Feb
17
Where There’s Smoke, There’s Folks Getting Fired
ByThe City of Asheville had its first round of layoffs today. My source tells me that 19 people lost their jobs today, two of those were in the engineering department.
I was at City Hall being interviewed by Council for the Homelessness Advisory Board when a fireman came into the room to tell us the building was being evacuated. There was smoke on the third floor (IT, I think), and men with axes were headed in as we were all headed out.
The budget crunch is upon us. The budget areas protected by Council will say a lot about our priorities as a city. While it’s certain we need some deep cuts to balance our budget, I would hope that Council will choose to protect Affordable Housing, Transit, and Law Enforcement funding.
16 Comments
February 17th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
I’m getting a lot of microtemporal text hallucinations these days. That’s my instant technical-sounding term for when the brain substitutes a word for what you read. So I got the phrase “Council for the Hopelessness Advisory Board”. MTH’s tend to be eggcorns of some sort, in my experience. (Eggcorn is a new but real term: see wiki.
Funny thing: I was looking at Detroit properties on realtor.com just out of curiosity. A million will buy you almost anything in Detroit, except a few huge apartment buildings. $600K will buy you the waterfront property formerly owned by the Purple Gang (I had to look it up: they were bootleggers, two of whom participated in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre).
Are ya fuckin’ kiddin’ me??!?!??!?!??
It would be easy, right now, if one had a few thousand put back, to grab several trashed properties in Detroit and build an intentional community right in the midst of the blight. Don’t worry, I’m not doing it. Just being counterfactual.
And since I’m off-topicking: The Nation has a cover article about the man who plans to spend a billion dollars tricking you out of your Social Security. Yes, those goons who broke Wall Street are not done trying to fence off Soc Sec as well: Looting Social Security.
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February 17th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Why those? And, while I don’t expect you to say, “This shouldn’t receive any funding”, what budgetary categories would you not prioritize too highly, when the chop comes?
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February 17th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Johnny,
Here’s an example – Do away with the money going to build a parking deck on Broadway.
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February 17th, 2009 at 11:02 pm
I agree with you on the parking deck – I just hope they let them repair the streets of downtown that they have been destroying alll winter. And we could stand a few more cops tooling around harassing people. At least, put them on a bike so they can burn off some donuts.
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February 17th, 2009 at 11:47 pm
What are the thoughts on Mayor Bellamy meeting with Prez Obama?
Is she going after the list that has been printed in the Citizen Times, or do we have any other projects or infrastructure ideas on the table?
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February 18th, 2009 at 12:05 am
Parking decks are a waste of space.
If Asheville really is going ahead of the rest of America and grasping onto population space tactics, like that of Euro & Asian cities, then we have to recognize the needs for central biking, pedestrians, mass transit, and small vehicles.
Parking decks on the outskirts near the entrance portals into the city are the best use of design. Park and rides -or- walks.
I once dreamt that the Civic Center got converted into one of the mega parking decks of the city, and that everyone drove smart cars.
Concerning Tom’s point –
Why not build a conscious community here? We already have a great start. The talent and ideas are bubbling beneath the surface.
But with our property taxes one of the highest, and potentially still going higher, it doesn’t seem like Asheville is too interested in growth.
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February 18th, 2009 at 12:11 am
Careful with those John Locke statistics, Jenny. It’s my understanding that JLF figures in Sales Tax with these figures. They don’t take into account our tourist economy when doing their per capita. That’s how it worked last time they released this report.
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February 18th, 2009 at 10:02 am
Locke massages numbers very carefully. Definitely not a source for accurate reporting.
I agree about safeguarding affordable housing and transit. As I noted in my application for council last fall, we should scrap the Biltmore deck and invest half that much in a solar farm (local jobs, local energy).
As for law enforcement and emergency services, I suspect it could be cut somewhat. I’m not clear how much of the burden for homeland security has been passed on to the city, but the preparedness for terrorist attacks that was being used to justify boosts in emergency services (and the new “secure” headquarters) a couple of years ago is bogus.
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February 18th, 2009 at 10:06 am
Oh, and I wonder if the federal funds we might get will pay for wages. To date, federal money will buy buses but not pay drivers which really puts the city in a bind.
Until gas goes up and stays up, Asheville Transit can’t demand high enough fares to cover driver wages, so city taxes subsidize them. Doubling the size of the fleet and the frequency on the routes would be wonderful, but that won’t float without drivers.
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February 18th, 2009 at 11:42 am
My understanding is that 19 positions that were seen as duplicates are the ones that got cut. I can understand reorganization. Times like this make us reevaluate our priorities. It just sucks for those 19 families.
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February 18th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
What about Solar Farm parking decks?
Pricy – but a double solution.
Do we even know that solar is the best green industry for our area? What is our percentage of average sunshine? I need to find resources so far as what we have the most of naturally that can sustain our energy consumption needs.
Concerning wages – one idea that I keep hearing circulated is local/alt currency, and the possibility of subsidising federal minimun wages to a level of a local living wage through some sort of local circulating currency. It’s a tricky topic, but there have been a lot of good folks who have done much research on it and there seems to be a decent goundswell of support, but no real clear solution. There is going to be an ABC discussion on the possibilities of alternate currency in Sept.
The city needs to examine funding possibilities that are not created through high taxes and empty positions.
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February 18th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Actually one really nice thing about solar energy is that while you may think you need to live in some desert for it to work well, it’s just not so. Germany is going solar in a huge way, and ther climate makes ours here look like Hawaii.
Another nice thing about solar energy is that it’s very decentralized. Central generating plants can be rendered utterly unnecessary. And it can be very, very lo-tek. Like the passive solar heaters one can make out of beer cans or mosquito mesh.
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February 18th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Why not install toll booths to pay for revenue negative infrastructure projects?
We pay to park, whether it is on the city street or city parking garage. Why not pay to drive into the city too?
I grew up in the northeast in a time of many tollbooths. I saw them get removed over time as projects got paid for. Those roads and bridges are now in bad shape. I say bring back the toll booth.
How about one on Patton before it becomes the 240 bridge? Or maybe another on the Billy Graham Freeway at the crest of the Beaucatcher cut. We could even build a little visitor’s bureau/rest area up there in the cliffs of the cut, it might sell some homespun local goods, more taxable revenue.
I say, bring on the usage taxes
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February 18th, 2009 at 8:03 pm
Wow, just think of the traffic jam. Businesses on TUnnel Road would definietely benefit from that toll idea. Maybe a toll on either end of 240 where it meets 40.
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February 19th, 2009 at 2:02 am
Usage taxes are regressive. That is, the poor family in the Escort have to pay the same toll as the guy driving the Bentley.
Also, it’s more effective to charge people to get out, not in. If you charge to get in, they might go somewhere else. But if they want out, you’ve got them by the short’n'curlies.
Now that gives me a better idea:
Use unpaid prison labor to build more prisons for debtors who will be used to build more prisons to hold the ever-growing ranks of debtors who can then be forced to build more prisons to hold…
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February 19th, 2009 at 2:40 am
“Usage taxes are regressive. That is, the poor family in the Escort have to pay the same toll as the guy driving the Bentley.”
Not as regressive as assuming that everyone drives, and taxing folks who walk and bike to pay for highways they don’t use. Roads are meant to be funded by user fees, and labeling it a “regressive tax” is a misnomer that inappropriately tries to elevate road access to the level of basic citizen rights like police protection or clean air and water. Motorists are allowed to externalize too many of their costs as it is.
As for toll booths, I think they are widely recognized to be obsolete; GPS (or something similar) will be the tolling technology of the future and it will be feasible for computers to bill motorists for all their road usage without slowing down traffic.
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