The Bull in Full

Shameless plug: Txakoli Fest at Six Plates tomorrow

Six Plates, a ridiculously cool local restaurant and wine bar that just so happens to be owned by three friends of mine that I know through two completely separate channels (Matt Beason and I lived on the same street in Durham when I was 5), is have an event entitled the "Txakoli Fest" tomorrow.  Here's a little snippet on it (including how to pronounce Txakoli):

“TXAKOLI FEST” AT SIX PLATES ON JULY 19

(Durham, NC) – Six Plates Wine Bar announces Txakoli Fest, a special event taking place on Saturday, July 19. Doors open at noon.

The event will feature six types of txakoli (pronounced “chah-ko-lee”), which is produced in the Basque country of Spain. Why base a festival around this specific type of wine? “Txakoli is a great summer wine that people in the United States are just beginning to understand,” says Beason. “The festival is a way to enjoy a summer day and expose our customers to something new.” All of the wines will come from Chapel Hill-based De Maison Selections, the premiere importer of txakoli in the country.

Because white txakoli, in particular, has a clean, slightly effervescent taste that pairs well with oysters, head chef Ted Domville will offer six versions of oysters on the half-shell along with a variety of accoutrements.

Local musicians will provide live music throughout the day. Guests will also be able to purchase a mini “porron,” a traditional Spanish drinking instrument that several people can share. “It’s kind of like a more sophisticated version of a beer bong for wine lovers,” says Beason.

There will be some really good live music throughout the day, including (and here's the truly shameless part) yours truly as part of Mark Cool's backup set, the "Folk Stars."

Dude, what happened to your blog?

So this happens to be a question (paraphrased) I've been asked a few times recently.  I know there's been radio silence here, so I thought I might try to briefly explain.

First of all, in addition to working in an office which is currently rather severely understaffed, there's an item which will probably make a more regular appearance here if I do start blogging more often.  I've alluded obliquely in the past to my involvement in the effort to start a new cooperative grocery in Durham.  Now is probably as good a time as any to elaborate a little on that, and hopefully with a few more updates in the future.

Here's the basics: this venture is now officially incorporated as an agricultural products cooperative with the state, with the working name of Durham Central Market.  The steering committee, which I've been a part of since the beginning, has now transformed into an official board of directors.  And here's where my absence from the blog comes in -- I've somehow ended up as President of the board, which doesn't mean a whole lot other than just being a board member, except that I have a few more responsibilities to call board meetings and to a limited degree be the person that talks to the media and other folks with questions about it.  I've promised Monica Chen at the Herald-Sun that I'll give her the scoop (in exchange for her holding off snooping around earlier this year when we were still going through the motions of forming, and really weren't ready for a full load of publicity), but the general gist of the status right now is that we're busy putting together the business plan, working on the website (which is what I'll be doing immediately following finishing up this post), continuing to do preliminary location investigation, but most of all, gearing up for an ownership drive.  (If you know me personally, expect to be hit up for a share purchase sometime in the next few months.  On the other hand, if you want to just hang out, I'll be just about living at our booth at the Festival for the Eno in a few weeks.)

Alston Ave., housing inspections, and a sad interlude between

Normally when I get "come to council to support _____" e-mails, they're for Monday night full council meetings, not for the Thursday afternoon work sessions.  So in a way, it was doubly odd that I got the "come support" e-mail from two different groups.  The first came from Aidil Collins at Uplift East Durham, who asked us to come support, as she termed it, a "Friendly Alston Ave.".  Now, this wasn't a hard issue for me to support, considering Gary Kueber and I wrote an op-ed for the Herald-Sun about the same issue over a year ago.  Aidil deserves all the credit in the world for doing the hard legwork of rallying people, shaping the message, and meeting with some local groups that had previously expressed support for the project, to form a set of compromise concerns.   All that legwork meant that Aidil could step to the mic yesterday and truthfully say that her proposal represented the consensus of every community group with any standing.  Given the acrimony over the project early, that's quite an accomplishment.

No vote took place, however, and what exactly will happen when a vote does come before the council was the subject of much discussion between Mark Ahrendsen (who also deserves enormous credit for his work here) and the council.  Yours truly added to the confusion when he stepped to the mic to ask for clarification on what I thought was the status of the law at this point -- that unless the council acted, NCDOT's plan would move forward.  I was immediately corrected by several members of council, and only got a full explanation after the meeting from Ahrendsen.  Aside from the fact that one should get ones facts straight before stepping up to speak at a council work session, here's what I learned from all of the discussion:

The Council doesn't have any real direct authority over NCDOT's projects.  The power they do have comes from the Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPO), in this case, the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro MPO (DCHCMPO), which consists of members from the three town councils and the two county boards of commissioners, which do have some approval power over the projects.  And, as Ahrendsen noted yesterday, the other MPO members will generally defer to the council in whose jurisdiction the project falls.  However, the process isn't even that simple (is it ever?).  Also, note that I've already been significantly wrong on the facts here once, so take what follows with a grain of salt.

Like the council, most of the MPO's actual power comes in more of an advisory role.  Between our local DOT Board rep (Ken Spaulding) and the MPO, the community gets a very strong voice in what happens inside DOT and what projects are put forward on each three year Transportation Improvement Plan.  However, the only real actual voting power the MPO has is to accept or reject the entire TIP, which boils down to veto power for every state-funded road project in the two counties over the next three years.  As Ahrendsen phrased it to reject it at that point is a bit like holding a gun to your own head and threatening to shoot yourself.  Sure, it's a potent threat in the worst of situations, but it's not one you really want to ever have to use.

Still, here's the good news: the community consensus that Aidil has forged has pushed the Mayor to become an advocate for the design changes.  In this way, she has managed to turn the Mayor from one of the more problematic obstacles to actual progress on Alston to a valuable (if not terribly enthusiastic) ally.  To digress for a moment, I'm not sure I've ever seen an issue highlight the Mayor's strengths and weaknesses more fully.  His apparent selective hearing, lack of imagination when it comes to alternatives to suburban-style development, unwillingness to appear out of step with the dominant power structure, and a generalized aloofness were all on full display as we tried to get anything at all to change with regards to the NCDOT design.  At the same time, once the community came to consensus, it wasn't inhis nature to blow against the wind.  And at that point, there's not many other city leaders I'd rather have stepping into a room full of NCDOT staffers to say, "come on, just do the right thing," and getting the right deal out of it.  At this point, moreso than at any point previously, I have some hope that we'll get something less than a disaster on Alston.

- - -

The other e-mail I received about Thursday's work session came from the Durham CAN housing team, which I'd sort of met with once, and if I weren't so bogged down with other community and job related stuff, I'd probably be making more of an effort to attend.  CAN was calling for support for their proposal to allow city inspectors to inspect any house without complaint, and to shorten the time period the city must wait before taking action from a year to six months.

When I saw this come across the the wire, it caused me a good bit of consternation.  I've in the past spent a fair bit of electronic ink on the PAC2 list supporting a rental registration program in Durham.  In theory, I'm firmly behind the CAN proposal -- a city government ought to take the action needed to enforce its minimum housing code. 

However, as I pointed out in an e-mail to Durham CAN staff, this isn't a generic city government we're working with.  Gary has spent the past two years repeatedly documenting cases where the actions of the city's Neighborhood Improvement Services department have repeatedly not only contributed to the demolition of some beautiful historic properties that were nowhere near beyond repair, but have also had a demonstratively negative impact on efforts to maintain or revitalize many of Durham's older neighborhoods.  The staff responded by noting that Durham's Latino residents who live in substandard housing are particularly vulnerable to predatory landlords, and that better action from the city is needed to address the problem.

Because CAN is fundamentally about working together, coming to consensus, and supporting each others aims for social change, I showed up in support of the proposal.  Still, if we're going to keep this action from becoming an authorization for NIS to knock down buildings whenever its heart desires, there's a lot of work to be done. 

And sadly, we didn't have to wait long for an example of just what can happen under the current NIS administration. 

No sooner had Council passed the CAN-backed resolution, than an elderly retired nurse wheeled herself to the microphone to read a statement.  I won't get all the details right, but essentially, here's the story:

She owned three houses in the Southside area which she had long rented out as rental properties.  NIS had cited her for $32,000 in code violations which she claimed she could not pay.  Her plea to council was that she wanted to sell her properties to the city for rehabilitation, or for help in selling the building to someone who would preserve it.  Now, I read Endangered Durham enough to know that this can be a stalling tactic, but there were moments when the owner was pleading to not have one of her houses in particular demolished, by whatever way could be managed, even if she didn't profit from it (other than to remove the civil penalties). 

Oddly enough, what she was proposing wasn't all that out of line with some of the alternatives to just the "repair or demolish" orders that Gary has talked about so much.  Unfortunately, the city's attorney had to step in and point out that in the mediation of code disputes, the council had delegated its authority to the city housing appeals board, so in essence, short of passing substantial new law, the  council's hands were tied.

But this is hardly an excuse.  Last year, we were promised a demolition and code enforcement "summit," that would open the lines of communication between the city and neighbors, so that we could all work towards a better solution.  Unfortunately, with NIS running it, the entire affair turned into little more than a series of stern lectures from various staff members on how enlightened the process was, and how any quibble with it must be due to a failure by community members to understand it.  Afterwards, we were all given time to "comment," in the usual two-minute, haphazard format, with no responses and no discussion.  It was, quite simply, both ridiculous and insulting. 

Patrick Baker then promised a continuing dialog with the community, but unless there have been discussions I haven't heard about, the issue has effectively died.  (I suspect the impending city elections may have had something to do with this, but I don't know that for certain.)  Still, outside that particular process, the continual response from the leadership at NIS has been one of zero interest in alternative solutions, with what appears to be an underlying assumption that all community members expressing concern must be troublemakers who are best locked out.

This, combined with the general stammering of NIS's top staff members at the meeting Thursday left me with the indelible perception of a rudderless department more interested in territoriality and insularity than in actually trying to, you know, help improve neighborhoods.  My first impulses are always to give people the benefit of the doubt, particularly with the number of exceptional staff members I've met inside Durham city government over the years.  However, when a departments policies are both poorly implemented in their current form and badly limited by outdated ordinances, yet the department's top staff members show little to no interest in either improving services or drafting better code, it's time to start looking at that favorite buzzword of all city critics -- accountability.
 

How I'm Voting -- May 6 edition

Call these endorsements or not -- whatever.  Enough people have asked me to post these over the past few elections that I feel like doing one here.  I do my best to be clear with just how much knowledge (or lack thereof) about the candidates I'm basing my decisions on, so I don't give any false impression of expertise.  Anyway, enough primary blather to choke a horse awaits just below the fold....

(I've put whom I'm voting for in bold, for perhaps easier reading.)

Bad baseball, bad video, and you want HOW much?

It just hasn't been a good week for sports around here, has it?  I'm going to ignore except in passing the pathetic and embarrassing episode from last weekend, as well as the even more pathetic and embarrassing response by UNC fans to Roy Williams wearing a Kansas sticker at the championship game. 

What's on my mind more at the moment was the display of baseball ineptitude I watched at the Bulls' game last night.  Bad pitching, bad fielding, bad hitting, almost all of it on the side of the Bulls. 

But more troubling was one of those silly video spots they put on in between innings, this one featuring the Bulls' head groundskeeper giving tips on how to have a good lawn.  What was the crux of his advice on this one?  (I'm not making this up.)

Water your lawn.  A lot.  2-3 times a week, give it a good healthy soaking.  When in doubt, use more water.  The man even ended the clip with this priceless nugget:

"Remember, no water means no grass!"

Sitting in the stands, I kept feeling like I needed to check my ears to make sure I was hearing things.  Was the image-obsessed Jim Goodmon's baseball team REALLY that tone deaf? 

Here's a tip for the Bulls -- don't run that clip any more, and get Mr. Water-a-lot to shoot a video about xeriscaping for you.

To top it off, there was a nugget in Wednesday's Herald-Sun, now swallowed up in the black hole of their internet policy, about plans for a national Minor League Baseball museum next to the old DAP.  Now, I confess, I've generally been behind this project.  The old ballpark is a great piece of history, and can still continue to function as a good baseball stadium, so I don't have much of a problem with dropping $5 million into the renovations on the park itself.  My assumption was that with those renovations, MiLB would come in and do its museum largely on its own.

But I confess I got classic sticker shock when it came to the plans for the museum.  From the H-S:

Accompanying the ballpark will be the Minor League Baseball Fan Experience and Museum, which is scheduled to open in 2010. 

Plans are to build that facility, which would overlook center and right fields, at a cost of $50 million, with Minor League Baseball providing a $25 million endowment and running the operation after the city comes up with $25 million in construction costs.  (my emphasis)

Okay, on the face of it, a MiLB museum (can we please drop the lame sounding "Fan Experience" part of the name?) is a great idea for Durham.  The Durham Bulls are pretty synonymous with minor league baseball nationwide, so building on that seems like a great idea.  But $25 million is a ton of public money to spend on something that's going to be largely patronized by those from out of town.  For comparison's sake, the new DBAP cost $16 million to build, and was the source of serious controversy at the time.   And all with the goal of opening by 2010?

Now, some might point out that I was a proponent of the new DPAC (SOMEBODY buy the naming rights so we can get away from these freakin' ackronyms), which took something on the order of $32 million in public money.  But I'll also note that we only built that thing after 2 years of intense public debate, which resulted in a theater that ended up costing less and being built with a far better design than the one originally proposed.  I guess I'd hope for a bit more scrutiny of this proposal and a bit less hurry on this one.

Lastly, I'll note that the new Carolina Basketball Museum which just opened in Chapel Hill cost $3.4 million.  If we're helping to pay for a museum that costs $50 million, I sure hope it's going to be fabulous.

[where: 27701]

Full

I made the prediction at Barry's yesterday, and while it wasn't exactly going out on a limb, it looks like Durham's reservoirs are finally topped off:

Lake Elevations

Lake Michie Elevation: 341.00 feet, mean sea level.
Lake Michie is full at 341.00 feet, mean sea level.

Little River Reservoir Elevation: 355.00 feet, msl.
Little River Reservoir is full at 355.00 feet, msl.

Matt Dees at the N&O notes the same thing, and hints that we may finally be ready to back off of water restrictions.

On the one hand, despite the soggy weekend, we're not out of pretty bad drought conditions.  The historic low flows in the Flat and Little Rivers before this heavy rain testify to the fact that the groundwater and the underground aquifers are simply a long ways from being fully recharged yet.  But when you're spilling water over the dam, it would seem to make some sense to take a step back, not all the way to baseline, non-drought conservation measures, but to at least let people water their gardens twice a week.  I mean, we're all happy to chip in when we're in a pinch, but loosen up the taps just a little at least. [where: 27701]

Transit in the Triangle: Together, or apart?

To touch on a topic I keep trying to get to, it seems that the future of public transportation in the Triangle has come very quietly to a critical turning point.  It appears that most of what's going to be said in public has been said, and the talk made its way from the pages of the newspapers to the back rooms, where I can only speculate that haggling over the process seems to be still going on.  Given the amount of time and effort put into the STAC, I can't imagine that the process has already fallen dead.  At least I certainly hope not.

To recap, following the final collapse of the originally proposed Raleigh-to-Durham high frequency rail service, the state government appointed a Special Transit Advisory Commission (a.k.a, the STAC), to be hosted out of the Triangle J Council of Governments.  The purpose, ultimately, was to revisit every step in the decision-making process, to go back over all the options, and to see if out of the ashes of the original TTA plan, something could be made to work politically and financially.  It consists of all sorts of movers and shakers from across the Triangle, from business folks, former elected officials, university leaders, and activists.  The STAC met monthly for the past year or so, working with staff  members from the various local governments as well as the state.  In February, the STAC unveiled a draft report of its recommendations, which showed an ambitious $2 billion comprehensive plan for transit in the Triangle, to be funded through some sort of local tax, similar to Charlotte's .5% sales tax.  One of the Indy's blogs captured it nicely in a post last month, wherein the stresses in the agreement started to show.  Not surprisingly, the fault lines fell along much the same lines as before.  There's all sorts of ways to describe that rift, but ultimately it boils down to the Durham-Wake county line.

Listening to noise, not hearing much

I know I shouldn't, but sometimes you can't help it.

I put on waders and headed back into the rather icky waters over at Liestoppers, which is pretty much Grand Central for those most inclined to see the Duke lacrosse/Nifong mess as a grand conspiracy involving liberals, black people, the media, corrupt police, reptilian shape-shifters, and probably the Loch Ness monster, all centered in that city perched atop the hellmouth itself, Durham.  The odd thing is, mixed in with the true loonies, there are a few people who come across as objecting out of principle.  Given that, and the fact that I was sure these folks were obsessively watching Durham for signs of Masonic child sacrifices or what not, I was sure they had some take on Eve Carson.

Funny, just like almost exactly two years ago, there's a media frenzy going on, with suspects being arrested and a lot of evidence appearing in the media appearing to implicate them.  Now, if there's one rock that the Liestoppers folks tether their ark to more than any other, it's the constitutionally protected presumption of innocence until proven guilty.  Would these stanchions of constitutional and legal ethics insist on the presumption of innocence for Lovette and Atwater? 

You can probably guess, or you can see for yourself.

Ground water and Little River

So with Lake Michie sending water over the dam, Little River reservoir up to just 5 feet below full (up from 28 feet below earlier this year), and two rainstorms forecast in the next week, the blogs are starting to buzz with questions about just why the heck we're still stuck on Stage IV water restrictions.

While I'm definitely in the camp (as can be seen in the comments) of going ahead and backing off to Stage III or even II, there is a little bit of concern.  Take, for instance, the past month of data from the USGS's stream monitor on Little River just above the reservoir, showing cubic feet of water flow per second:

The two spikes at the right represent the two heavy rains we got in the past 10 days.  But here's what's disturbing:  even just a short while after those rains, the water level at little river has already fallen well past the median flows, to the most recent value of 17 cfs, which puts it in the lower quintile of historic flow rates for this time of year.  Not only that, but the clear curve of the graph shows flow rates continuing to drop, possibly approaching the historic low of 11 cfs.  Why, after a recent rain, are the rates so low?

Well, one explanation is ground water.  Now, I should point out that the hydrographers I know in the UNC Department of Geography have cautioned me that all of these things are terribly complicated, and that it depends not only on the rate and amount of rainfall, but on the time of day it falls, the temperature, and most importantly the soil types where the rainfall occurs.  Certain types of soils (I believe the Triassic basins, which I think in layman's terms are North Carolina's red clays) dump the water directly into streams, while other types are so rapidly permeable that rainfall neither immediately runs off nor later drains into streams, but rather percolates rather rapidly into underground aquifers. 

But in the in-between stages, there's the topsoil and alluvial sediments which absorb and hold comparatively  large volumes of water and release it slowly into the streams.  Since these tend to be near the top of the soil layers, it also matters what type of soil is under them, and of course what watershed they sit in.  All that said, these soils don't recharge immediately, but rather absorb water best when it comes in very slow, steady doses, such as during slow rainfalls and large snow melts.  The stored water then not only supplies water to the vegetation growing there, but slowly apportions out water into the stream beds during the times between rainstorms.  Measuring the levels of that water is really tricky, and I think involves going out and digging soil pits and waiting to see how much water collects in them, but one indicator is the level of the rivers well after a rainstorm. 

And based on the Little River levels, those still aren't in great shape.

I've said several times in comments on other blogs, but if the predominant weather patterns continue, we're not in terrible shape.  Being behind on rain going into spring is a lot better than being behind going into fall -- spring is usually when we catch up, whereas late summer and early fall are when we usually draw down our reservoirs the most.  April showers not only bring May flowers, but full reservoirs for the summer.  Likewise, another month of good, regular, sustained rains could recharge our groundwater levels and take us out of the drought in good shape, but that's going to take more than just the filling of Little River reservoir that will probably happen in the next week.

Speeding, broken windows, panhandling, and all that

Busy day today, but I can't let this topic go without commenting.  Kevin today tag-teams off of one of Barry's posts earlier this week about the hesitancy of the Durham Police Department in going after speeders.  I meant to get to Barry's post earlier, but I can't let yet another one on this topic go by without commenting on it.

My master's thesis was on crime in Durham and various location-based strategies for addressing crime, and what their results are.  In the process, I did a pretty extensive review on the criminology literature surrounding order maintenance policing, better known as the "broken windows" theory, based on an article of the same name that James Q. Wilson and William Kelling wrote in the Atlantic in 1980.  Back in early '06, when I was in the thick of finishing the thing, we got into quite the conversation on the PAC2 mailing list about the panhandling ban, and whether it represented an effective "broken windows"-style approach to crime prevention.  I thought it was not, and put forward, oddly enough, residential speeding as something that the police should crack down on instead.

This message came in the middle of a conversation, so it refers to e-mails written by Chris Sevick and Ken Gasch previously.  I think it's still pretty apparent what's going on, and this post laid out my case for how broken windows applies to Durham better than I think I could write now.  And since I don't have a whole lot of time, I'll just quote the thing in its entirety below the fold, edited slightly for formatting: