Home > So, what do you think? > Archives > 2008 > July
July 2008
Too bad Ford’s deal didn’t come through
It’s a shame to hear that Phil Ford will no longer have his name associated with the Carleton House.
The prospects of a hometown basketball star breathing life into a downtown landmark had great potential for the city. Ford’s legacy is secure, considering his stellar career with the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in the 1970s and later the NBA.
He has remained a popular celebrity in Rocky Mount, where he grew up, and in North Carolina at large. A Ford-themed restaurant no doubt would have had drawing power well beyond Rocky Mount, and that kind of cachet could have added a new dimension to downtown.
Fortunately, another group of business people is said to be considering buying the Carleton House and taking up where Ford left off. Fiinancing fell through on Ford’s deal. I doubt the restaurant canl have the same drawing power as Ford, but a renovated Carleton House is a win for downtown anyway.
Here’s hoping for more good news soon.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Post your comment |
More thoughts on ElectriCities …
I appreciated Terry Smith’s comments in The Daily Southerner this week. He and I don’t see eye to eye on the ElectriCities issue, but that’s OK. In fact, our disagreement illustrates part of my problem with the power agency.
If newspaper readers in Tarboro, Rocky Mount or Nashville don’t agree with my opinion or the way the Telegram reports the news, they have other options. They can subscribe to The Daily Southerner or to the Nashville Graphic or to the News & Observer of Raleigh. A lot of them can go online and read newspapers from all over the state, country and even the world. That’s not what I would want them to do, of course, but they have that option.
With ElectriCities, we have no option.
If the agency wants to raise rates, it raises them, and we pay it. If it wants to pay its top CEO a half a million dollars a year, it can do so, and never mind what it does to struggling dry cleaners and other small businesses. If it wants to abandon fixed-rate bonds for variable-rate bonds and watch those suckers go soaring, there’s not a thing I can do to stop it.
I guess I could cancel my subscription by pulling the plug on every appliance I have and closing my power account with the city, but that’s not very practical.
And that’s what really bugs me and, I think, a lot of other folks about this situation. ElectriCities doesn’t have to be accountable. We, the customers, have next to no choice about whether we pay the agency’s rates. We have no voice in who the company executives are or how much they’re paid. We’re pretty much at the mercy of the people who serve on the board that does oversee those issues.
So, given all that, I’d like to see the one group of people whom we directly elect stand up and raise some of the same fuss that we’re raising about this situation.
A 14 percent increase in rates when almost 30 people at the agency are pulling in six figures? A 14 percent increase when at least 2 percent seems to stem from poor investment decisions?
Maybe I’m living in a dream world by hoping that someone on a city council somewhere will stand up, pound a podium, shake a fist and start ranting. But I certainly don’t think it’s asking too much to hope a town council will one day ask some tough questions and let the board know how we feel before blindly passing along a rate hike that’s going to send some people to the poor farm.
That’s not going to happen so long as town councils like Tarboro’s pass along a rate increase before the blame thing has even been approved by the ElectriCities board.
Permalink | Comments (63) | Post your comment |
Step … away … from … the cute little chickens …
I guess our children are safer in a world that’s free of animal crap, but I dunno … seems like we’ve lost something here.
Sorry for the earthy language, but every once in a while we have to call it what it is. Staff writer John Henderson has a story in today’s Telegram about a pumpkin farm in Red Oak that may have to close its “animal display.” The reason? The owner’s insurance company is worried about E. coli contamination. That’s a liability the insurance company doesn’t want to cover.
It’s not even a petting zoo. The owner stopped allowing kids to touch the animals a few years ago.
So there you go. No more cute little goats and calves at Fisher’s Pumpkin Farm. We must protect the children! Let the lawyers and insurance companies lead us to a safer, poop-free promised land.
I was on DP’s talk show this morning on ZAX 99.3. DP and I exchanged stories about riding bikes without helmets and swimming in pools that still had diving boards. It’s a miracle he and I survived childhood.
I should be thankful that neither insurance companies nor lawmakers apparently found out about some of the stunts my brothers and I used to pull with BB guns and firecrackers. The poor kids today would have to wear full-body armor after the resulting legislation was finalized.
I know, I know. I’m being overcynical here. Closing down an animal exhibit is small potatoes compared to the sickness that E. coli can cause if a kid is contaminated. I don’t wish that on anyone.
But aren’t we losing something here? Don’t kids learn even a little about the world when they feed a duck or pet a colt?
Too bad we can’t buy insurance to cover the loss of that experience.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Good food, great music and sunshine. What more could you ask for?
Rocky Mount’s downtown block party today was a blast!
Plenty of food, great music and sunshine. All it lacked was a few hundred more people.
That’s to be expected. The block party idea is new, so word is still spreading. It’s summer, so a lot of folks are on vacation. And it’s July, so it was fairly warm, even under the tarps the city put up on Howard Street.
But I’ll challenge anyone to come up with a cooler way to spend a lunch hour, especially on a Friday. There were probably 50-75 people when we were there, and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.
I’m proud to say the musical entertainment included two Telegram staffers - Content Editor Gene Metrick and City Hall reporter Eric Klamut. They played mostly cover tunes written by artists such as Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Oasis, Neil Young and plenty more. And they’re pretty darn good, too.
Hats off to Ian Kipp, the city, the Downtown Merchants Association and everyone else who made the event a success.
Downtown Rocky Mount rocked today! Hope the rest of you will join us next time.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment |
A Packers fan plea: Stop the drama and play ball
Being a Green Bay Packers fan lays a certain weight upon your shoulders. There’s glory, of course - the history, the titles, the magic of Lambeau … But we’re often called upon to soldier through lean times, too - most of the 1970s and ’80s, for example.
And so we sit and watch the unfolding drama of Brett Favre’s on-again off-again retirement, the Packers’ should-he-stay-or-should-he-go-now response, and we can do little but stock up on brats, throw another log on the fire and hunker down. It’s going to be a long winter.
Favre and the Packers’ management are each a little bit right and a little bit wrong.
Favre shouldn’t have made his March 4 retirement announcement so soon after the season ended. He shouldn’t have flirted with unretiring just a couple of weeks later, with general manager Ted Thompson and coach Mike McCarthy scrambling to prepare to visit him in Mississippi. He shouldn’t have then called back and said, “Just kidding.” And he shouldn’t have continued to go back and forth, back and forth on seemingly every day since.
But once you get past that, is it really so wrong for the guy to ask for another year?
He’s coming off one of the best seasons of his career, no matter how you measure it. Realistically, there are only two, maybe three, quarterbacks in the league — Tom Brady and Peyton Manning, for sure — who are better than he is. Yes, he’s 38, but if age is going to be a determining factor, let it show up and exact its own ugly toll. We should all be so ancient.
Thompson and McCarthy may or may not have pressed Favre for a fast decision. They may or may not have showed their star player enough love during the past two years. They can be justifiably angry about Favre’s demand to be released from the team altogether. But they really can’t expect him to return from a 13-3 regular season and play backup to Aaron Rodgers.
It’s unreasonable to think they’ll give Favre an unconditional release. But in the name of Vince Lombardi, at least trade the guy. Let him continue the start streak with dignity even if it is in another uniform. (Just no one else in the NFC North, please.)
Most of us have some idea of how complicated the retooling process must be. McCarthy is trying to take an offense that has been run for 16 years by No. 4 and put it in the hands of Rodgers, who is about as green as they come in the NFL.
But think of what Favre playing for another team does for your new kid. No matter where he goes, Favre would have to learn a new playbook, new players, new coaches, new media … a whole new system. Wouldn’t you rather have Rodgers competing against that guy instead of a ghost whose mystique will only grow in the minds of fans if Rodgers stumbles out of the gate?
Trade Favre. I love the guy, but the drama has gone on too long already. It’s time for everyone concerned to suit up and start thinking about the fall.
I’m already looking for a warmer coat.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Post your comment |
Hey, ElectriCities … give us a break!
Whatever you might think of the six-digit salaries commanded by almost 30 top executives at ElectriCities or the skyrocketing interest rates on some of the debt held by the management company, there’s no denying that things are getting tough for local businesses.
As Telegram staff writer John Henderson reported Sunday, the proposed 14 percent electric rate increase is likely to have a big impact on everyone - from giant power users such as Nash General Hospital to mom and pop operations such as Koretizing One Hour Cleaners. That doesn’t even begin to address the folks like you and me, who are likely to see our utility bills jump if Rocky Mount passes along the increase.
ElectriCities board members told Henderson that the salaries paid to top executives (CEO Jesse Tilton makes almost a half-million a year) have to be high to attract the best and brightest to those positions. Board Chairman Sam Noble also defended ElectriCities’ borrowing practices, saying the board signed off on the deal that converted fixed-rate bonds to those with variable rates, too.
That’s all well and good, but neither factor makes the rate increase sit any better with the rest of us. The top executives of ElectriCities would buy themselves a world of positive press if they would announce plans to take a pay cut this year. At the very least, why not stagger the increase? A 7 percent hike now and the rest in January would still hurt, but at least it would spread out the pain a little bit.
There’s no point in kidding ourselves. Energy costs are going up all over the country. Even so, the taste of that increase is especially bitter to Rocky Mount and the 31 other cities in the N.C. Eastern Municipal Power Agency, which ElectriCities is paid to manage.
How about sweetening the deal a little?
Permalink | Comments (10) | Post your comment |
Reporting crimes and rumors of crimes
Here’s an issue I’d love to hear some suggestions about: police reporting.
The Telegram typically runs a crime roundup in Sunday’s Community section that prints pertinent information about break-ins, minor assaults, etc. Bigger stuff - murders, armed robberies, that kind of thing - usually warrant individual stories that we run as soon as we can gather the information.
But the system doesn’t always serve us or our readers, to be honest. Case in point: I’ve received a couple of phone calls this week about a gang fight that supposedly occurred at Wal-Mart in Rocky Mount on July 3. The store was locked down by police and the store manager, I’ve been told. The brawl began when one of the gang members began swinging a golf club at another gang member - again, according to one of the people who called me.
Here’s the thing: Rocky Mount police say that’s a huge exaggeration. Police say a group of kids entered the store after a couple of the kids got into a fight at the July 3 fireworks display. Once the kids got to Wal-Mart, they got rowdy. The store manager called police. But there was no brawl. Police did a couple of ride-throughs in the Wal-Mart parking lot to make sure things calmed down, but that was it.
The Wal-Mart manager told Telegram staff writer Eric Klamut that a couple of kids started yelling and pushing each other, but the store broke things up pretty quickly. The manager laughed when we asked about a store lockdown. No such thing occurred, he said.
So here’s an apparently minor incident that we normally would report in our Sunday roundup that has taken on a much bigger life as a rumor in the community. It’s frustrating for all of us who want to know what’s true and what’s not.
If we report the incident (as we’re going to do in Friday’s edition), we make more of it than what it actually was. If we don’t report the incident, people think we or the police or Wal-Mart or all three of us are trying to cover up a Rocky Mount gang problem.
Any advice? We’re scratching our heads over this one.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment |
The Homer Simpson energy policy
Here’s my second cranky old man entry for the summer.
Back when I was a kid, getting your driver’s license gave you the privilege of driving 55 mph on our nation’s highways. The national speed limit passed in 1975 (one year after I turned 16). It was an offshoot of the Arabl oil embargo (remember that one?) and it was designed to save lives and fuel.
How well did it succeed? According to U.S. Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the national speed limit saved 167,000 barrels of oil a day, or 2 percent of the country’s highway fuel consumption. It’s also credited for reducing highway fatalities by 4,000 deaths per year.
Additionally, it’s estimated that every 5 mph over 60 mph that you drive today adds about 30 cents per gallon in fuel costs.
So it’s a clear case, right? President Bush should announce tonight that he’s rolling back the speed limit. We won’t get rid of $4 a gallon gasoline right away, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that a reduction in demand would at least get OPEC’s attention.
But that suggestion leaves out a key part of the equation:
We hated 55 mph in the 1970s and ’80s. And we’ll hate it even more in our cruise-controlled radar-detecting vehicles of the 21st century.
From my experience, the unofficial speed limit these days is about 10 mph over whatever the sign says it is. If you drive 70 mph on I-40 or I-95, you’d better stick to the right lane. Otherwise, you’re going to make somebody mad.
I have a small laugh every time I hear a commentator ponder the price per gallon at which Americans are really going to get fed up this time and park the SUV for good. If we can’t even slow down to a limit that would spread some sacrifice over everyone, the fuel crunch is never going away.
The wise man Homer Simpson once argued against 55 mph speed limits: “Sure, it’ll save a few lives, but millions will be late!”
However much we want to complain about gasoline prices, Homer’s philosophy seems to be our national motto.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment |
Editor’s junket a collossal failure
As I read the news about Gov. and Mrs. Easley’s recent trips to Europe, I realized what a flop my vacation was last week. At least I managed to contain my expenses to less than $170,000.
That squeezed my family and me, of course. No round-the-clock Mercedes rentals. We skipped the $100-a-person restaurant and chose Oak Island Subs instead. (Try the pastrami).
I’m not sure how much of a “cultural exchange” my trip represented, although the tattoos and swimwear of Coastal North Carolina grow increasingly exotic.
Nor can I confirm that my mission of hope and peace (well, technically, I read some books and talked sports with my dad) will result in jobs and economic opportunities for Rocky Mount or North Carolina.
I wish I could point to something like the Monet exhibit at the N.C. Museum of Art as a tangible justification for why trips like mine are good for all of you, but I can’t do that, either. I took note, as always, of Pedro’s South of the Border billboards along Interstate 95 (“You never sausage a place!”), but I hesitate to mention that in the same context.
So in all those ways, my trip to the beach was a collossal failure, and I apologize for letting down the good people of this state.
In my defense, at least I didn’t cost you anything.
It’s good to be back.
