Category Archives: Midlands

I missed my chance, Jerry!

4 Replies

Last week, I meant to react to this news …

About 20 DHEC and EPA agents raided the city’s sewer plant at 8 a.m.
Thursday, armed with a search warrant, weapons and wearing bulletproof
vests — just as parents were dropping off their children at nearby
Heathwood Hall Episcopal School.

… by saying that if it had been ME raiding that place, I don’t think I’d have worried about bulletproof. Bullets wouldn’t have been my main concern. I’d have gone for a hazmat suit. But that’s me.

But forgetting to say that until now at least gave me the excuse of using that headline about "missing my chance."

Now that we’ve had fun, I’ll raise the serious question: First the police department messes. Then the inability to close out the fiscal year because no one knew how. (Or was it the other way around?) Y’all know I like ol’ Mayor Bob, but one begins to wonder if there’s anything the city knows how to do right. I guess I’ll just use it as another excuse to push for the strong-mayor system that would at least give Columbia voters someone to hold accountable.

Free Chicken

13 Replies

On my way to work today, I found myself trapped behind a chicken truck on Sunset Blvd. (the one in West Cola, not the one in L.A.), from I-26 all the way to Columbia Farms.

First, for those of you who haven’t had this experience, banish from your mind any bucolic image of "chicken truck" as the Clampett mobile with several chickens perched up on Granny’s rocker. This is a tractor-trailer in which the full three dimensions of the trailer are taken up with individual cages — sort of a poultry skyscraper on wheels — with uniformly white and miserable-looking chickens on their way to their doom, with billows of white feathers and a foul stenching streaming off the entire load.

The rig was well ahead of me, but not so far that I wouldn’t end up inhaling its miasma at a traffic light if I didn’t either pull over and let it go well ahead, or pass it. The preferred method would be passing it, but since it was apparently doing more than 50 in a 40 zone and seemingly accelerating in that downhill stretch past Hummingbird, that didn’t seem doable without both a) speeding and b) getting closer to it with no guarantee of getting past it. So I hung back — and ended up directly behind it at the stop light at 12th St. Of course,  I closed my vents.

And it was at that moment that I realized what I had been listening to on FM 102.3 since I had first come upon the truck. Yes, ladies and gentlement, it was Lynyrd Skynyrd’s anthem "Free Bird." Near as I can tell, though, none of the chickens were holding up their cigarette lighters as the song approached its climax.

The folks in charge of the soundtrack of my life have an affinity for irony, you see.

During the final instrumental portion, I turned off onto 9th St. So I wasn’t there for the chickens’ big finale.

What’s with this Esplanade, and why am I not getting my taste?

8 Replies

Have you noticed, in that blink of an eye just before you cross the bridge heading toward West Columbia from downtown, a sign that says "Esplanade?"

All I can tell is that it seems to have something to do with the CanalSide development — or the riverfront, in any case. Looking back, I see passing references to it in the paper, and this notice to contractors.

Which makes me think somebody’s pulling a fast one on me. Given that Columbia can employ 42 people in a "unique" department with the express purpose of attracting Homeland Security dollars, I gotta figure there’s money to be made here, too.

True, I haven’t done any actual work to bring this thing about. But neither did Tony Soprano, and he managed to get a couple of "no-shows" and several "no-works" worth of income from HIS Esplanade.

So where’s my taste?

(Seriously, the development of our riverfront is an exciting and positive thing for the Midlands. I just couldn’t avoid poking a little fun at the "Esplanade" name…)

So do I LOOK like a sap, or what?

32 Replies

That was a rhetorical question. (Imagine Billy Bob Thornton saying that, as Mr. Woodcock.)

Jeffrey Sewell from over at S.C. Hotline sent me this suggestion:

Brad,

Would you consider a blog piece encouraging folks not to give
to panhandlers but directly to shelters and churches during the holiday season?

Would that work? Even for a notorious soft touch like me? Long ago, back when I was in college, I sort of developed this attitude that if someone had degraded himself in his own eyes to the point that he’ll beg me as a stranger for money, why not just give him some? I mean, he might as well have the money, because what else has he got?

Admittedly, that’s a poorly defined philosophy, and an odd mixture of sympathy and judgmentalism on my part, but in all the years since, I haven’t really improved on it. I’ve experimented with giving the money, refusing to give the money, and ignoring the supplicant. All three make me feel bad — the first because I’m generally all but certain that I’m being conned (although there’s always the chance that the NEXT guy who needs just a little more money so he can catch the bus to Greenville to see his sick child will be telling the truth), and the others because, even if it’s a con, they make me feel like a rat.

So generally speaking, I’m a soft touch for beggars. But what gets me is that they can spot me at a distance. Either there’s a panhandler database on the Internet with my name and photo on it (so that’s what they’re all doing when they hang out at the library), or they can just TELL. The way I can just tell they’re going to hit me up from the first clearing of the throat, or the first move in my direction.

Sometimes, I can tell before that. Over the weekend, I was parallel-parked in 5 Points. I was in my vehicle already and just about to start the truck and pull away when I saw, about 10 feet off my starboard bow, a panhandler approaching a young woman. I said to myself, "Go, go, GO!" and cranked the ignition, but even though there was every reason to think I’d escape, somehow I knew that the young woman wasn’t going to buy me enough time; he was going to bypass everyone else and somehow get to me before I could get away. And he did. I started the truck, looked over my shoulder for a break in the traffic, and there he was, tapping on my closed window and holding up — this is the best part — an actual, official, U.S. military ID card.

I rolled the window down (what am I gonna do; run over a veteran to get away?), and he was already into his spiel, of which I only caught bits … "Green Beret… nineteen sixty-four…" Yes, it was the classic Billy Ray Valentine approach:

Uh… I was with the Green Berets – special unit battalion commando airborne tactic specialist tactics unit battalion. Yeah!

Apparently, this was Agent Orange himself. I hastily dug a couple of bucks out of my wallet and handed them over, which provoked a gap-toothed grin. He asked, "Bet you didn’t mumble-mumble-mumble THIS year!" So I said "What?" and he said "Bet you didn’t mumble-mumble-mumble THIS year!" and I said either "Yeah," or "No, I didn’t" noncommitally (how could I have committed? I didn’t know what he was saying). And he grinned and nodded, and I drove off.

Where were we? Oh, yeah, Jeffrey’s suggestion. Good idea. But would that work?

Biggest disappointment of the night: Mike Montgomery’s loss

43 Replies

Looking at both our endorsements AND my predictions I made yesterday, you might have already figured out that my biggest disappointment in last night’s results was Mike Montgomery’s apparent loss of his seat on Richland County Council.

Actually, last night was a bad one all around for you folks who live in Richland County, whether you know it yet or not. In the only other contested race, Gwen Kennedy — remembered mainly for her Hawaiian junket at taxpayer expense (and for almost nothing else because she basically accomplished nothing in office that I can recall) when she was on the Council before — won. But we expected that — there was no way a Republican was going to win that seat against a Democrat with name recognition, even BAD name recognition.

But Montgomery was arguably the best, brightest, hardest-working member of council, a guy who truly had the interest of everyone in the county, regardless of party or anything else like that, at heart. On a council that had lost its way recently — putting $30 million for parks ahead of transportation and other critical needs — he was one guy who was right on those and other issues, an extremely level-headed pragmatist with his priorities straight. This is a deep loss for anyone who cares about the future of the county.

And he lost to a guy who — and I kid you not — had exactly two reasons for running:

  1. He didn’t think Decker Boulevard was getting redeveloped quickly enough.
  2. He thought there should be a Democrat on the ticket to take advantage of the Obama Effect. Really. That was his reason. When his wife, who lost to Montgomery in the last election, wouldn’t run again, he put his own name on the ballot. That’s pretty much his story.

So basically, we have here a monument to party line voting over merit, the most stark that I saw in this election. And it’s a real shame.

Oh, and I would have given you some pictures of these two guys on this post, BUT MY LAPTOP GOT STOLEN LAST NIGHT. But perhaps I already mentioned that.

My laptop was stolen last night

34 Replies

Folks, this is awful timing, but you won’t be seeing as many blog posts from me as you normally would, on account of this:

Someone smashed the window out on my truck last night and stole the newpaper’s laptop, the one that is my primary work platform. I do all blogging, all e-mail, most working of photos and cartoons that I handle, plus all of the video and other stuff I do for the blog. All administrative files, such as evaluations and budget info, were on the laptop, plus all of the photos I had taken of candidates for this fall’s elections.

My truck was one of 10 broken into on my street.

That the computer was in my truck was just the worst possible luck. It’s probably been years since I’ve left it there overnight, and I only did it this time because on Monday I came to work without it, which put me way behind on the week, and with the confusion of election night and all, I wanted to make sure I remembered it this morning. Add to that the fact that I normally don’t take it home during the week, but only did so last night because it was election night and I was going to be working from home. I still can’t believe this.

Now I’ve got to run out and deal with the guy who came to replace the window in my truck; he’s here now.

Back to you later.

Now watch this: Lee will blame this on Obama.

My predictions

13 Replies

Here are my predictions as to what I think will happen on the contested races that we dealt with in our endorsements. As always, endorsements are about who should win, not who will win. To fill that vacuum — and to help you see the difference — here are my prognostications (in which I place far less faith, because they are not nearly as carefully considered):

  • Obama will win the presidential election — the real one (electoral college, with at least 300 electors) as well as the popular vote. He’ll win it decisively enough that we’ll know by midnight. BUT McCain will win in South Carolina, probably 55-45. We endorsed McCain.
  • Lindsey Graham will easily win re-election. No prediction on the numbers; I have no idea. In fact, I’m only doing numbers on the presidential, because I really have no idea on any others. We endorsed Graham.
  • Joe Wilson will win against Rob Miller, but it will be close. We endorsed Wilson.
  • Jim Clyburn will have a blowout victory over his GOP opponent. We endorsed Clyburn.
  • John Spratt will win with a margin somewhere between Wilson’s and Clyburn’s. We endorsed Spratt.
  • Nikki Setzler will survive the challenge from Margaret Gamble, and thanks to the Obama Effect, it will be the first time it helped him to be a Democrat in 20 years. We endorsed Setzler.
  • Anton Gunn will beat David Herndon, but it will be fairly close. We endorsed Gunn.
  • Joe McEachern will cruise to victory over Michael Koska. We endorsed Koska.
  • Chip Huggins will roll right over Jim Nelson, who will NOT benefit appreciably from the Obama Effect. We endorsed Nelson.
  • Nikki Haley will win big, again in spite of Obama. We endorsed Ms. Haley.
  • Harry Harmon will again be Lexington County coroner. We endorsed Harmon, although we again made the point that this should NOT be an elective office.
  • Elise Partin will — I hope I hope — win the Cayce mayor’s office (this is the one I have the LEAST feel for, since we’ve never endorsed for this office before). We endorsed Ms. Partin.
  • Gwen Kennedy, despite being best known for a Hawaiian junket the last time she was on Richland County council, will ride the Obama Effect to victory over Celestine White Parker. We endorsed Ms. Parker.
  • Mike Montgomery should prevail (note my hesitation) over challenger Jim Manning, who seems to be running as much as anything because he felt like there should be a Democrat in the race with Obama running. We endorsed Montgomery.

Oh, and Ted Pitts will roll to victory over his last-second UnParty challenger. We didn’t endorse in this one, but if we had, we would have endorsed Ted.

Your voting anecdotes here

27 Replies

Voting2

It took me an hour and forty minutes to vote at the Quail Hollow precinct — most of it standing in the breezy fine mist of rain, which gets cool after awhile even in a camel-hair sport coat. This was the first day in more than a week that I did NOT wear a sweater, which was stupid. I had looked at the weather report on my Treo — mid-60s, it said — and it simply never occurred to me that I would spend 90 minutes of the day standing outside.

But it was OK. Here are some pictures. The one at top was looking toward the front of the line, just after I joined it. Voting3The blurry one at right is a little later, showing all the way to the front of the line. (That’s my wife in the white sweater and dark hair about halfway up, although I didn’t know that until I called her on the phone and she told me she was there; I had thought she was in Shandon watching the twins. If it had been any other sort of line, I would have gone up and cut in to join her. Somehow that seemed a violation of electoral etiquette, though.) The one below is from
about 15 minutes later, at which point the line stretched back about twice as far as the point where I had joined it at 10:08. Note that the mist was falling when those behind us got out of their cars, so they had umbrellas. Many of them did anyway; the lady colonel in the foreground did not, but she was dressed for inclement weather.

All during this there was a steady flow of old folks being escorted to the front of the line, and after a while, I must confess, I was tempted to say, "Oh yeah, right! Like you really need a walker — I’m onto you!" But I didn’t think it would be nice, so I didn’t say it.

When we finally got inside the little building behind the church, the line waiting to check in consisted of about 10 people. Then there was a long, undulating space for a line after registering with only four or five people standing in. Apparently it didn’t occur to the poll workers that they weren’t managing the flow as well as they might. The lady checking in the first half of the alphabet was moving people along pretty well — story of my life; if there’s a way to screw over the W’s, it will be found and acted upon. My half of the alphabet had to wait while our worker was distracted by the old folks bypassing the line. (The whole curbside voting thing seemed very haphazard. They had a van for awhile, but that left. Some cut to the front of the line; some went to a side door, and I got the impression that each person who did so was a bit of a surprise, and was dealt with in an ad hoc manner. But perhaps I didn’t fully perceive what was happening.)

At the front of the line, there were seven machines (not counting the young lady holding the curbside machine — why she was in there, waiting for people to check in and then accompanying them out to the voter in the car, I don’t know). But only five were in use. One of them was specially equipped, I overheard, for the hearing impaired (what role hearing played in the process I don’t know). Maybe it was rigged for sound for the blind, and I misunderstood — it appeared to have headphones attached, which for all I knew was so that the "Rock the Vote" kids could hear loud music while voting.

Why the seventh machine wasn’t in use, I don’t know.

So how did it go for you?

Voting4

Mayor Bob’s update on bus funding

15 Replies

Just now getting to my weekend e-mails, and I see this one from Bob Coble:

I wanted to give you an update from the City County RTA Committee that met at City Hall last Thursday. City Council members include me, EW Cromartie, and Kirkman Finlay. Belinda Gergel also joined us. County Council members include Damon Jeter, Val Hutchinson, and Joyce Dickerson. Chairman Joe McEachern also attended. The Greater Columbia Chamber of Commerce and other groups also were in attendance. The first meeting had four presentations from staff on a variety of background issues. Joe Cronin of the County gave an excellent overview of how our RTA compares to peer cities. I believe that all the Committee members strongly agree on two fundamental points. First that transit is an essential public service that is critical for those who depend on bus service to get to their job and the doctor; an essential environmental tool to prevent non-attainment status and become a green community; and is vital to continuing economic development. Secondly, that the County and the City have the capacity to provide funding currently and it would be unacceptable not to do so.

Frannie Heizer, as the attorney for the RTA, presented the current legal options for funding. She made the following points: First, a sales tax referendum could not be held until November 2010 (Richland County Council could call the referendum now for 2010). Secondly, Frannie believes that the use of hospitality tax for transit would require a change of state law in the 2009 Legislative Session. The County has asked for an Attorney General’s Opinion to see if hospitality tax could be used now without a change in state law. Thirdly, neither City nor County property tax can be used without a referendum and then property tax would be limited by the cap on milage. Fourth, the mass transit fee by the County and the vehicle registration fee by the City and County are available now (both fees are different legally but to the taxpayer are paid in the same way and the same amount). 

When we establish a funding plan, other issues that were discussed included the need for other governments and partners to participate in funding the RTA; doing a comprehensive operations analysis; and changing the RTA organizational structure to have advisory members for those governments that are not providing money to the system.

The next meeting will be Friday November 14th at 9:30 am at the RTA headquarters on Lucius Road. We are inviting three members from the Lexington County Council to participate.

Thanks. I will keep you updated.

Our congressional endorsements today

21 Replies

Yesterday, I wrote the editorial that I dread each election year — the one dealing with Congress. (Actually, some years we do separates on the individual districts, but this year I decided to do it all in one piece — like ripping off a Band-Aid suddenly.) I put it off until it became the VERY LAST endorsement we did. I’m the one who had to write it, and I took advantage of being the editor to keep postponing it.

Now, before anyone gets all huffy about my dismissive attitude — I think Joe Wilson is a really nice guy who tries hard, and I know that Jim Clyburn is deeply and passionately committed to his constituents. But they are both, to me, emblematic of what is wrong with Congress and with our system for apportioning districts.

They are both deeply committed to the agendas of their respective political parties, and you know how I feel about that. Joe is just breathlessly eager to implement GOP initiatives, and Mr. Clyburn (I don’t feel I know him well enough to call him "Jim"), as the Majority Whip, is the very embodiment of Nancy Pelosi’s House. And I don’t like any of that one bit.

So why don’t I do what Doug always says I should do, and endorse the challengers? Because I have too great a sense of responsibility. (As you know, I’ll make a futile gesture with my own personal vote, but I wouldn’t feel right indulging myself that way on behalf of the newspaper.) For all their partisan flaws, Messrs. Wilson and Clyburn are obviously more knowledgeable and better qualified than the people running against them. I have the greatest respect, admiration and appreciation for young Rob Miller’s service as a United States Marine. (As some of you know, the very first thing I wanted to be as a kid — and one thing I could never be, for medical reasons — is a Marine. So the Corps has a particular mystique for me.) But I can’t see where serving as a captain in the Corps has equipped Mr. Miller for the very different duties of a congressman. I’d like to see some other things on his resume — such as service in some lower elective offices. I have a great reluctance to send people off to Washington before we’ve had a chance to see how they serve in office a little closer to home, where we can keep more of an eye on them.

And from what little I’ve seen of the lady running against Mr. Clyburn, I am deeply unimpressed. Watch the debate on ETV if you doubt me.

Now John Spratt is a somewhat different story. I’ve never been conflicted about endorsing him, because he seems to have so much competence, and his partisanship has been far more muted than either of the aforementioned gentlemen.

Those three are the only districts we endorse in, because those are the areas where we deliver the paper.

Anyway, here’s the endorsement(s).

Today’s ‘other’ endorsement — Elise Partin

7 Replies

Partinelise_035

The McCain endorsement, being released early today, was sort of predestined to make a splash to the exclusion of readers noting anything else. So I call your attention to the endorsement that actually ran in today’s paper — that of Elise Partin for mayor of Cayce.

Certainly I want to make sure readers who live in Cayce see it. But beyond that, I see that race as being of at least passing interest to others in the Midlands — which is why we decided to interview and endorse in that race to begin with. The decision of the current and immediately past city administrations to pursue Lebensraum even to the point of going into a neighboring county — combined with such ongoing cross-jurisdictional issues as riverfront development, the regional transit system and such — made this election worth thinking about. In fact, the very first among several people who urged us to look into this race actually lives in Columbia (although others were actual Cayce voters).

Giuglianopaul_035_3
Ms. Partin is an unusually engaging candidate who presents a sharp contrast to status quo incumbent
(Robert Malpass, shown below), and offers a better course for the future than the third candidate (businessman Paul Giugliano, right). It’s an interesting race.

Anyway, I just wanted to make sure this endorsement didn’t get ignored entirely.

Malpassrobert_053

Who (if anyone) is John Vierdsen, and why does he want to be my ‘friend’?

14 Replies

Call me a mossback, but I admit it: I don’t get Facebook. It’s not that I ain’t hep! Blogging is second nature to me. Almost everything else about the Internet, from Google to e-commerce, I do as though I’ve always done them. I’ve essentially been instant-messaging since the early ’80s.

But Facebook foxes me. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t understand why information flows the way it does on that site or is structured the way it is; I have trouble obtaining the simplest information from it.

But most of all, I don’t get the whole "friends" concept. Mind you, I’m not the world’s most sociable guy. There’s family. There’s co-workers. There’s sources. There are nice people I see at church or at Rotary. But friends? Not so much. We’re not encouraged to have "friends" in my business. I’ve been the recipient of disapproving remarks from colleagues on the rare occasions I’ve called someone a "friend" in a column. It’s considered unprofessional.

But ever since I set up a Facebook account (I did it when my youngest daughter’s boyfriend died last year, and I’d heard his sister had set up a page where a lot of people had said nice things about him), I’ve had this steady trickle of e-mails saying

(Name) added you as a friend on Facebook.  We need to confirm that you know (name) in order for you to be friends on Facebook.

To confirm this friend request, follow the link below:

Sometimes these are people I know, usually professionally. I usually confirm them, if only to keep open the lines of communication. Some are members of my immediate family, such as my children. I approve those, of course, although "friend" seems an awfully inadequate way to define the relationship. Some are people whose names are only vaguely familiar, although I generally recognize them when I go to their pages. Then I have a dilemma — should I snub this person who has asked me to be his or her "friend," or potentially compromise myself by declaring to the world that this person is a "friend?" (This category includes a lot of people, usually younger ones, who work in politics professionally.)

Yeah, I get it that the site using the word "friend" to describe a range of relationships much broader than the original meaning, but I’m still not sure what to do.

Then there are the total strangers asking me to be their friends — some of them attractive young women (and some of them young men whose motivation I wonder about, but never mind). The very first person who asked to be my "friend" was an attractive lady (which I knew from the glamor shot) who lives in Germany and is married. I "confirmed" the friendship just so I could send her a message asking, as delicately as I could, whether we knew each other. She said we did not. OK. Whatever.

That was a year ago, and I still don’t understand what’s going on.

Vierdsen
Now, along comes a message saying that "John Vierdsen" wants to be my friend (that is allegedly a picture of him at right). That rang a bell. Sure enough, I went back and found this e-mail I’d received from Randy Page of SCRG on Oct. 13, to wit:

Brad,
I trust that you are doing well.  I noticed that “John Vierdsen” is quoted in the S.C. Blogs section again today.  From all accounts, “John Vierdsen” is a pen name because no one knows who “John Vierdsen” is.  Rumors swirl about his possible identity, but no one really knows….

So I decided to make use of my vaunted "social network." I went to the page on Facebook where I was being asked whether this John Vierdsen is my friend, and saw that we had a number of "friends" in common. I noticed they were mostly Democrats or fellow travelers, such as Bob Coble, Joe Darby, Joe Erwin, James Smith, Laurin Manning, and so on…

… and former colleague Aaron Sheinin. So I sent e-mails to both the mayor and Aaron asking if they knew who, if anyone, this guy is. The mayor responded with possibly the shortest e-mail I’ve ever gotten from him:

I do not know him.

I haven’t heard back yet from Aaron.

So can any of y’all shed light on this guy? Basically, I just want to know whether we got hoodwinked on our Monday blog rail, as Randy alleges.

And then while you’re at it, maybe you could advise me as to whether I want to be "friends" with Darrell Jackson (his is the only "friend suggestion," rather than "friend request," which I take to mean that HE didn’t want to ask me, sort of like getting a third party to ask whether you want to be friends, which sort of takes me back to the 5th grade), or Tom Fowler, or Scott Sokol, or a lovely young lady from Connecticut named "Tiffany…"

Video: Richland 2 superintendent explains why he’s against 4-day school week

19 Replies

  

Richland 2 Supt. Steve Hefner visited us today to talk about the $300 million dollar bond referendum that will be in front of voters on Nov. 4. More about that later. While he was here, I asked him about Jim Rex’s idea of letting districts go to four-day school weeks to save money.

He had some strong objections, which you can hear by viewing the video clip above, taken in our boardroom.

Hefnersteve

Salvation Army says homeless center not moving either way

6 Replies

We just remade tomorrow’s op-ed page to share with our readers a piece that I think everyone should have the chance to read (folks who live in the Elmwood area will find it of particular interest), even though it has already been overtaken by events, and could be more so by the time the paper hits your doorstep Thursday morning.

So it is that I go ahead and give it to you here and now. An explanation: We got this piece today, when Salvation Army board chief Michael Beal shared with us the letter he had sent to Columbia City Council. He wrote it before the Midlands Housing Alliance voted NOT to change its plans and move to a site being pushed by some members of the city council. That happened Wednesday afternoon.

What I don’t know at this writing is what the city council will do in light of a) this letter, which tells them that the homeless services that residential neighbor want well away from them isn’t going to move whatever the Alliance does, and b) the vote by the Alliance this afternoon NOT to change its plans.

I’ve heard one thing about the city’s plans: That it plans to discuss the issue behind closed doors tonight. Here’s hoping that the city’s leaders think better of that and deal with this in the open. For my part I’ll find out when I read the paper in the morning; tonight I’ll be watching the presidential debate (assuming I get out of here by that time tonight). When I’m going to finish reading that blasted book so I can write the column that will be the counterpart to the "Barack Like Me" column, I don’t know. But that’s not your problem, is it?

Anyway, here’s the piece from Mr. Beal, adapted from the letter he sent the council:

Killing homeless center won’t move homeless

By MICHAEL M. BEAL
Guest Columnist
On Wednesday, I sent a letter to Mayor Bob Coble and City Council on behalf of the Columbia Salvation Army Advisory Board to disabuse them of the idea that the homeless are leaving our site at 2025 Main St. If the Midlands Homeless Alliance doesn’t serve them at our current headquarters, we will continue to do so.
    I share the substance of it here.
    The Salvation Army has a 100-year history of caring for the homeless in Columbia. We believe the Homeless Alliance’s plan to build a residential homeless transition center at 2025 Main St. complements out mission.
    The selection of an appropriate location is loaded with emotion. No one wants a homeless facility in their backyard. And yet it must be somewhere.
    City Council, the Homeless Alliance and the Salvation Army all must make decisions that further their missions. Council will have to determine which homeowners to appease and which to upset (Elmwood Park and Cottontown vs. CanalSide) as well as whether to help facilitate a well-financed and well-considered solution to a problem for the greater good.
Council also has a duty to be a good steward of the taxpayers’ money. From an economic standpoint, the Homeless Alliance proposal is clearly the best option.
    The alliance will have to gauge the feasibility of abandoning the Salvation Army site for a city-sponsored alternative, which raises many questions and jeopardizes some of its financing.
    The Salvation Army’s goal is to sell the property to the alliance and become a service provider at the new transition center. To be very clear: If lawsuits or red tape kill the pending sale, we will renovate our facility and continue our residential care mission at 2025 Main St.
    We are informed that much of the financial support garnered by the Homeless Alliance will be lost if the transition center is not built on Main Street. If that occurs, we expect those who had agreed to support the alliance to support us instead, so we can continue to provide shelter and other services.
    If the new residential facility is built somewhere else, that would undoubtedly influence us, but it would not end utilization of the property for homeless services, including programs with substantial residential components.
    This is not an either-or issue. The current zoning permits the Salvation Army to use the property for up to 261 residential beds, with full support services. Infinitely. We continue to serve the homeless today even though much of our funding has been diverted to the transition center. If the Homeless Alliance contract is not closed, we will continue to own the property and will continue our mission and ministry of helping the homeless at 2025 Main St. for another 100 years, or until there are no more homeless people who need our assistance.
    If the Homeless Alliance isn’t able to build its state-of-the-art center, it will further Columbia’s reputation as a dysfunctional city where critical issues are interminably debated, not resolved.
    While we debate and litigate, little is being done to actually solve the problems of homelessness in Columbia. Homeless people (who are people) continue to sleep on the streets and urinate in citizens’ yards. Another winter will come and go in Columbia, and no answers will be provided.
    The Miami shelter, which many members of council and this community visited, has a success rate in excess of 60 percent. If the Midlands Homeless Alliance’s plans are approved and we achieve a success rate close to 60 percent, it will not take long to see a noticeable improvement in downtown Columbia. In addition, the lives of the formerly homeless will be changed forever: They will become employed, tax-paying citizens. If it happened in Miami, it can happen here.
    This is Columbia’s last and best chance to properly address homelessness.
    The alliance’s project has incredible support in the community. Hundreds showed up at the announcement at the Salvation Army this summer. Churches have pledged hundreds of thousands of dollars, and business and individuals have pledged $5 million to match the Knight Foundation’s incredible gift. The Midlands Business Leadership Group, Knight Foundation, United Way, Central Carolina Community Foundation and the faith-based community have come together in an unprecedented fashion on this singular issue to provide something that Columbia has been lacking for many years — leadership.
    We hope that council will be part of the solution and help Columbia take the first step toward becoming the great city we all believe it can become.

Mr. Beal chairs the Columbia Salvation Army Advisory Board.

The problem with ‘stakeholders’

1 Reply

No, not you, if that’s what you call yourself. I’ve got nothing against you. I just don’t like the word. Aside from it being bureaucratese, there’s something … presumptuous about it. As though one can accurately identify certain people as "stakeholders" which implies (but does not necessarily mean, I suppose) that some people are not.

I have this thing about the interconnectedness of all things that bridles at the notion that one can readily identify "stakeholders."

Then again, I suppose there’s a small-R republican part of me that objects to the context in which I usually find the term. I believe in representative democracy, not the direct kind. Barack Obama and other community organizer types are probably a lot more comfortable with the word, and with the concept of including all "stakeholders" (which in a community organizer sense I suppose means everybody who shows up at your meeting) in the decision-making process. Me, I’m all for listening to folks, but at some point a decision has to be made by the folks elected to do so. And often, very often, the correct decision is going to anger "stakeholders." And far, far too often, elected officials nowadays lack the cojones to go ahead and make that decision, because they’re so terrified of the "stakeholders."

Take, for instance, the issue of establishing a comprehensive center to deal with homelessness in metro Columbia. The city proper’s government has repeatedly bollixed up efforts to make this happen, out of fear of a certain sort of "stakeholder" — neighboring residents and business people motivated by the NIMBY principle. Here’s the thing about that: This center would be good for the community as a whole, and would in fact pull homeless people OFF the streets in its immediate area and start dealing with their problems. It needs to go SOMEWHERE, and that somewhere needs to be a place that homeless people can get to.

You may recall that several sites have been rejected over the last couple of years, from the State Hospital property on Bull St. (which would have been perfect for the temporary site that was under consideration), to one right down the road from us (which was fine with us at the newspaper, but OTHER "stakeholders" objected, so it fell apart).

In recent days, the group of citizens that has been busting its collective hump to make this thing happen in SPITE of the city has been moving toward establishing the center at the current Salvation Army site on Main St. Some on city council have been pushing a site down by the canal that you and I can’t actually see from the road (at least I haven’t). Maybe that’s a good site, but there are a couple of problems: The first is that the people who’ve actually been WORKING on the issue have a lot invested in the Main St./Elmwood site. The second is that, while the city council folks pushing the canal site say theirs is better because residential neighbors object to the Main/Elmwood one (true), now that word of it has gotten out, neighbors of the canal site are ready to sue as well (specifically, one big neighbor, the Canalside development). So it’s a wash.

The other day I remarked to Warren and Cindi that what’s needed is for the "stakeholders" OTHER than the neighbors need to get their act together and unite behind a site — something that’s supposed to happen in a meeting at 2:30 p.m. today, in fact — and then deal with the objections of neighbors. Because the objection of neighbors is a constant. It’s a wash. You have to deal with it either way. And the fact that some "stakeholders" are always going to be opposed cannot be allowed to prevent anything from happening.

Too many people who say "stakeholders" a lot think everybody has to be happy with a decision. As long as you’re willing to face the fact that some "stakeholders" will be unhappy even when you do the right thing (and some of them especially if you do the right thing), then by all means, go ahead and use the word.

What, you ask, set me off on this topic? Oh, I was cleaning out my e-mail from recent days, and ran across this, which is really unrelated to my rant about the word:

 

FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Oct. 8, 2008

DHEC announces water stakeholder meetings

COLUMBIA
– As part of an evaluation of the uses and quality of South Carolina’s
freshwater, the
S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control will be holding stakeholders
meetings across the state, the agency announced today.

"Stakeholders
will have an opportunity to share their thoughts on freshwater quality
standards, classifications, and uses, as they relate to recreation," said David
Wilson, chief of DHEC’s Bureau of Water. "We’ll be sharing information and also
will be available to answer questions and concerns….

I’m guessing that since this was a public announcement, "stakeholder" means anybody who shows up, although maybe I’m misunderstanding. Used to be we were "citizens," or "the public." But now we’re "stakeholders," and are we any better off for it? I don’t think so.

Christmas decorations. Already

21 Replies

Xmasdecor

As long as I’m in a griping, humbuggish mood, I might as well put in my bid for winning the prize for Xmasdecor2
spotting the first Christmas decorations of the "season."

I shot these pictures with my Treo at the Walmart store on Bush River Road on Saturday, Oct. 11.

And yeah, I fully expect some of y’all to be able to claim to have seen some Christmas stuff before I did, and spoil what tiny bit of satisfaction I might gain from being the first in my neighborhood to publicly gripe about it.

Bah. Double Bah. Bah squared.

Lord help me, but I do hate crowds

10 Replies

Don’t go anywhere NEAR the part of town where the State Fair is, unless you’re going to the State Fair. And if you are going to the State Fair, don’t. Pick another day and another time. Save yourself and others the aggravation.

What would you do instead with the time? Oh, I don’t know…. Let’s see, it’s the middle of the day on Monday; maybe you could GO TO WORK!!!!

No, I’m not in a good mood. I made the mistake of going to my Rotary meeting, which as always was at Seawell’s, which as you know is directly across from the main northern entrance to the Fair. That’s always difficult at this time of year, but this time was BY FAR the worst I’ve ever experienced.

I tried to be philosophical about it. I tried to make the most of the situation, get with the holiday mood for a bit before going back to the office, which I could tell was going to take awhile. I decided to walk over and get myself a bag of cotton candy to take to work with me.

So I crossed Rosewood and went up to the ticket booth, and the guy said sure, go around there and get in line and get yourself a "lunch token" for $5, and if you get it back to HIS booth by 2 o’clock, you get your money back.

It was 1:54. I couldn’t even have purchased the token, much less have gotten my cotton candy, by then. And I had only $8 in my wallet. If I had given up the fiver, I couldn’t have bought the cotton candy. (That didn’t even strike me until later, so I’m glad I didn’t try to beat the clock.) What, I’d like to know, is magical about 2 p.m.? If I hadn’t had to go to Rotary, I wouldn’t have even thought about trying to get lunch before 2 o’clock. On the days I eat at my desk (the overwhelming majority of the time, that’s what I do), I never think about it before then.

So I was already feeling pretty alienated, before I walked back to my truck, and before I fought my way out of the parking lot, and had to go a mile or two in the direction away from my office before I could turn and fight my way back past the fair again.

You know when I got back to my office? 2:21 p.m. I could have walked it a couple of times in that amount of time, and would have if I’d had any idea how long it would take. Almost half an hour of sitting still idling, with gas at its current price, with my windows open, breathing the exhaust of thousands of other vehicles.

Even if my purpose had been to go to the fair, and I’d had plenty of cash in my pocket, it would not have been worth it. As it is, I’m in a foul mood.

And the only constructive thing I can derive from the experience is to warn you that, if you’re about to try to go to the Fair, please think twice.

Stop feeding off me! Give blood

6 Replies

OK, I’m just kidding with the headline — chalk it up to my having put "Cool Hand Luke" into my DVD player after Paul Newman died. That is, I’m sort of kidding.

The fact is that those of us who do give blood regularly could use a little help from those who could, but don’t.

Night before last, my cell phone rang just before 9 p.m., when I was about to watch the presidential debate. It was a staffer at the local Red Cross, saying that there was a dire need, even greater than usual, for my blood type (O positive, the universal donor — anybody can use my corpuscles), and they needed me to come down right away. "Tonight?" I asked, which didn’t seem ridiculous given his urgent tone. No, he said with a chuckle — Wednesday would do.

So I showed up for my 6:45 p.m. appointment. During the extensive private interview in the little room ("Have you, since 1980, had sex with a little green woman from Mars known to inject drugs into her antennae?" "No… wait, you did say after 1980, right?"), I mentioned the late night call, and my interviewer didn’t understand why I was called so late. But they certainly needed my blood. They always do. The Midlands area regularly has to import from other regions, because folks here just don’t give enough to meet the need.

The guy who called Tuesday night said something else I hadn’t been asked before — he urged me to bring a friend. Well, I started to, right after I got off the phone. But my wife is a cancer survivor who still undergoes regular treatments, and my daughter is nursing twins. There were no other adults in the house. The next day at work, I thought about sending out a global e-mail, but I was unsure whether it was kosher for a vice president to ask fellow employees for their blood. I briefly thought of going downstairs to check with HR (they have a list of dos and don’ts that are not always intuitive), but got busy and forgot.

But I have no reservations about urging y’all to go give blood, so you can "stop feeding off me!" Just kidding. Kinda.

‘Boogie Man:’ Atwater film coming to Cola

15 Replies

Atwaterlee_2

You probably already read in the paper that "Boogie Man," the documentary about Lee Atwater, is coming to the Nickelodeon. A fresh reminder came in via e-mail from Judy Turnipseed:

This movie which starts this week at the Nickelodeon about
the famous Lee Atwater features Tom Turnipseed with a lot of other South
Carolinians.  Tom will be on a panel about the movie on Friday night. 
 
Here is a review of
it in the New York Times
 
 
Here is a link to a trailer of the movie and how to buy
tickets at the Nick if you want to see the movie.

http://www.boogiemanfilm.com/ 

 

Tom, of course, was the object of one of the most outrageously mean things Atwater ever said. Here, from a 1991 story by our own Lee Bandy, is a short version of that bit of history:

Tom Turnipseed, a liberal Democrat who ran for Congress in South Carolina, once accused Atwater of engineering a survey of white voters in which they were pointedly informed of Turnipseed’s membership in the NAACP. Atwater denied the charge, but also said that he did not want to deal with allegations made by someone who had once been "hooked up to jumper cables," referring to shock treatments Turnipseed had received years before as a suicidal teenager.

He said that in 1980, when Turnipseed was running against Floyd Spence.

Manholes in the Midlands

6 Replies

Back in the early 90s, I was one of a handful of editors who helped shape a drastic reorganization of The State‘s newsroom, challenging and in some cases throwing out fundamental assumptions about what we covered and how we covered it. (I was also the first one, months later, to say the new system didn’t work, but no one was listening to me at that point.) We came up with some pretty wacky, high-concept beats, but there was one I could never get the others to go for, one that I still think would be a good one — the "driveby beat." Basically, it would involve assigning a reporter to answer the kinds of questions that occur to you driving around the Midlands — What are they building there? How long will I have to take this detour? Whose responsibility is it to fix that pothole? What do all those people waiting for the library to open do the rest of the time? Essentially, just about anything that might occur to you to wonder about when you drive by it, and that normally you would never get an answer to.

For instance, Sunday morning I wanted to know why I couldn’t get anywhere closer than a couple of blocks from the Gervais Starbucks in my truck. It apparently had something to do with people riding around on bicycles in silly outfits, but I had to wait until this morning to get an answer. And I’m still not satisfied, by the way (that is, I’m not satisfied that was worth diverting traffic for, but then I’m a real curmudgeon about these things).

One of the letter writers on our Monday page got me to thinking about another one that I usually forget by the time I get to work. Here’s the letter:

Manholes are hazards around Columbia

Why is it that with the technology to provide a smooth, correctly profiled, beautifully laid asphalt roadway, no one seems able or willing to address the numerous manholes that seem to dot every block of roadway on our main thoroughfares?

When you ask a paving contractor about it, he or she sounds like Freddie Prinz of “Chico and The Man” — “It’s not my job!” How about, at least, a composite disc to raise the low ones to the roadway elevation?

With so many diverse utilities — the water and sewer department, SCE&Grab, Bell South/Southern Bell (whatever), etc. — nobody wants to take the time, expense or effort to raise (or lower) these units to the proper elevation before paving, and they are legion. Ride over to Forest Drive and take a look.

There is one in front of the State Museum (outbound lane) that would knock the treads off an Abrams tank if hit at 30 mph.

BEN BOATWRIGHT
Columbia

More specifically, here’s what’s on my mind: I’ve grown accustomed to the periodic indentations along Sunset Blvd. in the left-hand land heading down to the river through West Columbia. It’s been like that for years, and I either stay in the right lane, or dodge the manholes, or put up with my truck being jarred into rattling every few seconds.

But now, on the days I take that route, there’s a new barrier — coming up from the river on Hampton. You know, the part that’s several lanes one-way? It got repaved last month, and apparently it got ground down WAY below the manhole covers before repaving, but was not paved back UP to the manhole covers. The pavers dealt with that by constructing volcano-like slopes around the manholes, creating a sort of slalom situation — particularly right at the top of the hill, at Hampton and Park — if you don’t want to experience the equivalent of multiple speed bumps.

I am as sure as anyone can be of something like this that this situation did not exist BEFORE the repaving. I’m pretty sure I’d remember it if it had been like that.

If I we had created that driveby beat, and if I still worked in the newsroom, and if I were that reporter’s editor, I’d have him or her call around to find out who’s responsible, and whether anyone plans on doing anything about it.

Or if I were an editorial page editor in another state, one where government isn’t impossibly fragmented, I’d just call City Hall and probably get an answer.

But since I’m an editor in South Carolina with half the staff he used to have, I’m going to use the same technique I used to check Nicholas Kristof’s math — post the question on a blog, and see if I get an answer.

Now I’ve got to run; there are proofs on my desk that need reading.