In a favorite episode, Otis, the town drunk, buys a fancy new car. This scares Andy and Barney, the local Sheriffs.
Barney decides to give Otis a driving test, which doesn’t go so well.
Later, Otis passes out at a party. Barney and Andy take him to jail and fake his death in a car accident.
“If only he hadn’t try to drive in that condition. Lickety split, down two-mile hill, around the curve, weaving from side to side, out on old plank bridge, through the rain, into the river….drowned.”
In his drunken stupor, Otis believes he has actually died. He’s “scared straight,” so to speak.
North Carolina’s Two-Mile Hill
Roy Cooper says that we need to have a sustained drop in Covid cases before our economy is allowed to “drive” again.
Well, folks…it ain’t happening.
We’ve flattened our curve into a two-mile hill.
As testing increases, this hill isn’t likely to drop anytime soon.
And so, we’re in this thing for the long-haul.
In other news, Fayetteville Mayor Mitch Colvin extended Fayetteville’s curfew. We shouldn’t be out past 9 p.m. or we risk getting a citation.
Colvin said crime was going up and people were having house parties and cook-outs.
To close, a new study says sunlight kills the virus.
I’ve been disheartened by the amount of animosity thrown at Georgia over the past few days. Their Governor will re-open portions of the state’s economy on Friday and his decision is controversial, to say the least.
It seems that there’s only two options:
Support him.
Hate him. Say he’s killing people for money.
The virus is now a political wedge. It’s Red vs. Blue. Everything is.
Executive leaders carry the power to open and close portions of our society, so the partisan wedge is amplified at all levels of executive government right now. It’s Trump vs. Democrats and Cooper vs. Republicans.
We even see it in Fayetteville, with the only Republican on the City Council, Johnny Dawkins, coming out in favor of re-opening and against Democratic Mayor Mitch Colvin’s curfew order.
I think the common thread in all of this is our tribal desire to be “right.” This comes at a cost. Our need to “win” diminishes our ability to reason. We lose empathy and compassion, and we become less human when we see our fellow man as the opposition. I do it too, sometimes.
But back to Georgia…
Things are a lot worse there. More people are sick. More people are dying.
And so, North Carolinians, I ask that you pray for Georgia. Pray the suffering doesn’t increase, because no true American should ever desire the suffering of his fellow citizens.
Here’s a more practical reason: if Georgia’s “gamble” pays off, it means that the virus is not as bad as we fear.
In our new normal, you may see more people wearing masks or having their temperature checked. A restaurant you go into may have tables that are only partially full. The only sporting events or concerts that you may be able to watch for awhile will have no in-person crowds.
We shouldn’t be in such a hurry to alienate our rights because there is a respiratory virus in our midst. These rights were secured by braver men in the face of greater threats.
The implementation of paid parking in downtown Fayetteville is getting expensive. Not only are you going to have to pay to park downtown in the near future, you’re going to have to pay back hundreds of thousands of dollars in unanticipated debt so that Fayetteville can implement paid parking enforcement.
If you want to read all about it, download the attached file.
Fayetteville doesn’t yet own the new parking deck downtown. The reason is that we’re not building it ourselves. We are buying it from private developers, once it is finished. Then, we’re leasing back most of the spaces to those same developers.
The deck is more than a year late. Therefore, we haven’t been able to rent out the spaces to Prince Charles Apartments, Woodpeckers employees, etc.
Thus far, according to the City’s numbers, we’ve lost $352,369 in projected revenue as a result of the delay:
In the meantime, the cost of the deck has increased by $3,446,095.
I have more good news: once the deck is finally finished, you, the taxpayer, will be paying a private company to manage, clean, and operate the deck, even though you will not get to use the vast majority of the spaces.
Need Money = Borrow It
So what’s Fayetteville doing to make up for these losses? Borrowing more money:
Now we are taking out a $500,000 loan to install electronic parking meters and equipment. Note that this was all supposed to be “cash funded” from parking revenues we already had.
Keep in mind, we’ve already taken out $14,842,032 in bond money to pay for the deck. The voters didn’t approve this by the way. The City went around the voters using a legal loophole called Synthetic Tax Incremental Financing. It’s great, assuming your tax projections pan out. They haven’t thus far.
Bad Business
The City of Fayetteville has already proven it is lousy at the parking business. It can’t decide what it wants to do, and it once it does, it has to take the taxpayers further into debt to get there.
Moreover, what’s the goal here? The end result of all this is a significant burden on downtown businesses. Less people are going to shop and eat downtown if they can get the same amenities elsewhere in town without having to pay to park.
The short of it is this: Your City government has taken you into debt so that they can charge you money to park on City property.
It’s pretty much a lose/lose. But don’t worry, City staff says that downtown parking will pay for itself, one day, when the deck is finally finished.
Despite the money shuffle, it’s pretty obvious where the problem lies.
Cross Creek Divide 