Column for Feb. 9, 2012

When considering the government expenditure of public money, we all have to ask, “To what end?”  Not everything that is a nice idea is necessarily a good idea, nor is it in the public best interest.  Furthermore, government has to take into account the impact on area residents when entering into contracts.  There are several cases in point in the news.

There have been and will be meetings in the Town of Selma at which residents can express their concerns to the town leadership.  One big concern has been the high cost of utilities in town.  Selma, like other towns, is a public power community, meaning that the town owns the electrical system and is contracted to purchase energy and then retails it to its citizenry.  I have written many times about this.  Basically, this amounts to another tax upon the town residents.  Since we pay significantly higher rates than customers who deal with Progress Energy directly, any dollar amount above what would be charged if we bought the electricity ourselves from the power company should be considered taxation, not merely utility costs.

What I found unacceptable was the town’s attitude of “Too bad, we have a contract to do business this way, so you have to live with the high costs.  Try cutting back on your electricity use.”  No, the town brought this burden upon us by a poor contract for services, so the town, if not already doing so, should be looking at being released from that contract.  I never hear that as a possibility from anyone.  Also, any town should never obligate itself and its citizens for numerous decades as has been done with many local communities.

I looked with interest at an article about the Town of Selma moving forward with building a train viewing platform.  I still laugh at this one.  We may be a railroad-centric town, but this is ridiculous.  I don’t care if the town is seeking funding from some grant.  If the grant comes from any governmental source, it is tax money.  If it is from a private institution, that is another thing.  Either way, the town has to pay $2500 just to have a company process the grant application.  Then it is recommended that the town commit to at least a $5000 sum of public tax dollars to help attract the grant.  So the town wants to spend at least $7500 to hope to get a $75,000 platform.

I am making an offer right now to the Town of Selma.  I will gladly save them all of the money mentioned, go to Lowe’s or Big Lots and buy a couple of park style benches out of my own pocket.  I won’t even ask to have my name on a plaque attached to them.  We don’t need a train watching platform in town.  We already have a nice train station with a sizable concrete pad.  People already come here with lawn chairs and sometimes even radios to hear the train radio traffic.  When the come, however, they come with their own coolers, drinks, and lunches.  I doubt that they purchase much, if anything, in town.

Again, I ask, “To what end?”  If the desired end is to attract more people to town, will we ever attract sufficient people to little old Selma to watch trains to justify the public expenditure of $75,000?  That is doubtful, regardless of from where that money comes.  How about the $7500 that the town will be staking for the project?  I doubt highly we will make that back in tax revenue, ever.  How about just the $2500 the town will spend for someone to process a grant application to pursue the money?  Yeah, right.  I doubt even that would be recovered.

People who come here to watch trains are not going to be interested in purchasing antiques.  And if they do venture into town to find a restaurant, their choices will be limited.  Creech’s Drug can’t sell enough homemade orange-ade to gain sufficient sales tax to cover the town’s expenses on this project.  Just because it is a nice idea, it doesn’t mean that the town should spend money on it.

I like the Selma Development Partnership’s idea of having a town museum as one example of how to do a project without tax dollars involved.  Granted, the small building may end up falling off the property tax rolls now that it is owned by a non-profit group, but at least we are not spending tax dollars.  It is ironic that one of the smallest business buildings in town will be the Selma museum.  Basically it can showcase a jar of Vick’s Vaporub and a model train and that about covers the town.  At least my tax dollars won’t be paying for it, though I will be willing to buy the jar of Vaporub at Creech’s Drugstore to donate to the museum.

Column for August 25, 2011

Should a town be beholden to the State of North Carolina for every last decision? I say no. I was reading the article in “The Selma News” about about the Town of Selma’s desire to close the road around the railroad crossing on Preston Street by the old feed mill. I cringed when I read about how the Town Council decided to hold off on the vote until next month. I wish I still had the newspaper in front of me, but my two-year-old got to it, tore up the paper, and it got tossed in the recycle bin. I do recall that the town wanted to get input from the state Department of Transportation before taking a decision. I am all for having all the needed information before you prior to taking decisions, but that irked me a bit.

If Selma is an autonomous government agency, then it has its own jurisdiction and decision taking ability. I am told that Preston Street is a state road despite its length and termination points. It probably should be a town road, anyway. As much as I disagree with the proposed closing, I do believe that it should be Selma's decision to take, considering that the road is entirely within the town's jurisdiction.

There is a reason that each town has its own jurisdiction. I think back to when Selma was rezoning a parcel of land so that it could be used for industrial applications, specifically for an ethanol plant. I recall it vividly because I was on the town’s Planning Board at the time and was one of those who voted on that matter. I also went to the town council meeting about that decision. What irritated me about that meeting was that our neighboring town of Pine Level wanted to have a say in the matter. Speakers from Pine Level droned on for quite some time about their opposition to the ethanol plant. First, the agenda item was for a rezoning request, not for a debate over the merits of an ethanol plant. Second, this was a Selma matter within Selma planning and zoning jurisdiction, and not that of Pine Level. Selma can take its own decisions within its own jurisdiction, thank you very much.

As to the road closing request coming from a safety perspective, I do have experience in this area. Safety and risk management are part of my educational and work background. Sometimes there are acceptable levels of risk to take. Anytime you get into an automobile, there are inherent risks associated with travel of any distance. Yet we assume that risk regularly. How often are we going to shut down an intersection under the guise of safety? That railroad crossing has been decades and yet I don’t recall a single massive wreck associated with it in the news since I have been a Johnstonian. So to me, the safety issue is a non sequitur.

This safety claim reminds me of my very first column in this very newspaper about the Town of Selma spending thousands of dollars to take down an abandoned water tower for alleged safety and liability issues. The tower had been fine as it was for decades, but in a time of budget cuts and layoffs of town personnel, the town spent money needlessly at that point. It was reasonable, assumable risk at the time and could have been accomplished later in better financial times.

There are two more reasons that I personally oppose the closing of this railroad crossing. The first is freedom. I occasionally use this public road, for which I pay taxes for its upkeep. I despise the many roads that already dead end at railroad tracks in this town. How many more are we going to close? Shall we wait until only Pollock Street, Buffalo Road, Anderson Street, and Ricks Road remains as crossings?

Furthermore, I am not much for accommodating a railroad’s desire to close a road when they keep digging up our crossings almost every year, especially at Ricks Road. We have the worst crossing there now we have ever had. Another bad crossing is now near the train depot on East Anderson Street. Trenches with gravel tossed in them have been the norm now for quite a while and are simply horrendous. I can remember at least four times in as many years that the crossing at Ricks Road has been closed and torn up. Each time it’s never a quality job as was done on Peedin Road in Smithfield, on Buffalo Road, or even in the Town of Lillington.

Until all of our crossings are fixed nicely by all railroads that cross through our town and in a timely fashion, I would not be so willing to make accommodations for taking away more of our town’s access ways. As it is, I saw three signs on three different roads just this week warning of temporary crossing closures. Closing multiple crossings for construction has happened before, and I find that to be more dangerous in terms of cutting off emergency response by fire and ambulance equipment than any single crossing remaining open. It almost makes me want to see Railroad Days changed to some other type of festival. I can’t possibly be the only one who thinks that way.