter, as he was going out of the door that State finances were in the terlit.

To help make ends meet, Easley seized $209 million in taxes and reimbursements that were due to local municipalities throughout the State. Raleigh lost about $8.3 million from taxes collected from electric, natural gas, and telecommunications companies. The state collected the money from the companies on behalf of the City, but declined to pass it along. And the City wants its money back. Consider it an interest-free loan says the Mayor to the Governor, just give the principal back now that the State is flush with cash again.

Cowell and Hunt (and others) have sponsored a Senate bill to pay back that $209 million this fiscal year. Long story short - they said it ain’t gonna happen. Guv says no, State House says no. They suggested that nothing would happen unless all the cities united through the League of Municipalities and put the full court press on the Guv et al. They also suggested that the legislature might push back, and refuse to fund local requests, such as the $10 million that Cowell and Hunt have requested for an Wake County inpatient psychiatric hospital. $15-30 million are needed, but $10 million is a good start for a County Commission that has promised to build a hospital of some sort.

So this got me to wondering, just how much bacon are Cowell and Hunt frying up for Raleigh? Yeah, Cowell is asking for $50,000 for Wake County Public Schools’ Project Enlightenment, and Hunt has joined her in seeking $175,000 for the Wake County Family Court pilot program. Of course Raleigh dominates Wake County and so will benefit if these projects are funded. But the Guvnuh stole the 8.3 million from the City, not the County, so just what is the City directly risking by asking for its money back?

Hunt and Cowell have asked for $100,000 for repair and renovation of the Raleigh Senior Center and $100,000 for the Exploris Museum downtown. Cowell also is asking for $1 million for scholarships for the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) universities.

The MEAC basketball tournament was recruited to replace the CIAA tournament at the RBC Center when the CIAA graduated to better digs in Charlotte. Hunt co-sponsored an identical bill with Cowell last year that went nowhere, but has declined this year. You might call it investment in economic development, but Hunt knows that the chance is hell of the legislature giving a cool mill in scholarships to 10 universities, only one of which (NC A&T) is in North Carolina, is exactly zero.

So, if we’re lucky this year, the City will get $200,000 from the legislature. That'd be mighty lucky, as that’s $200,000 more than we got last year from our Councilors Emeriti.

I think I’d recommend that Mayor Meeker call the Governor’s bluff on this one, and demand that he pony up the $8.3 million he stole from us. The money is there, as the State is reimbursing trust funds and rainy day funds. Meeker even suggested that the sales tax not be repealed until the debt is paid, but that has less chance of happening than funding MEAC scholarships.

What the heck, Mayor Meeker, ask for interest on the money as well. You really don't have much to lose.

PAPER TIGER
Lunsford Lane
May 29, 2006

Late last year, the City Council passed an ordinance to change parts of the City’s zoning code and subdivision regulations. Not that it had much choice in the matter, mind you, as earlier that year the NC Legislature passed “An Act to Modernize and Simplify City and County Planning and Land-Use Management Statutes.” That bill mandated several changes that local governments had to make. At 23 pages, the bill hardly seems simple, but I will try to get to the crux of what it is supposed to mean to you and me the ordinary Raleigh citizens.

For this blog, let’s start with this - the City of Raleigh Planning Department is only supposed to accept rezoning applications that address the consistency of the proposed rezoning with the comprehensive plan, and more importantly, the benefits and detriments of the proposed rezoning for the landowner, the immediate neighbors, and the surrounding community. So how’s that going? Let’s look at a few recent rezoning cases.

First we try Z-004-06 (the secret code just means the 4th rezoning application filed in 2006). 8.43 acres at Rock Quarry and Barwell Roads in Southeast Raleigh. Currently four homes per acre are allowed, the owners wants twelve homes per acre (originally they asked for fourteen). The owner, Charleston Homes, says the request complies with the City’s Comprehensive Plan, and tells us that it “seeks a higher residential density for this assemblage in order to continue the trend towards quality, attractive residential development in this area and thereby accomodate (sic) the need for diverse homes in this sought after location.”

I don’t know what “diverse homes” are; maybe some are painted white, others black or brown? Nevermind, I do know that not a single word was written about the detriments of the proposed rezoning for the immediate neighbors and the surrounding landowners, as required by State law and City ordinance. Wanna argue that there are no detriments? They will build 102 homes where the Comprehensive Plan says 33 should be. I am certain that there are tangible benefits to this development. But this is high density development in the middle of low density development, so don’t even try to give me the line that there are NO detriments. The whole idea is to put everything on the table, the good and the bad, so a reasoned decision can be made. The Planning Commission found that despite the owner’s assertion to the contrary, the request is NOT consistent with the Comprehensive Plan. Despite all of this, it should come as no surprise that the Planning Commission recommended that the request be approved.

Why? Because astute readers will recall that Charleston Homes is really Charles Walker and Jim Baker, both developer lackeys who serve on the Planning Commission. So of course their developer buddies are going to approve their requests for whatever they want - it’s the reason, the only reason, they serve on the Planning Commission.

Oh well, let’s move on. Let’s jump over to North Raleigh with Z-036-06, just over 5 acres on the west side of Litchford Road, east of its intersection with Falls of Neuse Road. Currently residential with four house per acre, requesting permission to build “office and institutional” uses. Four pages of conditions that would apply if the request is granted. The petitioner claims that the plan is consistent with the City’s Comprehensive Plan:

“The Planning Department has publicly stated that the Comprehensive Plan and Small Area Plans are guides for development and redevelopment; and it is the belief of the petitioner and the property owners and their consultants that the proposed zoning change category and the accompany (sic) conditions are in compliance with the Comprehensive Plan. Due to the individual constraints of the subject parcels, we do acknowledge that not all of the specific criteria for development along a thoroughfare either apply to these parcels or are met through these conditions.”

Not a peep, not a single word about the detriments of the proposed rezoning for the immediate neighbors, and the surrounding community, as required by State and local law. And guess what? Despite the owner’s assertion to the contrary, the City Planning Department has determined that this request is NOT consistent with the Comprehensive Plan.

Strike two. You see where this is going. The folks asking for rezoning are ignoring the State law. The Planning Department is accepting rezoning applications that State law clearly says they cannot accept. The Planning Commission once again thumbs its nose at Democracy. Laws? We ain’t go no laws. We don’t need no laws. We don’t have to show you any stinkin’ laws.

Let’s wrap this thing up with Z-042-06. 1.13 acres at Six Forks Road and West Millbrook Road - currently zoned for Office and Institutional Uses, Shopping Center use is requested. Tons of conditions on how the property would be developed. Not a peep, not a single word as required by law about the detriments of the proposed rezoning for the immediate neighbors, and the surrounding community.

What the application does say is “the Petitioners believe the proposed rezoning is substantially consistent with the Comprehensive Plan and that the request is reasonable notwithstanding a minor inconsistency with what, per its terms, is intended to be solely a guideline, with actual spacing to be determined by market potential or unusual physical or demographic situations.”

What the hell does that mean? Nevermind, it was written by two planning attorneys, so it was never meant to be interpretable. By the way, the other two applications above were also written by planning consultants, which explains why they are equally obtuse. You get the basic idea though - these consultants see the Comprehensive Plan as just a gentle suggestion, not really a plan prepared by professionals and approved by elected officials to create a livable city for all Citizens.

Stee-rike threeeee, the Citizen at bat is outta there.

Oh by the way, one of the owners of this last property is Planning Commissioner Erin Kuczmarski. She voted against fellow Commissioners Walker and Baker’s case (Z-004-06 above), so expect them to vote against her case. After all, it's not about following any law.

Astute readers will recall that BTB.org lobbied hard to keep Kuczmarski on the Planning Commission when the County Commissioners tried to dump her at District B City Councilor Jessie Taliaferro’s request.

Guess which local blogger has egg on his face now?

LESSONS NOT LEARNED
Lunsford Lane
May 10, 2006

Do you know where your City Councilors are?

Last weekend, chances were even that they were at the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce Inter-City Visit and Leadership Conference.

Mayor Meeker and Councilors Taliaferro (District B), Kekas, and Stephenson (both At-Large), along with a couple of your County Commissioners, spent the weekend schmoozing with the beautiful people at the Grand Hotel Minneapolis. That’s in Minnesota.

Every year the Chamber sponsors this trip. Last year it was to Boston, the year before Jacksonville, Florida. The idea is that Raleigh and Wake County leaders are exposed to new ideas for improving our quality of life here at home.

I gotta tell you, on the surface, we really like that idea. Lord only knows how provincial our leaders tend to be. Minneapolis is a truly great city - they built the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome, downtown, in 1982, what more do
you need to know? Boston? Well, if you’ve never been to Boston, pack the kids into the old Woodie this summer (last chance before year-round school starts), suck up that $3 a gallon gas, and check out the silversmith Paul Revere’s house . Then as you drive back into Raleigh, pass the RBC Center out on the highway at the edge of town and the quaint but relocated Joel Lane house, and ask yourself who the hell has been running the joint for the last 75 years?

Between de Gama and I, we’ve seen the seedier sides of four continents (and as for Clark Air Base in the Philippines, well, I have nothing to say about that). But by the way they run this place, you’d think some of our City Councilors really believe that Asheville is the Paris of the South.

So if the City Fathers and Mothers want to go to Boston and Minneapolis on my nickel, I’m game. But what gets my goat is who they go with.

It’s invitation only, typically 90-100 folks. Heavily weighted to developers. This year? Centex Homes. Two from the Raleigh Wake Homebuilders Association. Scott Culter of Clancey and Thays, who made a mockery of the Planning Commission. KB Homes. Toll Brothers, the biggest residential builders on the planet. Donna Preiss, slumlord to college students throughout the southeast. Various attorneys and bankers and engineers.

The Councilors, for their part, were keeping a low profile. Joyce Kekas went as a representative of Kekas and Associates Limited. Ever heard of that company? Russ Stephenson from Stephenson Millworks. Ever heard of that company? The Mayor? His law firm. Jessie Taliaferro? Well, just Jessie Taliaferro - I begrudgingly have to give her credit for not creating some cover for herself.

To be sure, and a little bit fair, there were others besides Big Real Estate along for the cocktail parties. Sig Hutchinson, Mr. Open Space himself. The new superintendent of the Wake County School System. Health care. NC State University and Wake Tech.

But who was there to represent you and me, average Tammy Taxpayer, over that third martini after the discussions on TIFs and other creative financing?

Your CAC leaders?

Not invited.

How about that seminar on creating small learning communities?

Sorry, your PTA president wasn't on the plane.

So just what do all these pols and builders and bankers learn from these trips? The Triangle Business Journal often asks just that question.

Fort Worth 1998 - Encourage business leaders to hold public office - Vernon Malone, Former Wake County Commissioner, now State Senator

Raleigh 2006 - Big Real Estate owns and operates the controlling interests of both the Raleigh City Council and the Raleigh Planning Commission. Gee thanks, Vern.

Seattle 1999 - They did nothing for 10 years and the result is a top-five worst traffic situation. We have to take action through the Regional Transportation Alliance - Jack Clayton, Wachovia Bank

Raleigh 2006 - City Council passes laughably small increases in impact fees to fund road-building generated by new development. Lesson unlearned.

Denver 2000 - We learned that the public and private sectors were finally able to get together on a $2.3 billion road and transit bond after two previous defeats. This was accomplished with leadership and regionalism... We learned that a multi-modal system approach is needed if we are going to keep up with the road and transit needs for the future. - Duane Long, Chairman, Longistics

Raleigh 2006 - $2.3 billion is what we need for schools, and you know what kind of reception that idea is receiving? A multi-modal system approach? Ya think he means Denver-type light-rail for the Triangle (he is a transportation expert, after all)? Ha!

Minneapolis 2006? Here’s a novel idea - schmooze with the Citizens for a change - Lunsford Lane, BTB.org

However, if you want to create a circumstance that guarantees that flimsy pols (sic) will determine fiscal policy, that nobody has a plan for growth because of special interests and the status quo, and that drives voting percentages into single digits, hey, we're already there!

ONE FOR YOU, NINETEEN FOR ME
Lunsford Lane
May 3, 2006

You read it in the paper yesterday, property taxes in Raleigh are going up. And that suits some politicians, like District C City Councilor James West, just fine.

He signaled weeks ago, at the March 21 City Council meeting, that he is preparing to raise your property tax. During a discussion at the Council table about raising impact fee. At-Large Councilor Russ Stephenson had said that the whole point of raising impact fees is to keep property taxes down. He said that property tax payers shouldn’t pick up 90% of the cost of new roads and park space made necessary by new development.

Councilor West disagreed. He said, “The ad valorem tax is probably the fairest tax there is. Someone who owns a million dollar house is going to pay much more than someone who owns a $100,000 house - there ain’t no question about that.”

To hear West talk, at that meeting and others, you could come to think that 1) he wants taxes to be fair, 2) he likes progressive taxes better than flat taxes, and 3) he is a supporter of affordable housing. But you would be wrong on all three counts. West talks the talk, but having sold out to District B Councilor and Mayor-Wannabe Jessie Taliaferro and her developer handlers, he simply cannot walk the walk. Not even hobble. Which is why he voted for her impact fee proposal.

Mayor Meeker pleaded with the Council to consider a progressive impact fee schedule so that million dollar homes would pay more than $100,000 ones. But West was having none of it. Mayor Meeker implored the Council to consider alternatives that would not burden affordable housing at the low end of the market. But West was having none of it. Mayor Meeker beseeched the Council to spread the cost of new development equitably among both current and new residents and properties. But West and his fellow developer hackies were having none of it.

We knew this was coming in March when West made his big to-do about ad valorem taxes and Big Real Estate squealed with delight. On his website, the president of the Triangle Community Coalition - aka Big Real Estate - had this to say about West’s nod to higher ad valorem taxes: Councilor James West gave a very eloquent speech (one of the best I have heard lately) about the effect of impact fees on housing for working families and the need for balance in looking at revenue streams to pay for growth.

We’ve thoroughly debunked all the sophistic arguments about effects of impact fees on working families - indeed the Mayor pleaded to no avail with his colleagues to include provisions to protect those families. What West and Sinclair call balance is you and me paying 90% of the cost of infrastructure to serve new development. That’s what we here at BTB.org call perfect asymmetry.

So yesterday, West joined four of his fellow Councilors to vote to go easy on impact fees for developers, and hard on property taxes for you and me. Regular readers know that we have never been fans of James West. Political machinations like sticking the taxpayer with this giveaway to the building industry is why. Talk is cheap,but property taxes are real money. As I’ve said before, South Park burns while Nero fiddles.

HOOVERVILLE
Lunsford Lane
April 20, 2005

The argument against raising impact fees that was trotted more than any other out over the past few months was the negative effect it would have on affordable housing. Builder after developer told the City Council that at the low end, buyers are sensitive to price increases of just a few hundred dollars. Raise impact fees, cut these marginal first-time buyers out of the market.

District E City Councilor Philip Isley repeated the claim on Tuesday, then proceeded to vote to raise the fees anyway. Ditto for District C’s Councilor James West. At last week’s Planning Commission hearing on raising the fees, local builder Rusty Ammons stated the case as best I’ve heard it yet:

"There is an overriding issue that this affects, and that is the affordability of housing in Raleigh...

You’ve heard stories of other towns like San Francisco and other parts of the country where before you even start to build a house you’ve got to pay 50, 75 thousand dollars in fees. Well, you know, how do you build a hundred-thousand dollar house that somebody can afford, you know, when you’re doing that?

I guess you can put a tent on there."

That’s a powerful statement that struck us right in the heart here at BTB.org, where we are committed to the idea that home ownership is the surest and best pathway that the average Joe can follow to accumulate wealth. So our top research analyst ( who like the Intern prefers to remain out of the limelight) got to crunching the numbers.

Ammons, who knows building in Raleigh as well as anyone, sets the affordability bar at $100,000. So the first thing our analyst considered was that ceiling. A single mom making $18,000 a year shouldn’t be spending more than 30% of her income on housing - that’s $5,400. If she buys a $100,000 house with100% financing at 5.5% interest on a 30 year loan, she’d be spending just over $6,800 a year, for which she'd need to be earning about $23,000 a year. Not including taxes and insurance, she’s in over her head, but she decides to push her limit, get a second part-time job, and go for it. So for argument's sake we'll go along with Ammons' $100,000 metric for affordability.

Next he wanted to look at which houses she could have chosen from last year. So he went to the local Multiple Listing Service and got every sale for every new house for 2005. Guess what? Not a single new house listed in the city sold for $100,000 or under. Nada. Zilch. Not even one.

So much for our young Mom's dream of a yard with a swing set for the kiddies, but there surely are other options. Our gal is not exactly a handyman, and even if she was, with that second job and two kids who's got the time? So a real fixer-upper is a no go. There are plenty of condos and townhouses out there, so we threw them into the new housing mix as well. Guess what? One new housing unit in 50 in Raleigh sold for $100,000 or less last year.

So Ammons et al. argue passionately that increasing impact fees will knock out the $100,000 house, when they know damn good and well they never build a $100,000 house. Well, now you know too, and you know that our City Councilors tried to pull the wool over our eyes for the development industry. Here are the sales by unit type last year:

The City Council could have raised impact fees to levels comparable to those of Cary and other neighboring communities, and then exempted every new home sold for less than $125,000 (only 10% of the total new housing market last year). And the City would have raised considerably more money for roads and parks than the low levels adopted, which hit even that rare 1 in 50 unit that sells for under $100,000. Hit it, mind you, with the exact same fees charged on million-dollar + homes, dozens of which sold in Raleigh last year.

Ammons was recently named Builder of the Year by the Home Builders Association for his "outstanding and selfless service to the industry as it relates to governmental affairs and land planning." In other words, Ammons is well recognized for his ability sell City Councilors $100,000 houses that don't exist. You know the old saying, there's a City Councilor born every minute.

So if our single mom does wind up living in a tent as Ammons suggests she might, she can blame him and his apple polishers on the Council like Isley and West who voted for the lame ordinance that passed. The next time you hear one of them bemoan the effect of impact fees on affordable housing, you'll know that they are just spinning tall tales around the campfire.

Someone’s laughing, Lord, kumbaya.
Someone’s crying, Lord, kumbaya!

A FACE IN THE CROWD
Lunsford Lane
April 19, 2006

Gentle reader, please consider carefully this justification for supporting Councilor Taliaferro’s motion at the City Council meeting to pass the impact fee increases she had previously proposed:

“I appreciate the recognition that the Duncan report was flawed, I agree with you 100%, and we should never have hired that consultant, and I appreciate your acknowledging that. I think that’s the smartest thing I’ve heard today, acknowledging the flaws.

I know we haven’t raised impact fees in 17 years, but honestly I think we have lost sight of what an impact fee is and who it affects. What we’re doing today is we’re going to prevent people from buying a home, from businesses from moving here, and for essentially helping to create the growth and maintain the growth that is what is making Raleigh create. I wonder how many local families are going to be prevented from buying a house based on our actions today. And I don’t like an impact fee and I have never supported this, but as you look at the totality of the circumstances of what has been proposed, what is being proposed, and the misinformation that is out there, I think that striking a balance of the 72% increase is the best thing this Council can accomplish.

It is a reasonable amount, it is set to an inflation index that forever we will have the ability to prognosticate what the impact is going to be on our citizens, our business, of those who use Raleigh to not only better their lives but the lives of others.

So I am going to support the motion.”

Those whom we select to govern us have an awesome responsibility, and I have never walked a single step in their shoes. Compromise is often the grievous order of the day. But if I honestly believed that a proposal would stifle home ownership (which we are really big on here at BTB.org) and business development, if I fundamentally believed a tax being proposed is destructive, I would never vote for it, regardless of the political consequences. Every politician needs a core set of principles.

The philippic above is from District E City Council Philip Isley, who unfortunately has never developed a core set of principles. And is pretty much the dumbest thing I heard that day.

Let’s put aside the Duncan report for the moment, I’ll get to that later in the week. Isley tells us with plain talk that raising impact fees will hurt people and businesses, though he has no idea how many people and how many businesses. However, “the totality of the circumstances” and “misinformation” are working against him, so for that reason he will vote for a tax increase that he doesn’t support and that he is certain will hurt some unknown number - potential a high number - of families. Folks, read it again, that is what he said - I transcribed his entire statement word for word, so as not to be accused of taking single sentences out of context. Notice that he doesn't let us in on just what “totality of the circumstances” and “misinformation” are, just as he neglects to ever tell us what an impact fee really is.

When Councilor Isley gets hot and bothered, he is prone to blurting absurdities. My very first ever blog entry was about one such incident. This is a trait that can’t serve Isley, an attorney, well in the courtroom, but is of little consequence in the Council chamber. And Isley was plenty hot and bothered, taking issue with the Mayor’s handling of the debate from the very outset of the discussion. All of the Councilors were visually and verbally agitated. Through a series of motions, votes were not called as ayes or nays, but Yes! and No!’s almost shouted out. Councilors Stephenson and Craven got into a spat that had to be called to order by the Mayor. Councilor West was clearly annoyed, accusing some Councilors of doing exactly what he did - making up their minds before the issue was ever debated. The Mayor's plea for higher fees was passionate and strong without being overly derisive. Councilor Taliaferro struck back anyway, declaring that she can't be held accountable for sins of omission of prior Councils, which included some currently at the table (i.e., the Mayor former District D Councilor Meeker).

Folks, we told you that the fix was in on this motion from el Dia Uno, and so it passed 5-3, with Mayor Meeker and Councilors Crowder and Stephenson voting No! As it's a motion to increase revenues, it must either win by a super-majority (six) or be twice approved by a simple majority during two separate meetings. So even though the motion is coming back to the Council in two weeks, we know that all we are doing here, all we have been doing for weeks, is the postmortem.

Here’s the rub - if Isley deep down in his heart believes that impact fees are bad, he should have stuck to principles and voted no, and the motion would have failed. With that, one of the losing three could have brought a new motion for higher fees, but it would never get the votes of the others who voted yea. Taliaferro could have moved for fees lower that she originally proposed, but that would never get the votes of the losing three, so that motion would also have failed without Isley's support. Isley held the trump card - the fifth vote - and he caved to “the totality of the circumstances.”

Bottom line? No one here at BTB.org believes that Isley is fundamentally opposed to impact fees. We also don’t believe that Isley fundamentally supports anything (except Isley). He puts on big shows of being “against” issues du jour, but he never offers any solutions to real problems facing the City. Rock bottom line? No one here believes anything Isley says anymore, especially when he is hot under the collar.

This from a man who is running for Mayor.

I have no desire to have a Councilor, much less a Mayor, who is so easily overcome by some amorphous “totality of the circumstances.”

WHY DID GOD CREATE ECONOMISTS?
LUNSFORD LANE
APRIL 11, 2006

In my blog yesterday, I mentioned that county-wide impact fees are part of a comprehensive tax plan to support school growth. Neighboring Chatham and Orange Counties have had school impact fees for years, and other counties are now considering them.

There was an editorial in the Sunday newspaper by Professor Walden, an economist at NC State University. Walden tells us that when it comes to Wake County schools, there are three revenue options that deserve our attention:

1. a local capital gains tax on property, levied only on the increase in value between the owner's purchase and sale,
2. having the tax assessor adjust property values up annually, rather than once every seven years, so that property tax collections can go up every year, and
3. other forms of income taxation, such as higher local sales taxes.

Not included on the professor’s list of options that deserve our attention - impact fees on new construction. He doesn’t say why. Surely he knows of the option, why our local journal of all things social and economical - the News and Observer - recently did a story in which the impact fees for schools idea was featured.

Professor Walden finishes his editorial with this bold statement: Wake County is in a unique situation with school construction costs, but maybe we can find unique solutions. Step one, though, is understanding the issue.

Let me go on record as not able to agree more that we must understand the issue. But Walden conveniently forgets to tell us why Wake County’s situation is unique. Our problem is two-pronged - our population is growing whilst our costs for land, brick, mortar, and chalk slates are rising faster than our tax revenues. What so unique about that? Every place else experiencing population growth still has cheap land and cheap cement? There’s nothing unique about our school crisis, including our collective refusal to confront it intelligently. Unique solutions? That's code for let's not try what works elsewhere. Why bother, when we can eternalize Developer Welfare by floating a capital gains tax on pretty much the only asset besides our backs most Joe Schmoes like you and me will have in our lives that can make us a buck?

Because there's one more teensy little thing the professor forgot to mention. That he is being paid by the Homebuilders Association of Raleigh-Wake County to beat up on impact fees. As I wrote yesterday, about another university prof hired by the builders: there is something a bit unsettling about a professor who earns his living on the backs of state taxpayers being paid by a special interest group to push its views on said taxpayers. Just which master does the professor serve? His expertise clearly belongs at the table - we need his wisdom, but we need it untainted and untarnished by Big Real Estate.

I have no evidence that either Walden or Malizia have skewed any data or analysis to favor the Home Builders. But I also don’t think for one millisecond that professors are beyond the corrupting influence of special interest money. Walden is a regular contributor to the highly-partisan John Locke Foundation’s publications, and everyone knows that the John Locke Foundation is the mouthpiece of Art Pope posing as a research institute. By all accounts, NC State has one of the best departments of Agricultural and Resource Economics, and Chapel Hill’s Department of City and Regional Planning is world renowned, but one does have to wonder if either university tenures any professors of ethics.

The News and Observer, for unknown reasons, plays along with these deceptions. Liberal media bias? When a reporter reviewed the editorial in his blog yesterday, he neglected to tell you that Walden is being paid by Big Real Estate to find alternatives to impact fees. Fair and balanced reporting? He neglected to remind you that his paper recently featured impact fees as one of four methods of school funding. You remember, we report, you decide? And he ends his entry with a patently incorrect statement: The gains tax... would just target the increase in the sales price from the last time it was sold. That means it would hit long-held land -- such as family farms -- harder than condos and starter homes that frequently change hands. Either way, the cost will passed along to the buyer (emphasis mine).

Whoa there Lunsford - I can hear you gasping - have you lost your mind? Higher costs are always passed along to consumers, you know that.

It’s the same argument that homebuilders are making against impact fees - house costs will rise, the world will end. They offer no evidence for that, other than the firmly held belief that it must be so. So let's take the professor's sage advice and try together to understand the issue.

What really happens in competitive markets - like Wake County - is that a new (and reasonable) impact fee (or any other additional tax on development) will drive down raw land prices. The builder can’t raise her prices and stay competitive. She can’t lower her quality for the same price point and stay competitive. She can try to negotiate lower prices for 2x4's and sheetrock, but Triangle Brick is only gonna budge so much. She can offer her undocumented alien workers a dollar less per hour, but that’s not likely to go over too well either. The big boys like Pulte and KB Homes might get some break because they can buy materials by the railcar load when building whole new subdivisions, but for practical purposes you can consider all of these costs pretty well fixed.

What Betty the Builder can negotiate is the price of the raw land, and that is what happens - the fee will drive raw land prices down by the cost of the fee plus any overhead factor she faces. This has been shown to happen even when even the benefits reaped by the developer as a result of the fees outweigh the cost. Indeed, history shows that for every dollar of impact fees assessed, land prices are lowered by a dollar, and sales prices go up by 60 cents. That’s because when it comes to real estate, it’s all about location location location. And if you build a home in a location that will have adequate schools and adequate roads and adequate parks, which impact fees and transfer taxes and other taxes fund, it will be worth more than the same home in a location lacking those services.

And Betty has even more to gain, because impact fees increase the supply of buildable land.

Yeah, yeah, I hear you gasping again, now certain that I have lost my mind. They aren’t making any more land, so how can the supply increase? But it’s true - independent studies show that impact fees can reduce uncertainty and risk for developers by giving them a reasonably predictable supply of buildable land.

Yes, there are only 532,480 acres in Wake County (the remaining 3% of the county is under water). But not nearly all of those acres are located near good roads and good schools and good parks (yet - though by one future day we will surely have paved over everything in the county). So when we taxpayers build the northern half of the Outer Loop, building in North Raleigh explodes because land that wasn’t particularly “buildable” because its location sucked is suddenly added to the supply of desirable land. Which means Betty can keep on building on.

I don’t know why the professors turned hired guns don’t tell the whole story so that we can understand the issues at hand. And I don’t know why the News and Observer gives them a free forum to spin for Big Real Estate (ever wonder how much revenue the N&O makes off those ads in the classifieds?).

The only thing I know for sure is that no one is trying to educate the public on how to solve the current and impending fiscal crises faced by the City and the County.
--------------

endnote - to make the weather forecasters look good.

THE GRAVY TRAIN HAS LEFT THE STATION
Lunsford Lane
April 10, 2006

There were two speakers worthy of special note that rose when the Raleigh City Council met last Tuesday night to consider raising impact fees for the first time in 20 years.

The pro-hike crowd could not have found a better person to make their case than Cary At-Large Town Councilor Mike Joyce. Nevermind that he was there to rail against them. The very first speaker at the start of a long evening, Joyce related how Cary has been savaged at the hands of impact fees. Nevermind that the front page of the newspaper that very day reported that Cary is busting at its seams, with a record number on new houses to be built there this year - indisputable proof that impact fees don’t impede development. Nevermind that Raleigh is only considering raising its fee to a third of what Cary charges. Joyce recommended that Raleigh consider Charlotte’s policy of no impact fees.

To which local internet rabble rouser John Burns replied: “I am amazed and astounded to hear that growth in Cary has stopped.”

To which the crowd erupted.

I didn’t count the number of speakers for and against raising the fees, but I’d call the split about even. Those speaking for no or only small fee increases were by and large associated with the building trade. Their recurring themes were that if fees are raised development will stall, and families at the lower economic scale will be priced out of the home market. Those for sizable increases were a hodge podge of Raleighites. Their themes were that it’s only fair to share the true costs of new construction, higher fees haven’t hurt our neighbors like Cary, and that it is easy to exempt the lowest priced housing to avoid hurting those families just squeaking by to buy a house.

The building industry trotted out a series of “experts.” The folks from the John Locke Foundation were there in force, but it is always hard to take them seriously. They pose as a research institute, but are nothing more than the mouthpiece of businessman Art Pope.

The misnomered Triangle Community Coalition paid a UNC professor to tell the Council that its consultants erred when estimating the levels of service generated by new development, because they didn’t use his favored methodology of determining rational nexus. He then offered his services to help the City determine what the impact fees should really be.

(Never hear of rational nexus? Don't be embarrassed, neither have your City Councilors. Says the prof: “State legislatures and state courts have typically applied the "rational nexus" test to impact fees ordinances. That means three things: There must be a clear connection between new growth and the need for new capital facilities. The fee must be proportional--that is, it must not exceed the costs of providing the facility. And the payer of the fee must be shown to benefit from the new public facilities.” )

I have no reason to question the good professor’s expertise in impact fee assessment. In fact, he has demonstrated how to create a county impact fee for building new schools that:

• meets the rational nexus test (thus is legal),
• differentiates by housing type and size are generally more equitable and less regressive than flat-fee programs (apartment generate about a 1/3 less students than single family homes), and
• uses a sliding scale formula based on housing size, which among other benefits eases the burden on more affordable (i.e., smaller) housing.

As ya’ll know, Wake County is in a school budget crisis, and there is talk out there about implementing a countywide impact fee to fund new school construction. Neighboring Orange County has done so since 1994. So we here at BTB.org look forward to the Triangle Community Coalition’s strong and unwavering support of a new Wake County school impact fee calculated according to its own expert’s guidelines.

Should we take the professor up on his offer and let him calculate impact fees for the City? I think not. First, there is something a bit unsettling about a professor who earns his living on the backs of state taxpayers being paid by a special interest group to push its views on said taxpayers. Just which master does the professor serve? His expertise clearly belongs at the table - we need his wisdom, but we need it untainted and untarnished by Big Real Estate.

Second, the proposal on the table was created by Big Real Estate, so what’s the point of now letting them water down their own grossly inadequate proposal?

Yes folks, the fix is in. Big Real Estate saw the writing on the wall - Raleigh voters overwhelming favor big increases in impact fees.You can argue about the accuracy of any poll. But any poll that shows that 85% of the voters support raising the fees, and 74% want the fees raised higher than what the City Council is considering, can't be ignored by even Big Real Estate. So the builders got together and agreed upon the minimum increases now and in the future they think they can get away with. Then they got District B City Councilor Jessie Taliaferro, who they own lock stock and barrel, to collect the five necessary votes and make the proposal.

Yes, folks, the fix is in. Before the proposal goes back to the City Council, it makes a stop at the Planning Commission. Expect lots of whining there, followed by a lukewarm recommendation to support the increase with many exemptions added. Remember, the Planning Commission is also a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Real Estate. Indeed, the father and development partner of Planning Commissioner Brad Mullins got up and told the Council and Commission that he wants this proposal passed. So what’s the kid gonna do? Would you say no to your old man if bought you a seat on the Planning Commission? OK, how about he excuses himself for the obvious conflict of interest? I’ve got a vintage 1964 bottle of Champale that says he does what his pa told him to do. Mullins knows that his fellow Commissioners routinely violate conflict of interest rules and even state laws to promote their pet projects with impunity.

So if the fix is in, why did we encourage everyone to turn out? Because it lets the City Council know that we know that they know that this proposal is nothing more than their worst effort to kowtow to Big Real Estate. And turn out y’all did - it was standing room only in the Council chambers. And a fine job y’all did, too. How to gage how effective you were? Look at what the other side is saying about you.

On their website, the best the builders can do is make personal attacks and misconstrue what their opponents said. Read what David Lazzo, Chair of the Triangle Community Coalition, posted there: The knights carefully picked apart the heathens’ portrayal of the contributions made by developers, confounded their ingeniously crafted drivel about how growth is good, and with uncanny accuracy, portrayed the evil ones as nothing more than entreprenoooorial (most of the knights couldn’t spell the word either) businesses who want to make (hide the silverware!)…a profit!

Not once has anyone on either side even hinted that profit is bad. So why does the Chair of the Triangle Community Coalition pen bad fiction to paint his opponents as evil communists? Because he has his hand deep in your pocket, and he is angry that you are trying to extract it - empty. He knows what you and I know - that all independent research shows that reasonable impact fees - much higher than what Raleigh is proposing - do not hurt development in the long run. Indeed, most studies show that by funding adequate infrastructure, impact fees actually encourage development over the long term. He can offer no facts to make his case, so he must resort to smear tactics. At its core, this is neocon Republicanism in the 21st century - forget fiscal responsibility, forget balanced budgets, to hell with long-term fiscal responsibility, government exists solely for transferring as much money from the pockets of middle class taxpayers to the bank accounts of the well-to-do as it can, as quickly as it can. Lazzo’s post-modern profit theory is that you should pay many of the expenses his business generates, while he keeps all the revenues.

Like the now-extinct Welfare Mothers of the ‘70s, today’s Welfare Developers are not going to go away quietly. And they won’t be near as easy to get rid of, as they have the means to buy politicians and “experts” who will make a mockery not of the good old fashioned profit motive, but of good old fashioned American Democracy.

DISPOSABLE BUILDINGS
Lunsford Lane
First Day of Spring, 2006

A confidant of Mayor Meeker wrote to question my interpretation of the Mayor’s recent comments about the convention center hotel that you and I are helping to build downtown - see my previous post.

Yeah yeah, I know that the Mayor didn’t literally say that the hotel would be torn down when something better comes along in five years. I expect you, gentle reader, to recognize when tongue is firmly planted in cheek. Yes, the current hotel is architecturally unpleasing, and yes, someone is likely to come along in a few years and build a better hotel, but then we’ll have this lesser one plus the better one - we won’t be tearing down the lesser one you and I own.

Or will we?

Sometimes cities do wake up and realize that the time has come to stop throwing good money after bad. Take the old Charlotte Coliseum, for example. The “Hive” opened in 1988 to house the then fledgling now defunct Charlotte Hornets pro basketball team. It cost $52 million to build on its 154 acre site. In a ironic forecast of its future, on the morning the Coliseum was to open for its first event, the $$Texas Jumbotron crashed to the floor.

Problem was, among other things, it was built out of the City core, outside of the highway loop that rings part of the town (sound uncomfortably familiar?).

As for the Hornets, they buzzed off to the Crescent City (downtown) in 2002 (and last year Hurricane Katrina blew the team all the way to [downtown] Oklahoma City - serves ‘em right for walking out on Charlotte). The Queen City wasn’t ready to let go of pro ball, so they got the rights to an expansion team - the Bobcats. The catch was that the old arena wasn’t going to cut it. So the City abandoned the old one, and built a new one. Where the action is. Where people want to be.

Downtown.

The new Charlotte Bobcats Arena cost $265 million. The old coliseum stands empty. So Charlotte decided to sell off the old to help pay for the new. In January of this year, a developer paid $23.35 million for the land. It got the Coliseum as part of the deal too, but it will be torn down. To make way for 625,000 square feet of office, 271,000 square feet of retail, 616 apartments, 91 townhomes, and 116 single-family homes. What today’s planners are calling mixed-use.

The Charlotte Coliseum, a huge complicated expensive building, had a realized design life of 17 years.

Who’s to say that in ten years we’ll be sick and tired of pumping public money into a failing hotel that was subpar when it was built?

The RBC Center has been open for seven years. The CIAA bailed and went to Charlotte as soon as that City’s superior new coliseum opened downtown. Who’s to say that in ten years we won't finally own up to our mistake of building our arena in the wrong place, and abandon it for a new one downtown?

I was speaking tongue in cheek when I said we could abandon the convention center hotel in a few years. But I wasn’t being absurd.

Final note: In 2001, Charlotte voters overwhelmingly defeated a referendum to spend $342 million to build a new coliseum for the Hornets. City politicians created a hotel and leisure tax and built a new arena anyway. (Sound uncomfortably familiar?) Don’t think for a moment that just because you want a building in which you have invested millions to last more than ten or seventeen years, that it won’t get torn down and replaced despite your will.

FAUX LEADERSHIP
Lunsford Lane
March 9, 2006

"There may be someone who comes along in two, three or five years and does something better," said Mayor Charles Meeker. "In the meantime, this does raise the bar."

Tell the truth now, Mr. Shaffer. No way the Mayor of Raleigh really said something so ludicrous to a newspaper reporter, did he? Surely you misunderstood. Or quoted him out of context? Okay, I’ll have to take it on your scout’s honor on it that he really said it.

The Mayor was talking about the new hotel you and I are chipping in for next to the new convention center downtown. It ain’t much. In two, three, maybe five years at the most, we can abandon it and go on to something better. But, faux stucco notwithstanding, it’s better than nothing for the moment.

The two professional architects on the City Council voted against it. That says something to us here at BTB.org. They know that faux stucco is a maintenance nightmare. Apparently, the Mayor came to the same conclusion, which is why he set the design life of a $70 million dollar structure, $20 million of which is coming out of your pocket and mine, at a mere five years. That’s a cool $14 million a year for a throw-away hotel. I had assumed that the new Convention Center had a long life span, but now the Mayor has me wondering about the design life of that sucker. If we figure on it too burning a cool $14 million in value per year, the hall should be good for 15 years or so. Then we can tear it down as something better comes along.

At-Large Councilor Joyce Kekas recognized that fake stucco is crap, but she says most of the past problems have been with residential applications. Maybe that’s because in its heyday it covered a hell of a lot more residential than commercial buildings, duh? But if she was thinking the Mayor’s design life of 5 years, then granted, maintenance won’t be an issue.

District E’s Philip Isley, who’s already campaigning for Mayor, pretends to be a neo-con, but he voted for the taxpayer-funded five-year design life hotel. Truth be told, his Republican rad-con bud and fellow attorney Kieran Shanahan lobbied him hard for this hotel. Shanahan represented the hotel owners in this ripoff of the taxpayers. Just three short years ago, when Shanahan was also a City Councilor, he was adamantly opposed to using taxpayer money to redevelop downtown. Now that he’s lining his pockets with part of the take, he’s a big supporter. No wonder he and Isley are pals, they're twins in two fundamental ways. First, they don’t mind wasteful government spending, just so long as the waste is directed towards them and their wealthy friends. Second, they are hell-bent on proving the false stereotype that lawyers are money-grubbing sharks with no core principles.

But here’s the rub - something better DID come along. The owners of this hotel promised us rich brick, stone, metal, glass. Maybe stone and stainless are a bit too ritzy for poor old Raleigh, but let's get real here; nobody builds cheaper than the State of North Carolina, and the entire campus of NCSU is brick - walls, sidewalks, sculpture, hat racks, everything. Others with better DID come along as well - other developers with competing proposals that were chomping at the bit to build a quality hotel. But we chose the group destined to rip us off.

And that, my friends, is the story of Raleigh. Promise us the world, deliver shlock, because this town will never hold your feet of clay to the fire. Buildings - plain vanilla sports dome out at the edge of town, when we could have, should have had a quality structure next to downtown. Services - garbage collection wasn’t broke, so of course the Council was quick to fix it. Laws - slum landlords pack every City Council meeting now that the word is out that fines are waived just for the asking, turning serious municipal government into a comic kangaroo court.

Nobody is going to come along in five years with something better than this hotel. We got just what we wanted. We demand shlock, and by and large that’s what we get.

As for our Raleigh City Council - same principle.

We’d be better off with nothing.

FORK IN THE ROAD
Lunsford Lane
March 8, 2006

About a month ago, the Wake County Commission and the Raleigh City Council got together to approve cost overruns on the new Convention Center being built downtown.

County Commissioner Herb Council dryly asked if the building could be covered in fake stucco, like the new hotel next to the convention center that Raleigh is buying into, in order to save big bucks.

Mayor Meeker was not amused.

Towards the end of the meeting, Commissioner Council urged the City will look hard at the fake stucco on the hotel as it will create long-term maintenance problems. Fellow Commissioner Betty Lou Ward soon piped in, having heard far too many concerns about the hotel. The Commissioners would really like something that would be beautiful and complement the convention center. Ward would like the hotel to be clad in materials that will last into the future.

Mayor Meeker was not amused.

Raleigh City Councilor Jessie Taliaferro, herself not amused, tried a clumsy hand at saving face for the Mayor by recognizing that there are details about the hotel which have to be worked out.

Maybe that explains why when the Mayor dined on rubber chicken with local Rotarians last week, he chose to use the bulk of his State of the City address to chide the County Commission, rather than articulate a broad, aggressive agenda for the City.

The Mayor presented a three-point challenge for 2006. Point one, reduce fuel consumption by City-owned vehicles by 20% over the next five years. He wants to create a commission to oversee the task. It’s a great idea, but one that doesn’t rise to the need of a new commission. Anyone in the City purchasing department with half a brain can get it done. As vehicles are phased out, spec out more efficient ones for future purchase. The number of hybrid models are expanding every year, this should not be a difficult task. If the head of purchasing needs professional help, she can call BP and get the world's experts at energy conservation for free.

Point two, end homelessness. Can't hardly argue with that; we have $3-5 million in the kitty from the last housing bond referendum to get this going.

Point three, rag on the County Commission and the Wake County School Board for getting so far behind in school needs. The Mayor acknowledged that this is not the City’s purview, then devoted most of his speech to it. He wants the Commissioners to commit to his $1.2 billion 2-year plan to renovate old schools, build new facilities to replace the trailers, and absorb 12-13,000 new students in the next two years. He figures that the County can find $400-500 million without new taxes, for which it can sell certificates of participation (bonds that don’t need voter approval) immediately. The rest can come from bonds paid for by property tax and sales tax increases, which the Mayor is sure the public will go for.

Maybe that’s a good plan, maybe not. All I know is that when I gave up a ½ hour of Sanford and Son reruns to watch the Mayor, I expected to hear about the State of the City, not the State of the County. Sure, they are intimately related, and sure, both City and County taxes come out of my purse so they need to work together, but what's the Mayor's current take on the City?

He did breeze through some recent accomplishments, but most left me cold. Recently passed tree ordinance? Many are still complaining about clearcutting. District D’s Thomas Crowder cast the lone no vote, claiming that the Mayor let Big Real Estate water down the proposal that came out of the Tree Task Force that he the Mayor created (and on which Crowder served), and mutterings on the street are that maybe he was right.

Increased control of rental property? The Council created a task force for this but then rejected all of its substantive proposals. To save face, the Mayor created something called the PROP, but word (yes, on the street) is that the Council is looking to water down the PROP over the next few months. Seems that less than a dozen slumlords have been reigned in, so the program needs to be gutted.

Improved trash service? I don’t think so.

Hillsborough Street redesign? The Mayor highlights the one road project that he endorsed only ten percent funding for in the last bond referendum? I don’t get it.

100 restaurants downtown? Great news! So tell me why I just spent a million plus dollars for number 101, just because it will be on Fayetteville Street.

So what didn't the Mayor mention for 2006? TTA. Impact fees. Fake stucco. Jaume Plensa. That crazy college football stadium somewhere downtown. Yes, he addressed a few other points in the q and a that followed, but he didn't put much on the table himself.

Disappointing, but perhaps understandable. Unfortunately for the Mayor, conservative forces are trying to portray all of his initiatives as poor decision-making. But Meeker not only has navigated a moderate course for the betterment of the city, he still has some fire in the belly. The absolute disgrace in most of these issues is that conservative votes coupled with a lot of special interest influence has brought us to a fork in the road. The shiny reputation we have is not a house of cards yet, but with schools bursting at the seams, roads going unbuilt, open space being squabbled over, the word is bound to get out sooner or later that Raleigh politics is nothing but amateurs posing as visionary. No Republican will take credit for any of these problems, but then again no Republican has any ideas how to address them. If you count some ill-defined concept of "less government" as the panacea for real issues, well....

... well, no wonder the Mayor thought he had to play it safe with something he has no responsibility over.

This Citizen is not amused.

WHEN YOU RIDE ALONE,
YOU RIDE WITH BIN LADEN
Lunsford Lane
March 7, 2006

Until I read the true crime story Takedown: The Fall of the Mafia Empire, I had no idea how much dough there is to be “made” in recycling. Newspapers, magazines, tissue paper, pizza cartons, breakfast-cereal boxes, take-out coffee cups, rolling out of New York, bound for paper mills in Canada. During one New York City Marathon, 1.6 million paper cups were handed to 30,000 runners. All deliberately unwaxed, so as to be recyclable. Sal Benedetto got the contract to buy all those used cups, but he forgot to get Frankie Giovinco’s blessing first. No wonder Sallie’s trucks were susceptible to spontaneous combustion.

The City of Raleigh collects a few recyclable materials curbside for all residences and at six drop-off recycling centers. The current contract to process and market the recyclables expires on June 30. Recently, the City called for three different types of proposals:

1. source separation of the materials by City crews at the curbside (what we have now),
2. dual stream collection, with all fiber material (I think that means paper) separated from the rest at the curb, and
3. commingling of all materials together.

The City Manager recommends a 5 year contract to Paper Stock Dealers, Inc. (doesn’t sound particularly mafioso) for option 2, and the City Council votes on it today. The idea is to:

1. improve crew efficiency,
2. recycle all plastic bottles (there are like 7 or 8 kinds), corrugated cardboard, paperboard, aseptic boxes (those little juice boxes), gable top containers (fancy name for milk carton), and aluminum foil, which doesn’t happen now,
3. ensure the least amount of contamination of the recyclable material, and
4. continue to give the City a positive revenue source.

We were promised better and cheaper garbage and recycling collection last year when we switched from backyard to curbside service. Instead, both got worse. And more expensive. Once upon a time, more types of plastic bottles were recycled (though supposedly all are accepted now, they still leave a couple of types in our bin). Even the trial collections of cardboard fizzled.

So it’s encouraging that service might improve soon. Changing the contractor and the method of collection will reduce City revenues from waste sales by as much as 35%. But there are beaucoup savings. Much of the separation will be done by Paper Stock Dealers at their facility, thus reducing curbside sorts by City employees from six to two. More kinds of stuff will be recycled, thereby increasing revenues (we get less because we give more of the revenue to Paper Stock Dealers to handle the materials). We pay a tipping fee for every load of trash we dump at the landfill, so more recycling means fewer tipping fees. Modern landfills with liners and caps and leachate collection systems make them some of the most expensive real estate around, and they’re not getting any cheaper. So every green bucket of stuff that doesn’t go to the landfill is bling in the bank.

The recycling doesn’t even have to pay for itself through sales. If you include the handling costs and foregone tipping fees, just breaking even makes it worthwhile. Factor in future costs for landfill space, and recycling makes sense long term even if it costs us a bit in the short term. Add in big savings of energy, which today means imported oil, and to paraphrase Bill Maher,

Victory Begins at Home, in the Recycle Bin.

WE BUILT THIS CITY ON ROCK AND ROLL
Lunsford Lane
February 23, 2006

I couldn’t agree more with Dr. de about those chandeliers designed for Fayetteville Street. What kind of revisionist history are the naysayers trying to write for Raleigh? If they get old fashioned gaslight fixtures, then I demand a horse trough out in front of my new white-tablecloth restaurant, and an 8-year old orphan girl selling matches on the corner. Oh, and only old cars should be allowed to park along the street (actually, that part would be cool).

We need to embrace and respect the best of history, never forget the worst of it lest we repeat it, and move on.

Is anybody in Our Fair City thinking about what this City is going to need to be in 50 years, 100 years?

One man is, problem is he just arrived yesterday - and by nightfall he was gone. I had wanted to see Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class, speak at NC State, but I was supposed to be at a job site yesterday morning. Lucky me the weather crapped out, and suddenly I had the morning free. I raced into town, got to the auditorium five minutes late, had to park the rod out in a soggy pasture, and wound up sitting in an overflow room in front of a monitor. This guy is an economic rock star, and his urban hipster groupies turned out en masse.

Florida says that creativity and economic development are entwined. 100 years ago we shifted from an agricultural to an industrial economy, with the transformation complete by 1950. By 1980, we were again transforming, into a service economy. Now, at the dawn of the 21st century, we are now transitioning to a “creative economy.”

The distinguishing characteristic of the creative class is that its members engage in work whose function is to "create meaningful new forms." The super-creative core of this new class includes scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and novelists, artists, entertainers, actors, designers, and architects, as well as the "thought leadership" of modern society: nonfiction writers, editors, cultural figures, think-tank researchers, analysts, and other opinion-makers.

In the creative economy, 1/3 of all workers will be in the creative class, and already they garner more than 50% of the wages paid. Manufacturing jobs? We already have a global factory, says Florida. It’s called China. Service economy? Just because Hootie now works for the King doesn’t mean that I want to too.

Florida teamed up with Gallup to find out what brings Americans “overall life satisfaction.” Turns out that regardless of class race gender sexual preference income, we all seek equal parts of three ingredients: the best of job, family and friends, and place to live. As for "place to live," sure it has to be safe and clean with good schools and good government and leadership. But numero uno, we want that place to have Aesthetics. That’s Aesthetic with a capital A - parks, open space, good air and water, history, authenticity, arts, culture. Numero dos? The ability to express ourselves.

The average American changes jobs every three years. The average American under 30 changes jobs every year. Creativity isn’t rooted in place, it gravitates to Place. If Place goes to Pot, the creative class eases on down the road. The nascent "unraveling" of traditional societal structures is being replaced by The Pure Individual, the latest model of human offered up by the capitalist/free society system, who can survive and thrive in any environment purely on brain skills. We do not have a lock on this product, as there are many other people in the world taking advantage of what this skill set can generate in terms of productivity. It is an awesome sight to behold, and is bewildering to those rooted in space and time to a single environment.

How in the world can you run a company or an economy with that much mobility? Sharing the stage with Florida was Jim Goodnight, owner of SAS, a privately held company with 10,000 employees around the world. Goodnight is widely touted as being the one executive, more so than any other in the world, who has figured out how to attract and keep a creative class. Once you get a job with SAS, it is like The Firm: you never leave.

Years ago Goodnight was a statistics professor at NC State. He foresaw the software revolution and was creative enough to develop applications for it. Creative genius, percolating right here in Our Fair City. But Goodnight soon escaped not only the creative restraints of the university, but those of Raleigh as well. He set out to build one of the greatest creative empires on the planet.

In Cary.

Goodnight visualized then what he knows now - what the creative class wants. Go ahead and ridicule that "Containment Area for Relocated Yankees" all you want (it’s the official past-time of the Raleigh elite), but Cary and Goodnight and multitudes behind them are laughing their way into the 21st century. I don't get all of Cary myself, but Goodnight does, and I get Goodnight.

NC State University saw Goodnight do what it couldn’t, and tried to emulate him. But don’t expect Goodnight to move any of his operations to Centennial Campus. He already owns the finest suburban office park on the globe; he knows it’s just plain dumb to build another suburban campus right next to downtown. Raleigh and NC State? Thinking too small, too late.

The problem is that Raleigh just doesn’t get it.

"It" is that folks, especially creative folks, define themselves in large part by the places they live. Aesthetic, with a capital A. Design, with a capital D. Creative, with a capital C.

The Raleigh City Council, to the person, doesn’t get it.

Craven, Isley, Kekas, Taliaferro? Too much influence from business owners in Big Real Estate who have a vested interest in the status quo in order to simply make money. Ergo, no thinking of their own. What does Big Real Estate think? They’re spending 100K to barrage us with radio propaganda. These ads spout the false notion that home building IS the great economy, not the RESULT of a great economy. For them it’s take the money and run, all short term exploitation. Short timers never want to pay their own way, so it’s no wonder that to save a dime in impact fees, they’ll spend a quarter to convince you and me that we are wasting our time investing collectively in our future.

James West? He’s stuck in some mid 20th century time warp battling demons that died long ago. He can no longer tell up from down, real people from fake, personal agenda from common good. South Park burns while Nero fiddles.

Thomas Crowder? He’s all about aesthetic, design, and creativity. But with a small a, small d, small c, not Florida with a capital F. Sure, he’s against fake stucco next to the convention center, and that’s a good thing. But Florida’s Aesthetic is something grander - less shotcrete, more abstract. It’s not about trying to micro-manage the design of a hotel or an office park and stamp your architectural seal on the plans. It’s about creating an environment where good design naturally springs forth in many forms, not all of which suit our personal tastes. It is demanded, expected, rewarded, and nothing less is accepted. The hired Big Guns at talkingaboutpolitics say Crowder wants to be Mayor (though for pros they have an uncanny knack for getting even the simplest details wrong - Crowder is a tad to the right of Meeker, not left). If that's true, I hope Crowder learns to use the shift key.

Russ Stephenson? Like Crowder, an architect. But so wet behind the ears, we don’t yet know exactly where he is going. We supported him, still do, we are certain he is creative with a small c, the jury is still out on the capitalization.

Mayor Meeker? Our quintessential man in the middle. It’s all about making everyone feel good. Conciliation is a good thing, to a point - where nobody feels really great anymore.

de Gama and I are a pretty unlikely pair to be pushing for a technologically rich creatively vibrant city. For us, creativity was tie-dyed t-shirts; a ‘58 was an Oldsmobile, not an Eames. We’re old rock and rollers trying to stay ahead of the curve and comprehend how the world keeps changing. de Gama cranks out his blogs on an old manual typewriter (says he needs the physical stimulation of the smell of the oil on the levers and the sound of the striker on the bell to keep his creative juices flowing). He leaves it to me to get everything on the computer and then the web. Which is to say he leaves me at the mercy of a couple of punk teenagers who know I doomed without them, and so are able to pick my pockets clean while inflicting untold mental anguish and humiliation.

And yet somehow even our simple minds get Florida. The Future with a capital F belongs to the young, it’s our duty to prepare them and us and our City for it. Like Florida says, combine the three T's - Talent, Tolerance, and Technology - in order to create the modern economic engine. Ask yourself how your local politicians are making decisions to create those circumstances.

While Neil Young is still strummin’ the old banjo, Public Enemy is implanting bio-micro-chips in the arms of pimps, Gorillaz was actually born in a microchip, and mixmasters everywhere serve up tasty samples of techno trance and house.

It’s time to face the music. Rock is dead. Long live rock.

For cryin' out loud, Raleigh, put up the freakin’ chandeliers already, and drag your intellectually lazy butt into the 21st century!

DEAF DUMB AND BLIND KID
Lunsford Lane
February 8, 2006

Indulge me for a moment, kind reader - play a little role-playing game with me.

Character Setup: You’re a typical Citizen. You work hard to make the mortgage on your modest home. You know your neighbors and even like most of them.

You’re registered to vote, and you usually do. You read the daily paper at lunch, so you know a little about politics, but no one can accuse you of being a policy wonk who follows all the political ballyhoo that occupies so much web space.

Scenario: You see a sign go up on a lot down the block, says the land is up for rezoning. You call the number on the sign, and a very professional young woman (VPYW) that works for the City answers.

You: “What does all this mean?”

VPYW: “The sign is actually for several lots, which together are almost eight and a half acres. Right now the owner can build four houses like yours per acre, but he would like to get the law changed so that he can build fifteen houses per acre.”

You: “Come again?”

VPYW: “Currently the owners are allowed to build thirty-three new homes on that property, but they are asking for permission to build one hundred and eighteen townhomes.”

You (stirred if not shaken): “But that won’t fit into our neighborhood. Does anybody Downtown think this is a good idea?”

VPYW: “Actually, rezoning this property would be inconsistent with the Comp Plan.”

You: “Come again?”

VPYW: “Raleigh has a master plan that guides what development should go where. On this property, we expect new residential to be built in a density similar to the rest of your neighborhood. Now down the road a bit from you, we have designated a Neighborhood Center, where new residential units should be built at higher densities than your neighborhood.

You: “Whew, that’s a relief, I guess I have nothing to worry about.”

VPYW: “Actually, the Comprehensive Plan is just a guide, not the law of the land. The City Council will make the final decision on the request.”

You: “So what can I do to protect myself?”

VPYW: “Well, first the developer will present his case at your local Citizens Advisory Council meeting, so you can ask questions there. Then, there will be a public hearing before both the Planning Commission and the City Council, so you can tell your City officials what you think then. After that, the case will be considered by the Planning Commission, so you will also have a second opportunity to tell the Commissioners how you feel about the project. Finally, the Planning Commission will make a recommendation to the City Council, which will make the final decision.”

You: “Thank you so much for telling me what I can do. You have been very professional and courteous, I appreciate that.”

Feeling edumacated and empowered, you show up at your CAC meeting hell bent on protecting the serenity of your neighborhood, not to mention your property value. There, a good looking young man tells you all about why you should let him build all these houses. You’re not convinced, and you and your neighbors tell him so, but he’s clearly not listening. So you make sure to find a substitute for the bowling team on the night of the public hearing.

Fast Forward: You rush home from work, put on a clean shirt and drawers, and show up at City Hall to speak your piece. And lo and behold, who is sitting up on the stage at front but the same young man whom you met at the CAC meeting. You’re totally confused now - how can you talk a planning board into not recommending a project that one of its members (who is apparently deaf) wants to build?

You know you’re sunk, you go home spittin' mad with your trust in the public process completely shattered.

Game Over: You’re a good sport for humoring me. Now back to reality.

At yesterday’s Planning Commission meeting, a Citizen stood up and said she thought it was a conflict of interest for Commissioner James Baker to have gone to the CAC (more than once) to promote the rezoning being considered to dramatically increase the number of houses that can be built on land his company owns.

Damn straight it was conflict of interest.

We’ve pointed out before that Commissioner Baker has made a mockery of the ethics code for Planning Commissioners. Baker, who works for a local building company, recently advocated legislation which when passed increased the value of one of his development projects. Then he voted for it, not once, but twice. Heck, he not only voted yes, he made the motion for approval. State Law is clear on the matter:

Members of appointed boards providing advice to the city council shall not vote on recommendations regarding any zoning map or text amendment where the outcome of the matter being considered is reasonably likely to have a direct, substantial, and readily identifiable financial impact on the member.

What do the City Attorneys say about this? Absolutely nothing from what we see. Why no investigation of Mr. Baker? If that law isn't crystal clear in meaning, what is?

We here at BTB.org call on the City Council to direct the City Attorneys to investigate crimes potentially committed on the Planning Commission.

We’ve been gentle up to now, trying unsuccessfully to shame Mr. Baker into changing his ways, to no avail. So now the gloves are off, no more Mr. Nice Guy, no more Mr. Clean.

Mr. Baker should immediately resign from the Planning Commission.

NO SIGN OF RELIEF
Lunsford Lane
February 6, 2006

In the elections last fall, the N&O reported that Larry Strickland, then the zoning enforcement administrator (now Chief Inspector) for Raleigh, reminded City Council candidates that it’s against the law in Raleigh to put temporary signs on “curb, sidewalk, post pole, hydrant, bridge, tree or other surface located on, over or across any public street, right-of-way property or thoroughfare."

In subsequent weeks, Mayor Charles Meeker, Councilors Russ Stephenson, Thomas Crowder, and Joyce Kekas, along with Councilor-WannaBe John Odom were fined when zealous volunteers erected campaign signs in the public right-of-way.

One could consider this equal treatment for all citizens, given that the City supposedly cracked down on illegal signs last spring. But as we drive around town, illegal business signs are still ubiquitous.

Inspired by The Intern’s recent photo shoot, I snapped a few myself these past couple of weekends.

Take a ride into town any Saturday on Glenwood Avenue, see the road lined with illegal signs. Mattress companies continue to be among the worst offenders. ToysRUs at Crabtree has been going out of business for weeks, so every weekend it strings out workers along two miles of Glenwood to hold illegal signs and wave at motorists.

All over town, businesses are flaunting the sign laws with impunity. Which could lead one to mistakenly believe that fining the politicians was just a little bit of payback for embarrassing the Inspections Department for not enforcing the law outside of 9-5 M-F (it was actually the Council's dumb idea to instruct law enforcement to ignore the law).

Some businesses have been creative at finding loopholes. You know all those trucks you used to see driving about that carry no payload, but rather are designed solely for advertising? Well, whoever owns them has figured out that gas is far too precious to waste running a guzzler truck around the Beltline all day. So now they park the trucks in strategic locations. This Centex truck is parked in front of the picture show at Brier Creek - a good place to target potential first-time homebuyers.

This Bud sign is parked in a shopping center lot on Western Boulevard next to the university - a good place to target NC State students (most of whom are under-aged drinkers, thank you very much Harris Wholesale).

Both trucks had drivers in them, reading the paper, chillin' out to tunes, whiling away the morning, saving gas. If one of these guys squatted in my shopping center, he’d either pony up some rent money or get back to burning pricey petro.

And it seems like most every business has a big truck parked out front right on the street, as a de facto billboard far exceeding any size sign the City would permit. As some of these trucks never ever move, I wonder if they even have functioning engines in them. Here’s a couple along the same stretch on Glenwood between Crabtree Valley and Lynn Road:

And the worst offender of all? The Centennial Authority. That patently illegal blinking sign at the RBC Center is plenty ugly on its own (the State, which owns the land, refuses to be bound by City laws, so it puts up signs that are verboten for private Citizens and businesses). Now they’ve taken to junking up the highway even more by placing billboards posing as utility trailers under their blinking sign.

The Wade Avenue entrance to the City is the primary gateway to the City of Raleigh. For most folk coming from the airport or RTP, the RBC Center will be their first glimpse the Capital City. It could have, should have been a bold positive statement about Raleigh. Instead, Steve Stroud and his Centennial Authority insist on shouting out tacky. Give Stroud a couple more years, and he’ll have the whole strip looking like a used car lot.

And if that visiting Conventioneer headed downtown in her taxi is less than impressed with our premier entertainment complex, wait until she pulls up to her hotel next to the Convention Center.

FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND OR
PHOENIX RISING?
Lunsford Lane and Dr. Walter de Gama
January 27, 2006

• curbing suburban sprawl
• mixing housing types within communities, so schools are diverse without so much need for "reassignments"
• protecting critical open spaces by purchasing easements or the land outright
• making development pay more of its own way via impact fees (or Adequate Public Facilities ordinances)
• cutting into the school overcrowding mess
• discussing how we grow, and whether growth occurs in a way that chokes future development or leads to more.

Saturday (Jan. 28), from 9:30 to 11 a.m., in Room 100A of the Wake Commons Building, in the county office park off Poole Road.

SOLDIER OF MISFORTUNE
Lunsford Lane
January 25, 2006

Regular readers know that I’ve been prosecuting a low-grade war against City Councilor Jessie Taliaferro ever since she first convinced the County Commissioners to not reappoint Dr. Erin Kuczmarski to the Raleigh Planning Commission.

Astute observers could honestly say I’ve not taken much enemy territory. Taliaferro ran unopposed for her District B seat last fall, and she still seems firmly in control of the City Council. But as we mused on New Year’s Day, BTB.org does seem to be shaking up the establishment, including Councilor Taliaferro.

Apparently Taliaferro has teamed up with political campaign gurus Carter Wrenn and Gary Pearce to polish off some of the tarnish we’ve put on her image. You will recall that Wrenn and Pearce, quintessential political insiders and professional campaigners, started a blog about politics late last year, much to the delight of local media. After a few months orbiting the blogosphere, it is apparent that Pearce and Wrenn view their blog as little more than a campaign tool.

Yes, Taliaferro is fighting back, and Wrenn and Pearce are her Soldiers of Fortune. For the past several weeks, they’ve been promoting her as the centrist Democrat who can save the other Council Democrats from themselves. Today, Wrenn fired this RPG at an unsuspecting public:

City Councilwoman Jessie Taliaferro recently introduced a resolution asking the City Council to consider, just consider, using money from the Meals and Hotel taxes (that pays for things like Convention Centers) to build schools.

Unfortunately for Wrenn, that grenade is a dud. Because that, dear friends, is what we in the political wars call a Bold-Faced Lie.

Taliaferro had nothing to do with that resolution. I quote here from the official minutes of the January 3 City Council meeting:

During the December 6, 2005 Council meeting, Councilor Craven requested that an item be placed on this agenda to have discussion as to whether to seek legislative authority to direct up to 50% of the tax monies to schools and road improvement projects...

The motion as made by Mr. Craven to ask Administration to provide updated information of the funding model outlining the revenues and committed expenses that is currently available and what may be available in the future and hold his suggestion at the table for further discussion was put to a vote which resulted in Mr. Isley, Ms. Kekas, Ms. Taliaferro and Mr. Craven voting in the affirmative. Mayor Meeker, Mr. West, Mr. Stephenson and Mr. Crowder voted in the negative. The Mayor ruled the motion defeated on a 4-4 vote.

Got it? The resolution was proposed by Republican District A Councilor Tommy Craven. Not by Democrat Taliaferro, who is now trying to seize credit for this purely Republican idea.

Okay, you say, now be fair Lunsford, context is everything. Yeah yeah, you're right, so here are Wrenn’s sentences that surround the one I extracted above:

For instance, the City of Raleigh has enough money to subsidize a restaurant, a supermarket, a hotel and a $200 million Convention Center downtown. The County Commissioners have enough money to keep on subsidizing the Exploris Museum - which has been showing the Harry Potter movie. Morrisville has a million dollars to offer subsidies and tax breaks to Chinese computer giant Lenovo.

How is it we have enough money for all these things but not schools?

City Councilwoman Jessie Taliaferro recently introduced a resolution asking the City Council to consider, just consider, using money from the Meals and Hotel taxes (that pays for things like Convention Centers) to build schools. The council refused to even consider it. I guess on the assumption there was already enough money for schools - or if there wasn’t it was somebody else’s problem - like the taxpayers who'll pay off those bonds (if they pass).

Gentle readers, please do allow us here at BTB.org a moment to set the record straight:

• Councilor Taliaferro DID NOT introduce a resolution asking the City to consider, just consider, using money from the Meals and Hotel taxes (that pays for things like Convention Centers) to build schools. Councilor Craven did that. The City Council DID consider Councilor Craven’s motion, rather thoughtfully considered it, and it was defeated.
• Councilor Taliaferro DID VOTE FOR using over $1,000,000 of Raleigh taxpayer money to subsidize a private white-tablecloth restaurant Downtown. Councilor Craven voted against that subsidy.
• Councilor Taliaferro DID VOTE FOR using $300,000 of Raleigh taxpayer money to subsidize a private grocery store Downtown. As did Councilor Craven (just to set himself apart from former Councilor Regan, whom he replaced?).
• Councilor Taliaferro DID VOTE FOR using $20 million of Raleigh taxpayer money to subsidize a (crappy) private hotel Downtown. Councilor Craven was not on the Council at the time of the vote.
• Councilor Taliaferro DID VOTE FOR spending taxpayer money to build the $200 million + Convention Center Downtown. Councilor Craven was not on the Council at the time of the vote.

Why does Councilor Taliaferro not want you to know her true record on the City Council? Why is Jessie Helms' former hatchet man Carter Wrenn now promulgating lies for Councilor Taliaferro? Why do guns-for-hire Wrenn and Pearce want you to believe that Democrat Taliaferro is really Republican Craven?

You know the answers - Score one for the boogie woogie bagel boys of BTB!

HAVE YOUR CAKE AND IT EAT TOO
Lunsford Lane
January 23, 2006

Not being sure what to make of the flap over the design, or lack thereof, of the new Raleigh Convention Center Hotel that you and I are building together Downtown, I called Dr. de on Saturday and asked him to tell me in ten words or less what the problem is. “It’s the Birthday Cake School of Architecture in play,” said he.

Thanks, Doc, that really helped a lot. So he invites me over on Sunday for a beer and a demonstration on how to Dryvit. Now I’m thinking, driving is one thing I know how to do pretty well, but the good doctor insists I need a lesson. So the next afternoon I roll the 442 out of the garage and spin over to de’s pad.

Dryvit, it seems, is not what you do to a golf ball, but the “stuff” that is supposed to cover our new hotel. Now you and I have been thinking stone or brick, at least that’s what our City Council sold us on. But given the classic bait and switch that this town has always passed off as City planning, everything in Raleigh eventually morphs into Birthday Cake Architecture.

I get to Doc’s place, and he is sitting in the garage with a dozen very large and very stale white sheetcakes and a five gallon tub of white icing he negotiated for half-price from the bakery at Sam’s Club. He tells me we are going to refinish the dog house he's drug in from the yard into a mini model of our new hotel.

First he loads a tube of Liquid Nails into a caulk gun, and tacks the cakes to the entire outer surface of the doghouse - walls, roof, everything. Then using a huge bread knife, he carves out the door opening and the little window in the back.

Next he slathers the entire thing with thick coats of white icing. The icing is close to stale too, so it’s pretty thick but still spreadable, at least on stale cake. Two coats and he’s done. That, he says, is Dryvit. To top it all off, he dashes into the house, comes out with the candelabra from the sideboard, and shoves four large red candles into the icing along the roof ridge.

And I'll be damned if that doggie house isn't a MiniMe of the Motel 6 over there by Crabtree Valley Mall.

And that is how the Birthday Cake School of Architecture was born.

Turns out, Dryvit isn’t a member of Sam’s Club, so they use big sheets of styrofoam instead of cake, and they add some plastic fibers to the icing to keep Fido from licking it off. And this time instead of the birthday candles going on top of the cake, they’ll be lined up in rows along Fayetteville Street.

Really, that’s it. Here are some actual pics of how it’s done. Alright, so you don’t read Hungarian, but the pics are worth a thousand words apiece. See the sheet cake being iced about halfway down the page?

Standard disclaimer - Dr. de warned me not to try this at home. Apparently if you cover your house in this Birthday Cake, your humble abode will rot away.

“Isn’t a hotel just a great big house with lots of guest rooms?” I ask de Gama.

“Not to worry,” he replies with a smile, “this hotel will be defunct long before it falls down.”

“But what about all of the Citizens who were promised stone?,” I doth protest too much.

“Let Them Eat Cake,” he cackles through a truly horrifying Dr. Evil laugh.

---------

Local IndyWeek writer and nuevo blogger Bob Geary gives Dr. de a run for his money as self-annointed Raleigh Art and Architecture Critic. His critique is definitely worth the read.

Note on Jan 25: And the beat goes on...

REMEMBERING PERCY
Lunsford Lane
January 17, 2006

We’ve been thinking through the January 3rd Raleigh City Council meeting in the last three blogs, searching for the underlying message in the sardonic deportment of many of our City Councilors. I think I’ve finally found it, in a plea from a Citizen to the Council.

At the end of the first City Council meeting of each calendar year, the City invites citizens to share their views on preparing a budget for the next fiscal year (which starts July 1). Doug Lintelman introduced himself as a concerned citizen with a university degree in finance and accounting. Which is pretty much needed if one is to decipher the City budget. Mr. Lintelman lives north of the Beltline, north of Millbrook Road, north of Lynn Road, so after he stated his address as being in Raleigh, he clarified that he lives in North Raleigh (his emphasis).

Lintelman has read the preliminary ‘06-‘07 budget, and lo and behold he can’t find the part where the City collects more money from higher impact fees. The Mayor ran on a platform of raising impact fees, as did At-Large Councilor Russ Stephenson. At the inauguration of the new Council in December, the Mayor reiterated that impact fees need to be adjusted, as development should pay for itself in the City of Raleigh. He charged the Council to act quickly on the task.

So Lintelman reminded the Councilors that the City of Raleigh’s impact fees are very low compared to those of Cary, Wake Forest, Fayetteville and other cities. He knows that fair impact fees are part of the solution for paying for needed infrastructure in North Raleigh (he emphasized North several times in his comments). He noted that last year about $9 million originally slated for improvements to Atlantic Avenue in North Raleigh were diverted to the Fayetteville Street Renaissance in Downtown Raleigh. Lintelman called on the Council to return that money to North Raleigh.

In just three minutes or so, this average Citizen hit the political nail squarely on the head: A disturbing number of Raleigh Citizens who do not live downtown do not feel as if they have a Mayor.

Perhaps to a certain degree, they’re right, as Mayor Meeker has largely been Mayor of Downtown. Far too often he’s left the rest of the City for the Councilors to spar over. At the Council inauguration last December, Meeker reminded us that when he was elected Mayor the first time he had a 34 point agenda, the second time he had a 16 point agenda, and for his third term he is down to just 6 points. What do the six points offer the average Citizen, that is, the Citizen who doesn’t live Downtown?

Point 1. Establish an environmental board to look at energy conservation and other issues

Fine, though you’d be hard pressed to convince us here at BTB.org that forming yet another advisory board is a real advance in governance. If you want to save energy, call Progress Energy - they’ll send out real experts to show you how to get it done.

Point 2. Speed up development plan approvals, inspections, etc.

Apparently developers are complaining that it takes much too long to pave Paradise and put up parking lots. Funny, driving around town, especially North Raleigh, that sure isn’t obvious to us here at BTB.org. No relief in sight, though, for citizens in their quest for quality development.

Point 3. Raise development impact fees

As Lintelman noted, apparently not in next year’s budget.

Point 4. Build a 20,000 square feet Senior Center

The current center, such as it is, is inside the Beltline - expect the new one to be there as well

Point 5. A football stadium to be shared by Shaw University and St. Augustine's College

More for Downtown.

Point 6. Spend the recently approved transportation bonds – synchronize traffic lights, build the Falls of Neuse Bridge, construct roundabouts on Hillsborough Street by this time next year

This was all approved last year, so these projects are good to go, except Hillsborough Street because the bonds only fund about 10% of what is needed. None of these are anything new for Raleigh in 2006 - they are the work of last year’s Council and voters approved the funds last year.

So what happened to the TTA? How about that big initiative to protect Falls Lake which the Mayor promised to undertake this term? If you’re not downtown, the Mayor doesn’t seem to hold out much for you this time around.

The Mayor could make a strong case that he has been a good Mayor for All of Raleigh. He’s worked on City-wide issues of traffic calming, neighborhood policing, recycling and garbage collection, those crazy trees, and most importantly, providing City services at low cost (Sidenote: Chuckie Baby - that’s a great chart, it should be on your front page, not buried in your website where few will stumble across it.)

But perception is everything, much of the Citizenry is less than convinced that garbage collection and recycling have improved, and folks still show up Downtown to kvetch about clearcutting to the Council. Perception becomes reality for these Citizens, and so Citizen Lintelman calls for the Mayor to step up from being Mayor of Downtown to become Mayor of All of Raleigh.

The Councilors sense this perceived void, hence the bickering and cynicism at the Council table. The Democrat Mayor has a 6-2 Democrat majority on Council. Yet District B Councilor Jessie Taliaferro protects Big Real Estate’s death grip on the Planning Commission and extracts who knows what behind closed doors to give the fifth vote on our new white tablecloth restaurant on Fayetteville Street. The Republicans on Council devise cockamamy schemes to divert City resources to County schools, schemes devised solely to embarrass the Mayor, and Democrats Taliaferro and At-Large Councilor Joyce Kekas pile on. Meanwhile the Republican lobbying firm in DC sucking money from the City Council is AWOL on federal funding for the light rail system. So the Mayor's idea of the using City taxpayer dollars to build a new football stadium for two private universities Downtown leaves North Raleigh cold.

By all accounts, inside the Beltline and out, the Mayor has down a great job with Downtown, and the Citizens by and large appreciate that. But these same folks have a real gripe with the Mayor about the rest of the City. de Gama and I have discussed this a lot, and we agree that Mayor Meeker has it in him to be a great Mayor of All of Raleigh. He just has to decide that it’s how he wants to define his third term. So we’re not throwing down the gauntlet here, rather just trying to send friendly smoke signals to the Mayor that the natives are restless.

The multi-point checklist stratagem worked well for the Mayor in his first two terms, but it’s not the only way to govern. Get out to neighborhoods around Triangle Town Center and Brier Creek and let folks know you feel their pain as they sit through three and four light cycles to clear an intersection. And then get those impact fees raised.

But folks don’t want new Boards and Commissions, as they don’t trust the ones we have. As Robert Mulder, former Chair of the City’s Planning Commission told the Council at the last meeting, one of the most important factors in government is maintaining the public trust. He was speaking in particular about the Planning Commission, which has become nothing more than a running bad practical joke on the Citizens. Take his advice before creating new Boards, and reform the ones you already have in order to restore public trust.

Get on a CAT bus and take a tour of the City. Along the way, pick up neighborhood leaders and Joe Shmoe Citizens at designated “bus stops” and listen to their concerns as y’all take in the sights together. Make sure Citizen Lintelman has a ticket to ride.

Embrace former City Councilor Marc Scruggs’ suggestion, and demand that all of us be responsible Citizens in our civic and economic lives. Collect delinquent bills for water and sewer and garbage collection from those who refuse to pay for what they use. Listen to folks in South Park and University Park alike when they kvetch that slum landlords are robbing them of both their property values and their sleep. Then provide them real relief. And we’re gonna need some out-of-the-box thinking how to get the trains running on time.

And of course remind everyone, especially those who want to cut taxes to zero while magically retaining City services, just what a deal it is to live in this City. With time, the Councilors will see that they too need to get on that bus with you.

Mayor Meeker, you’re known as a greater runner, so I leave you with this inspiration from legendary athletics coach Percy Cerutty:

"Run hard, be strong, think big!"

REQUIEM FOR A DREAM
Lunsford Lane
MLK Day, 2006

Part three of our look back at the last City Council meeting - now we try together to make sense of District C Councilor James West. Three matters in the meeting particularly stand out in my mind

First: The meeting started as most do, with Mayor Meeker presenting the Consent Agenda. This is a list of items considered to be routine and which can be enacted by one motion. If any City Councilor requests discussion on an item, it is removed from the Consent Agenda and considered separately.

Councilor West pulled the approval of a tree planting contract from the Consent Agenda. At just over $183,000, SouthernScapes, Inc. was the low bidder to plant 394 trees downtown. (Sidenote: Who in hell pays $465 for a tree? I guess the price breaks don’t kick in until you commit to at least 400 trees.)

Anyhow, the City Manager reported that MWBE participation was 100%. What’s MWBE, you ask? The City of Raleigh runs a Minority and Women-Owned Business certification program, maintains a Minority and Women-Owned Business Directory, and solicits participation of MWBEs in construction contracts.

But West wasn’t satisfied with 100% of the contract funds going to a MWBE. He wanted to make sure that the winning firm wasn’t woman-owned, or sub-contracting to minority firms - he wanted the contract to go solely to an African-American owned business. It was all much ado about nothing, as the City Manager had already determined that low-bidder SouthernScapes is such a business, so West voted aye.

Second: The Council heard from a Welton Jones. Mr. Jones is a retired Raleigh firefighter who for some time now has been on a mission to get the Raleigh Fire Department to recruit more minority firefighters. Now he’s particularly ticked off at the City for selecting a white male for our new Fire Chief. Jones is sincere, though a bit hard to comprehend, as he apparently sees some vast white-ring conspiracy to keep African Americans out of City employment.

The City Manager and City Attorney indicated that they had provided as many of the numerous documents that Mr. Jones had previously requested as legally possible, but that the resumes and other personnel information Jones demands are not public record. Jones threatened to sue, the City Attorney responded that would for Mr. Jones to decide.

For Mayor Meeker, it was all much ado about nothing, saying after the meeting (on local TV) that Mr. Jones’ accusations about discrimination in the hiring of City management are unfounded. He points to the diversity of recent hires - the new Fire Chief is a white male, the most recently hired Police Chief is a white female, and the newly hired Planning Director is an African-American male. We don’t know the new Fire Chief, but both the Police Chief and the Planning Director impress us as individuals who reached upper echelons of management through achievement rather than by racial profiling.

Councilor West said Mr. Jones has legitimate concerns, and specifically called out hiring of African-American females. Jones piped in, demanding to know how “females who are the daughters or the granddaughters of some of the richest people around can be counted as a minority.” It's news to us here at BTB.org that the richest people around town are sending their daughters off to be firefighters, but his point was clear, the same as Councilor West’s throughout much of the meeting - “Women and Minorities” is to be strictly interpreted as African-American.

Mr. Jones’ concerns were referred to the Council’s Budget and Economic Development Committee - we’ll follow what happens there.

Third: As we have been telling you for weeks would happen, Paul Anderson and Chuck Walker were appointed to the Planning Commission. All eight Councilors voted for Anderson, who came close to be beating out District A Councilor Tommy Craven for his Council seat. It says a lot about Craven that he voted to empower the man who’s vowed to succeed at the task of unseating him next election.

Walker was appointed with only five votes. Mayor Meeker voted for Matthew Brown, and District D Councilor Thomas Crowder and At-Large Councilor Russ Stephenson voted for Renee Bethea.

It was all much ado about something, as of the four choices, Bethea was clearly the most qualified, having considerable experience in neighborhood planning in the historic Method Community. Brown has less experience, and until last election, Anderson had little interest in planning. You already know that Walker is unfit to serve.

It is good to have an African-American male who is not a developer on the Planning Commission, so we have high hopes for Anderson. But this was an much-too-rare opportunity to appoint an African-American woman to the Commission. A woman whose primary claims for appointment are that she is 1) well qualified, 2) represents a section of the City not represented on the Commission, and 3) represents a stakeholder group woefully under-represented on the Commission. The African-American female part was just a bonus for choosing a good person.

This was a golden opportunity for Councilor West to do for African-American women what he had been preaching for much of the Council meeting should be done. So what did he do? He cast the deciding vote to appoint a white male who is undeserving of the honor.

Final Analysis: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

When James West finally got the opportunity to cut through the cheap rhetoric and stand up to the challenge when it could really make a difference, he was glued firmly, silently to the seat of his chair.

HOLD THE MAYO
Lunsford Lane
Jan 12, 2006

Picking up from my last blog (What in tarnation was going on at the last Raleigh City Council meeting?) - let’s move on to the next item: A white linen tablecloth restaurant for the City services building on Fayetteville Street.

In a nutshell: The City ran out of space in its current building, the Avery C. Upchurch Government Complex on Hargett Street. So they bought an old bank building a couple of blocks away on Fayetteville Street Mall and moved several departments over there. Soon the mall part of Fayetteville Street will be gone, and someone in City Hall decided that what the new Fayetteville Street will need is a hoity-toity Texa$$ fine dining establishment.

Problem is, no sane business model projects near-time success for a hoity-toity Texa$$ fine dining establishment on Fayetteville Street. So our City leaders decided to sweeten the pot - $800,000 to turn the first floor of the building into restaurant space, and up to $250,000 more to help the tenant, New Raleigh Restaurant Group, import the white linen tableclothes from Portugal.

The deal was approved by City Council, with only political polar opposites District A Councilor Tommy Craven and District D Councilor Thomas Crowder voting nay. But it wasn’t an easy win for the Mayor, as District C Councilor Jessie Taliaferro was a hard sell.

Taliaferro demanded assurance that this new restaurant provide lunch-time take-out so the City employees housed above it could eat lunch at their desks. Nobody was proposing that the restaurant offer meals modest enough for the typical City worker to occupy its seats at lunchtime. Mayor Meeker was quick to point out that there are numerous reasonably priced choices within two (short downtown) blocks of the building. District C Councilor James West reminded the Council that the intent is to attract Texa$$ clientele, not common office workers, and that the City had already rejected lease proposals for other less pricey establishments (They did? If any of you know what was rejected, we’d sure like to know).

But Taliaferro was persistent - City workers need to take lunch to their desks.

Huh? Why not just ask the restaurant to let City workers come in the delivery entrance and sit at a table in the kitchen? If they’re not rich enough or beautiful enough or clean enough to be seen in the main dining room, at least provide them a brief change of scenery from their desks. Sure, it’s noisy and steamy in the kitchen, but at least you’ll know if the line cook dropped your grilled cheese sammich on the floor before putting it on your plate.

We here at BTB.org are partial to a passionate populist plea. And Taliaferro’s might sound good at first listen: "What about us regular folks who work downtown and need to get a sandwich at lunchtime?"

But to be effective with populist rhetoric, you’ve got to at least feign respect for the populace. Insisting that the unwashed masses have the opportunity to eat overpriced tuna on wheat in their dingy dark fifth floor cubicles while all the beautiful people nibble wild caught smoked salmon on hand stretched flatbreads and sip glasses of sparkling classic claret under art glass chandeliers at street level below rings a bit hollow.

John Edwards is just a South Carolina textile mill worker’s son, and by gosh golly President Bush is just a good ol’ cowboy from a ranch in Crawford T-X. Surely a librarian from New Jersey can connect with Everyman (aka Lane or de Gama).

Late in the meeting at the end of the day Taliaferro relented on a promise that the restaurant will consider takie-outie and gave the Mayor his fifth vote, so you and I are opening a restaurant on Fayetteville Street! Maybe sometime we can all catch the second seating in the kitchen at 1:15 pm, after the City workers have finished feeding from the troughs and been herded by chief wrangler Russell Allen back up to the cubicle farm.

PERFECT STORM
Lunsford Lane
January 11, 2006

It’s been a week since the last City Council meeting, and I’ve been meaning for days to post my impressions of the sordid affair. The meeting was an mishmash of disconcerting and puzzling polemics. I think I have teased out the meanings of the individual exchanges, but I’m not yet able to focus in on the big picture which I am sure is there - what do all these small tiffs, taken together, mean collectively?

So I’ve decided to analyze a few of the important exchanges individually, in the hopes that in the next few days we achieve some sort of collective revelation together. First off the block - District A City Councilor Tommy Craven’s proposal to divert 50% of the Entertainment Tax to building schools and roads.

I thought the lottery was supposed to solve all of our school woes. And with the big increase in the gas tax last week, the Department of Transportation should be lining its pockets. But I digress....

Back to the food and hotel tax - in a nutshell, a few years back the City Council and the County Board of Commissioners cooperating in receiving authority from the State Legislature to levy a tax of 6% on hotel rooms and 1% on prepared food and beverages. Revenues from the tax have helped build the RBC Center, the IMAX theatre at the Exploris Museum, the Mudcats baseball stadium, the Soccer Park in Cary, the Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau, and now, Mayor Meeker’s piece de resistance the Downtown Convention Center.

The original intent of the tax was to pay for a new convention center - more exactly "only for Raleigh Civic Center Complex or similar facilities or for the construction of sports, cultural and arts facilities, including a coliseum." Now something like 85 of every $100 of uncommitted revenue collected from this tax over the next 30 years is slated for the convention center.

But Councilor Craven is not a fan of this tax or the Convention Center. So this solid Republican created what may be the perfect strategic initiative - divert the tax to schools and roads. Most every Republican supports building new roads, and most Republicans not aligned with the far right support building more schools. Most every Democrat supports building new schools, and most Democrats not aligned with the far left support building more roads.

But this proposal is oh so much more than just what meets the eye.

The tax money is needed to support the fledgling Convention Center for years to come. Divert the tax, kill the Convention Center.

Now the Mayor wants to build a new football stadium for Shaw University and St. Augustine’s University. Divert the tax, kill the football stadium.

Lest you forgot, let me gently remind you that K-12 education is not the purview of the City Council. Funding the Wake County School System is the responsibility of the Wake County Board of Commissioners. The Wake County Board of Commissioners is controlled by Republicans. Who ain’t exactly overly friendly to education. Who are facing school needs of between $4.25 billion and $5.59 billion through 2015. Cut that in half to allow for fat and padding, the need is still absolutely staggering. These Republicans have no clear vision on how keep Wake County schools top notch. Divert the food and hotel tax, divert attention from the failings of Craven’s fellow Republicans on the Wake County Board of Commissioners.

So how did Craven fair at the Council table? Fellow Republican District E Councilor Philip Isley, a sharp fellow who sees the hidden implications and never misses a chance to stick a finger in the eye of Mayor Meeker, jumped on board. District B Councilor Jessie Taliaferro was also on board. The Mayor gave an inspired and reasoned rebuttal to Craven’s proposal, and he's right - reopen this issue at the legislature and we're likely to lose the tax all together. Craven would like that, but the Mayor's got bills for the Convention Center construction clogging his mailbox and he'd like to pay them. At-Large Councilor Joyce Kekas spoke out strongly against the slight of hand - she reminded us that she participated in the development of the original interlocal agreement and does not see fit to reopen that “can of worms” (her words).

So the proposal died one vote shy, with only Councilors Craven, Isley, Taliaferro, and Kekas voting aye. Craven and Isley won’t miss a chance to stick a finger in the Mayor’s eye. Taliaferro likes to stick one of her fingers in the Mayor’s eye every now and then, just to remind him of who is in charge. And Kekas - you caught that, didn’t you? After speaking out loud and clear against the revenue diversion, she then quietly, almost meekly, raised her hand in favor of it. Kekas will vote how Councilor Taliaferro tells her to vote. Of course, she’d prefer you not know that, but the pattern appears to be setting firm - Kekas will outwardly appear to favor one of the Democrat Mayor’s programs, or a pro-neighborhood proposal, or some progressive program, then she will vote quietly against it.

It no longer matters if you or I like the Convention Center, for better or worse there’s a huge hole in the ground downtown with a lot of concrete pouring into it. And the bulk of the hotel and meal tax for years to come is needed to operate it. We’ve already bought that puppy, folks, now we obliged to pony up for puppy chow for years to come.

Of course, Wake County needs a major infusion of cash for the school system. That means bonds. Paid for by higher property taxes. On my house and yours. For us Raleigh Citizens, it doesn’t really matter if a tax is levied by the City or the County, we only have one purse from which to pay. So it's perfectly reasonable to us to expect the Mayor to sit down with the Chair of the County Commission, and for the all of the City Councilors and County Commissioners to sit together to agree who is going to pick what from our pockets.

But it is unacceptable for the City Council to assume the responsibility for school funding from the County Commissioners.

Same with roads. We are in a road mess partly because of a regressive state policy that does not distribute road funds according to need. Blame Democrats for that one. So Mayor Meeker has led the way for the City to fix and build roads that are the State’s responsibility.

That is a mistake, as now you and I pay twice - once at the pump to the State to build the road in theory, and then again for bonds so that the City can actually git ‘er done.

Now Craven proposes the same shell game for schools. It’s a stroke of political genius. Turn Republican failings into Democrat failings. Don’t worry, the voters won’t pay enough attention to realize what is going on.

Or will they?