Raleigh

The School Bond Referendum is caught in a crossfire. The opponents of the billion-dollar bond referendum seem to agree on one thing: Defeating it is the best way to send the School Board a message that it is headed in the wrong direction. But they differ on the right direction. (News and Observer; 10-22-06). Americans…

For the last couple of weeks Mayor Meeker’s been meeting with unhappy city garbage workers. Last week, in a show of bonhomie and empathy the Mayor spent the morning riding a garbage truck. He told the News and Observer (10-14-06) he “wanted to learn about the job as sanitation workers protest for better pay and…

Two of Mayor Meeker’s allies on the City Council, Russ Stephenson and Thomas Crowder, cast the only votes against building a new Wal-Mart in southeast Raleigh. Why? In a sense the answer is ideology. Councilmen Stephenson and Crowder are two politicians who have an ideology. They want to convert Raleigh into a patch-work of neighborhoods…

Wake County school bond supporters say the bonds are “the best way to pay.” But is that message enough to win? Bond supporters were smart to hire Democrat Brad Crone and Republican Ballard Everett to run their campaign. Brad ran a smart campaign against school bonds some years ago. His slogan was: “There’s a better…

The Wake County school bonds are winning the elites but losing the voters. Supporters have organized an impressive list of business backers. But that has not impressed voters. No poll has shown more than 45 percent of Wake voters supporting the bonds. And the bonds will not pick up undecided voters. That means 45 percent…

Mayor Meeker’s Triangle Transit Authority has been having a bit of trouble with its buses. The TTA runs an express bus everyday from Chapel Hill to Raleigh. According to the News and Observer the bus has been plagued by a series of mechanical failures. The air-conditioning goes out, one morning ten minutes after it left…

Lately, City Manager, Russell Allen, has been gone from a low-profile to a high-profile city manager. I agree with him on some of the issues he’s speaking out on like the Plensa Plaza. But one result of his new ‘high-profile is he’s got the arts crowd mad at him, the sanitation workers mad at him,…

The school board meeting the other night was packed with parents opposed to year round schools. One mother let the ‘chips fall where they may,’ put it bluntly and said “switching to year round schools would force her family to eschew the annual beach vacation.” (News and Observer; 9-26-06). Now, there’s something about all this…