The Bull in Full

An Open Letter to Tom Bonfield in Regards to the Police Headquarters

Dear Mr. Bonfield,

I read with great interest the article in the Herald-Sun which reported that you were in the process of presenting a plan for replacing the headquarters of the Durham Police Department.  In this process, as a citizen I hope you consider colocating the Police Department with City Hall by replacing the City Hall Annex, originally built as the police headquarters, with a prominent civic building facing Chapel Hill St.  In your role as City Manager, I realize that you have a number of concerns to take into consideration, and I certainly understand that there may be construction, logistical, or financial considerations which would override such a choice.  However, as the private sector continues to redevelop downtown, I believe that this is an excellent opportunity for the city government to increase its presence both in human and architectural terms.

The current City Hall Annex represents, in my humble opinion, an architectural and site plan mistake that's served out its useful life.  It dates from a time when we thought downtown would be revitalized by opening up large amounts of surface parking and converting blocks to suburban land uses.  All of us have come to agree that this was probably a mistake, but we are still left with the architectural relics of this period.  Simple budget considerations and careful stewardship of city funds dictate that we shouldn't toss these aside carelessly, but I believe that this represents not only an opportunity for the city to use its existing assets to solve a municipal problem, but an opportunity to improve the life of the city.

The current building is a low density use in a high density area; a building designed for automobile traffic in a time when we're trying to encourage pedestrians in the area; a design that turns its visually unappealing service entrances towards the intersection of two of the major streets of the center city; and a situation that shuns Rotary Park, rather than open onto it.

A new Durham Police headquarters could replace the existing facility with a considerably larger building, not only by matching City Hall in height but by expanding its footprint to cover more of the wedge of land that it sits on.  Inded, if the plan were to correspond with the planned re-routing of the downtown loop, an architect would have even more room to expand into towards the east.  A better design could face Rotary Park, and greet drivers coming down Mangum St. into town with a prominant, stately facade rather than the rampart-like back wall of the current City Hall Annex. 

Again, I realize that many considerations will go into this process, but I ask you to consider the City Hall Annex site, both to bring more workers into the downtown core and to improve that block's interaction with the rest of the downtown core.

Best regards,
Michael T. Bacon

Duke gets on board with transit, offers free GoPass to employees

I confess that my basketball allegiences probably made me increase my snark in this regard, but for years now I've been griping that during my four and a half years of working at Duke, I had to pay every time I rode a Durham Area Transit Authority bus, but now that I work at UNC, I can ride the Durham bus system for free.  Yes, even though UNC is in Chapel Hill, and Duke in Durham, UNC was paying for its employees to ride on Durham transit while Duke was not.

This was, of course, a simplification.  Because I joined UNC's Commuter Alternatives Program (CAP), under which I agreed to forgo my right to buy a parking pass for a year, UNC gives me a yearly Triangle GoPass for free, under which I get unlimited rides on Durham, Raleigh, Cary, and Triangle Transit buses.   (The Chapel Hill/Carrboro is always fareless, of course, so the pass isn't necessary there.)

Well, thanks to some welcome news out of Duke, I can snark no more.  In a news release near the end of July, Duke announced that the GoPass will be available to all Duke students as well as employees who work on or near one of the main campuses or at American Tobacco.  (Duke has posted an eligibility map for the program online to make more sense of that definition.)

I'd love to be able to post this story without editorializing, but I just can't.  To my eye, this is a most welcome, long overdue change in Duke's policy. 

For years, institutionally, Duke has regarded alternative transportation with a skeptical eye.  In the original regional rail plans put forward over a decade ago, Duke's opposition over the asthetics of a rail stop at Duke Hospital caused Triangle Transit to abandon the station and end the line at Ninth St., a move that removed the most dense employment stop from the line, and which some (including me) partially blamed for the insufficient ridership projections that led to the failure of federal funding. 

Bicycle advocates for years grumbled about Duke's hesitancy to put bicycle racks on its main quads, on the grounds that they weren't the look that Duke wanted to project.  As to buses, Duke for years has seen its own (somewhat decrepit) bus fleet as the solution to connecting parking with offices.

I have no sources inside the university these days, so I have no insight into what caused the change of heart.  I could speculate on parking crunches finally becoming too onerous for its construction plan to bear, or employee complaints about rising parking fees reaching a dull roar, but it's just guessing. 

However, I think this move is a great step for all parties involved.  Duke may potentially see on-campus parking demand drop by over a thousand spaces; our local bus systems get a boost of cash, and perhaps more importantly, an increase in the ridership numbers that help them qualify for federal transit subsidies; badly snarled area roads get fewer single passenger vehicles; and of course Duke employees get a break on gas and car maintenence for getting to work. 

Duke does end up having to buy these passes, and it loses out on parking revenue, but I can't help but suspect that the ever-increasing demand for parking spaces on campus was starting to make that revenue seem less and less enticing.

In any case, wherever the change of heart came from, good job, Duke.  This Durhamite, at least, thanks you.

A brief comment on the OK Great installation

After a couple of false starts in the the blogger relations category, some folks at a Flywheel Design-related blog called Ok Great dropped me (and I presume other bloggers too) a message asking us to check out an entry about their installation in the "Itsnota Park" where the old Geer building used to stand. 

Now, I generally like the stuff that Flywheel's been involved with, and I'm all for public art downtown, spontaneous and otherwise.  This crew probably has a lot of good work to come from them.  But here's a tip: if you find yourself writing this in a blog entry:

As a city that hails itself as the new cultural capital of the South and at the same time is rarely host to any public art, we figured this simple little tableau might stir up some kind of general reaction or at least spark a bit of curiosity.

Wrong.  I personally lurked in the bushes for an hour or two waiting to secretly photograph passersby only to be let down by the 50 or so folks that walked past only a few feet away from the couch and didn’t even notice (including a City of Durham employee who passed a record four times).  All the while, a Durham Housing Authority truck sat twenty feet away.

. . .

So what have we learned?  The City of Durham is thoroughly indifferent to street art.  The citizens of Durham are either as indifferent or just conditioned not to expect it and don’t think to look.  And some creepy dude lit candles in the dark and chilled hard on an old lady’s couch eating candies.

there may be more going on here than indifference and apathy.  Specifically, if the art installation you put up fails to generate any reaction whatsoever, I'll warrant that it's possible you're dealing with a jaded and artistically diseased populace, but I'd put better odds on you generally failing as an artist in this particular piece.  I have to say, I love me some public art, but had I seen this installation, I probably would have chuckled, shrugged, and kept walking.

And while that's no reason to quit trying, someone who writes that Durham "is rarely host to any public art" needs to have his eyes checked.

Mass transit and rail funding survive stimulus cuts

I'm breathing a sigh of relief today.  As the details of the conference stimulus package start to trickle out, it's looking like both rail and transit pieces of the stimulus made it through conference with at least some significant amount of money attached, as Elana Schor at TPM reports:

The House's original stimulus bill, as we've reported for several weeks, gave mass transit the short end of the stick in favor of $30 billion for highways with no requirement that repairs be prioritized over new road-building.

But according to a confidential summary of the final stimulus deal that we've just been passed (view it here), mass transit got some more attention in the end. Amtrak and high-speed rail programs got $9.3 billion, an increase of about $6 billion from the Senate's version of the stimulus.

Still, environmentally sustainable transportation didn't completely win the day. A $5.5 billion transit-modernizing grant program eagerly anticipated by environmental advocates, which senators at first wanted to open up to highways, was removed entirely from the final stimulus deal. 

Congress did agree on $8.4 billion for general public transportation grants, however. Vice President Biden (D-Amtrak), if you had any role in this: thanks.

At this point it's sounding like around $18 billion for rail and transit combined, which is still only a little over half of what went to highways, but that's way, way better than what I was afraid was going to happen. 

If you want mass transit in the Triangle, call Hagan and Burr now

I'd love to write more about this, but time is short, and the time to act is now.

The stimulus package moving its way through Washington is, to be fair, a bit of an ugly monster.  However, there's a lot of good programs in it, many of which are unfortunately the ones that are on the chopping block right now.  Energy efficiency upgrades for government buildings, which one would think would fall into the duh-obvious category for good stimulus, are among those at risk of cuts.  However, what's worse is mass transit funding is at risk too, while both Houses of Congress seem intent on stuffing more and more highway funding into it.

I hate to say I told you so, but a year ago when Bush's stimulus bill was making it's way through Congress, I spilled a bunch of electronic ink on this subject.  Sadly, in one of those, "damn, I wish I'd been wrong" moments, sure enough, huge amounts of new tax breaks did absolutely nothing to stimulate the economy, and just set the stage for the economic collapse of 2008.  With massive government funds getting shipped overseas, the public treasury turned upside down by Bush's tax cuts, and major backlogs in infrastructure left wanting by the crony capitalism of the previous administration, it was no surprise that simply dumping more tax cuts into the economy was about as effective as pushing on a string.

What we needed then, just as now, was infrastructure investment as stimulus.  Early on in the process, it sounded like what this was what the stimulus bill was going to be about.  However, the rotting corpse of the Reagan/Goldwater orthodoxy (which Reagan himself might have even blanched at today) brought out the bellicose GOP and the nervous Nellies from the Democrats, and of course we had to have some largely useless tax cuts in the bill. 

Regardless, while there is a fair amount of infrastructure spending in the bill, what those in Washington seem to be failing at realizing is that, as per Shellenberger and Nordhaus, this is exactly the time we need to be thinking about how to restructure our economy to be less dependent on fossil fuels and more ready to make cuts in our carbon emissions.  Government spending has an enormous effect on shaping the economy, and despite the stammerings from policy mouthpieces of the Right's political machine, nobody in the GOP is doing anything to lessen that impact.  Massive federal spending on highways simply continues to push our economy towards a single passenger vehicle-focused transportation system, when either the absence of federal spending, or less disastrously, greater balance in transportation dollars, would allow for a correction towards less polluting forms of transportation.

The bill from the House originally had $30 billion in road projects and just $10 billion for all mass transit and rail projects.  Thankfully Rep. Oberstar from Minnesota lead a revolt that got a little over $3 billion added in funding.  It's hard to keep everything straight in the swirl of information coming out of Capitol Hill today, but it sounds like the GOP is trying to strip out some of that mass transit funding as part of the "centrist" compromise.  From the reports of the STAC committe, to complete the biggest transit dreams of the Triangle, including passenger rail improvements, local bus expansion, para-transit, and some form of regional rail, whether heavy or light, we'd need about $1 billion in federal dollars to match a combined $1 billion from state and local sources.  (I'll also note that for most highway projects, the Feds pay about %80 of the tab -- yet another way in which highway funding is ridiculously skewed and unproductive.)  Given that we have at least 3/4 complete plans sitting around right now, we'd very likely be excellent candidates to receive this money, which would not only provide jobs in planning and construction of the system, but would likely trigger a building boom near the planned stations, we've got a vested interest in keeping that money in the bill.  But if the hand-wringers among the Democrats and the pro-highway wing of the GOP (including our friends at the John Locke Foundation) get their way, what chance do you think that money has in coming out in the next few years.

An excellent diary at Daily Kos made a fantastic point.  Obama's best campaign slogan, by my lights, was, "We are the ones we've been waiting for," with a close second being, "I'm not asking you to believe in my power to change government, I'm asking you to believe in yours."  If you want transit in the Triangle, now is the time to call.  Here are the office numbers.  The lines are understandably a bit busy, so keep trying:

Kay Hagan
202-224-6342

Richard Burr
202-224-3154

Because rail and transit are STILL stimulus where we need it.

More transit funding in the stimulus package

Elana Schor at TPM has a good note on environmentalists pointing out that way too much money in the stimulus package is going towards highways, potentially large new highway projects, rather than towards rail projects.  While I'd be thrilled if a little of that ended up in the East End Connector, my guess is that most of those highway projects are not quite so oriented towards dense development and are likely loop roads and other sprawl inducing projects.

Given the choice, I'd be much happier of some of that transit money came in and hit the bus system or jumpstarted the TTA's rail plans.  James Oberstar of Minnesota is making quite the fuss over this, and just needs some backup.  I don't know our representatives' positions on this, but a phone call to tell them that you support more transit and less highway funding in the stimulus bill certainly can't hurt.

Websites (with phone numbers on them) of our representatives:

David Price

Richard Burr

Kay Hagan

Quick hits: Creeps, Blogs, and Radio Shows

A few quick things to drop here.  First off, thanks for the lively set of nominations in the Christmas Creep thread.  Believe it or not, I actually looked for a suitably tasteless statue for the Bad Santa award at Morgan Imports, but the best they had was a bare chested beefcake merman with a santa hat on.  A little too expensive, and not quite tasteless enough.  Sometime during the holidays, I'll try to actually post the awards.

Next up, thanks for the help on the Herald-Sun blogs.  No matter how I look at it, I can't figure out how it's supposed to do anything worthwhile.  Oh, well, maybe it will become obvious.

Lastly, I'm going to be appearing on The State of Things with Frank Stasio tomorrow at noon to talk about the economic aspects of food and food access in North Carolina.  The first half-hour will be about the Alston Ave. expansion and how the demolition of Los Primos will impact the neighborhood.  The second half-hour will about about local food and the food economy, wherein I'll be representing Durham Central Market.

Herald-Sun gone to the blogs

So here's an interesting development.  I'm checking out the Herald-Sun website this morning, and there's an ad across the top from the H-S itself, saying, "Tell us what you really think," and providing a link to http://www.heraldsun.com/blogger. Well, having written the H-S in the past asking that they turn their best reporters loose to blog, I was naturally curious. So there, on the blogger page, it said "no blogs posted." With a lure like to that of a freshly poured concrete sidewalk, I was drawn in. Have to do a test post at least, I thought.

Given the prompt, "tell us what you really think," I let loose with my number 1 problem at the Herald-Sun -- the abundantly useless John McCann. So, with my critique summed up into a tidy blog post, I hit submit to see what would happen. And, well, it's not really clear what happens.

For one thing, the "blogger" page (which appears to have little to do with blogger.com) is only accessible to "registered users." As to the fact that I saw no posts there, I don't know if this was because I was the very very first poster, or that only shows things that I've written. If the latter, it's completely unclear as to how anyone, such as myself, might ever read anyone else's blogs. If so, is this a feature that lets me keep my own personal diary that no one else can read on the Herald-Sun website? Gee, thanks, guys!

So, here's a question -- can anyone else see any blogs anywhere on the Herald-Sun website? Can you see anything that might have been written by me? After you take a look there, see if this link (which allegedly goes to my "blog page," exactly what that means I don't know) shows you anything. I'm interested to hear from both users with H-S registrations and those without.

Maybe they're still ironing out the kinks, and maybe their lack of web editor means that it's going to take a while before anything works right. At this point, though, the review that pops into mind is something along the lines of, "Newzpapir blogz -- ur doing it rong."

Modernist, Utilitarian, Opulent: The provocative Nasher

I know that I have a bad habit of apologizing for blog entries, but there's some part of me which somehow feels that if I'm going to go on about something I know very little about in a sphere as public as the internet, I ought to at least be a little ashamed of it.  With about five other topics pending some writing on things that I actually have a bit of a clue over, I'm going to go off on something completely different here: architecture. (and I'm sorry if this comes off as totally daft -- there, I said it)

Last week I managed to get myself down to the Nasher for the El Greco to Velazquez exhibit, which among students of art appears to be thought of as one of the most significant shows ever to go up in North Carolina. Seeing an art exhibit as both an exhibition and a thesis with arguments is something I've only recently come to appreciate. I must say, while I enjoyed the show, I'm afraid a lot of the significance of it was lost on me. Going home, while a few paintings like Saint Francis Embracing the Crucified Christ stayed with me, I spent a lot more time thinking about the actual building the show was housed in.

Yes to the Prepared Meals Tax

Just as I try to get a rusty and dusty blog to creak back to life here, there is an explosion of stories I want to cover and comment on.  Most of these can wait until after tomorrow brings a close to the hubbub, but I did want to get at least a short piece out on this first.

Most attention is, naturally, focused on the bigger races tomorrow, with perhaps the most major contested races in North Carolina in a single election in my lifetime.  In addition to the every four year presidential and gubernatorial races, this is a US Senate race as well, plus the whole council of state.  And unlike in past years, all three of the top line races look to come down to the wire (at least for NC's 15 electoral votes, but perhaps not the Presidential race as a whole).

Locally, there's not much doing on the ballot.  The County Commissioners' race has five names for five slots -- I voted for four, just to give Joe Bowser a lower vote total.  But the one issue which has caused a stir is the Prepared Meals Tax (or Prepared Foods Tax -- I forget its official billing). 

Two Saturdays ago I voted for this tax for a few simple reasons -- ultimately it comes down to the worthiness of the projects and who pays.

The project list, on the whole, contains a large number of extremely worthwhile public expenditures, most notably funding for a long-sought Durham History Museum, job training programs, renovations to the Hayti Heritage Center, continued arts funding for the renowned African American Dance Ensemble lead by Chuck Davis, the Parrish St. "museum without walls," help for the Carolina Theatre and Museum of Life and Science, and a number of greenway trails that have been planned for over a decade but never built.

The most controversial project on the list is the Minor League Baseball museum and awfully named "fan experience."  (Please, oh please, change the name at the end of that thing.)  I'm on record at balking (no pun intended) at the price of the museum initially, particularlly when it looked like the city was going to be asked to fund $25 million of the $50 million construction cost.  That was an error in reporting, as it turns out, and the city's contribution is now down to $14 million, or slightly over 1/4 of the cost of the museum.  For a pretty good cultural amentity that builds on one of Durham's most recognizable features, I think that's not a bad deal.  (Full disclosure: yes, I'm doing a lot of work on a grocery store to open near where the baseball museum is headed.  That said, this definitely won't benefit me in any personal way, and probably mostly impacts the store by making rents in the area go up a little.)

As to who pays, there's been a lot of noise about this recently, with a lot of it focused on calling this a regressive tax.  This gets incredibly frustrating after a while, mainly for one reason: with the funding options available to Durham, it is very, very difficult to find funding sources that aren't regressive.

Here's a table from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that's making the rounds (this one pulled from the Indy's endorsement of the tax):

Lowest 20%---5.2% of income on food away from home
Next 20%-----5.5%
Middle 20%---5.8%
Next 20%-----5.9%
Highest 20%--5.4%

Looking at the BLS site, I've had a hard time recreating these numbers.  However, in muddling around with their numbers on property taxes, it's clear that property tax isn't much better.  As incomes increase, the percentage of income paid into property taxes decreases.  In fact, if the numbers presented above hold, they're a sight more progressive than the property tax distribution, and that's even before the differential in the income tax deduction.  (Deductions are more valuable for earners in higher tax brackets.)

Ultimately, it's very easy to get lost in the numbers games here.  But this basic synopsis holds, I think: If you think the projects are worthwhile, the prepared foods tax is among the best possible and most progressive ways to pay for it.  For those who don't believe it's a beneficial project list, I can respect a "no" vote, but there's hardly any water at all in the regressive tax argument, at least from a practical standpoint.