Column for Sept. 6, 2012

Selma has two main claims to fame.  Well, besides being the home of a great newspaper and television commentator (typed while my tongue was firmly pressed in my cheek), we can claim to be the birthplace of Vicks Vaporub, and we can claim to be a railroad town.  I don’t know if the latter can really be considered a reason to be famous, really.  Thousands of towns across the country have railroads running through them.  We just happen to be a high traffic railroad centric town.

As anyone who has traveled through Selma can tell you, freight trains run through town many times a day and Amtrak makes regular stops at Union Station (an original name if I ever heard one).  Amtrak may be making more trips through the area sometime soon.  A newly announced Thruway Motor Coach service will be serving eastern North Carolina through the Wilson train depot.  One route will connect cities like Greenville, New Bern, Havelock and Morehead City to train service on the north/south corridor of New York City to Savannah, and another will run to Goldsboro, Kinston, Jacksonville and Wilmington.

I don’t know how popular the routes will be, but the most likely people to benefit may be college students and military personnel.  The ones who will least benefit are the American taxpayers.  Don’t get me wrong, I have made use of Amtrak service before and I may again.  Unfortunately, my experience has been that traveling by train has been no cheaper than traveling by air or automobile.  

I once took a trip on Amtrak from Selma to New York City.  I appreciated being able to get on a train just a mile from my house and step off the train in Penn Station in Manhattan.  The down side was that I literally paid a little more for the round trip tickets than I would have if I had flown direct from RDU Airport to New York City.  The flight would have taken about ninety minutes whereas the rail trip took nine hours.  I had to put up with expensive onboard food, train staff with bad attitudes, backed up train bathrooms, and nine hours of “buck and sway”.  On the plus side, I didn’t have to travel to RDU, pay to park, go through security, board, deplane, and get transportation into the city once I arrived.

The sad part about Amtrak is that the train system loses billions of dollars.  We taxpayers foot the bill for it.  Every rider’s trip is subsidized by the taxpayer.  I have read the arguments both pro and con about federal and state funding for Amtrak.  I realize that with gas prices staying high, ridership has increased.  I also realize that the US taxpayer can’t afford to keep paying for every service, program, and policy that some bureaucrat thinks is needful.

Personally, I don’t like flying.  I drive most places to which I travel.  Of course with an increasing and young family, I don’t always relish the thought of putting three children in a mini-van and driving fifteen hours to go visit family.  On the other hand, Amtrak doesn’t go everywhere I would like to go and I don’t feel like packing lightly for air travel and hustling a family of five through airports.

I would love to see rail service privatized, but I don’t know if an efficient private service could make it or not, considering the amount of improvements that would need to be made to compete while keeping fares affordable.  I was looking at fares to go see a Carolina Panther’s football game in Charlotte.  With service being indirect to the destination, the train only leaves from Raleigh, and the cost being as much as gasoline, is it worth it?  It’s probably not.

Will thousands of people take the train from down east to connect to New York and points north or even just to the Triangle or Charlotte?  I don’t know if they will or not.  

As much as I would like to see rail passenger service be a viable form of transportation, I am having a hard time maintaining support for it when I see the dollar figures for the losses incurred per passenger and for the high fares charged per passenger.  When fares are as much if not more than airfare, the travel times are horrendously longer, and the taxpayer subsidizes the service, I am finding it hard to support the idea of more routes being added to a money pit.

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 Sept. 17, 2009

Most government programs and spending problems are caused by so called "good ideas". My cry for years has been that not every good idea, nice idea, feel good idea, or desired outcome has to be pursued by government or warrants the expenditure of tax dollars. Nowhere has this been more prevalent than at the federal government level. However, this happens at the state, county, and even municipal levels as well.

I am somewhat of a "news hound", though I do not read every article, listen to every detail in every news cast, or go into endless detail on some issues. Sometimes I stop and read with great interest. I just read two local stories with great interest. Both are so called good ideas that are going to expend your tax money for someone's desired result.

In Smithfield, there is a problem that is dear to the hearts of the police department. The dear problem is deer. According to the news story, "for the past three years, police officers have been instructed to reduce the overabundance of white-tailed deer by shooting them." The police officers will "use deer stands, archery equipment, and shotguns to control the deer heard along the Neuse River basin in South Smithfield."

Do we not already have a North Carolina Wildlife Management Division for such things? Is killing deer a law enforcement function? Are the deer breaking the law? Is the penalty for Bambi's jay walking now a death sentence?

I have no problem with either hunting or with guns. I have some rifles that would serve nicely as deer hunting instruments. I personally am not into shooting Bambi and his cousins, nor have I seen Bambi Helper at my local Food Lion to use for cooking the meat. Many hunters I know are not really hunters, anyway. I shoot for fun and use open sights. A lot of hunters are not hunters at all, but rather snipers with high powered scopes and shoot from great distances. Nonetheless, I would rather the thinning of the deer population be reserved for private citizens who would be willing to take care of the problem at zero expense to tax paying citizens and reserve law enforcement officers for law enforcement activities.

I would have other concerns, such as whether the Town of Smithfield can disregard laws regarding hunting seasons, the types of weapons used in hunting, and the like. Those things are governed by the state, not a municipality. Are law enforcement officers being paid to break the law? What about the liability associated with any mistakes they commit while trying to whack a white tail?

A second thing I read that made me scratch my head was the Town of Selma's desire to build a $28,000 train-viewing platform. Yes, Selma has taken the moniker of a railroad town. Yes, there are some people who like to sit and watch trains from time to time. Yes, there is federal DOT money leftover from the remodel project. Yet, this is money that was forcibly taken from taxpayers.
Like I said at the outset, not every nice project is something we need to sink tax money into. I would rather see that money sent to Amtrak to help offset its budget deficits or lower the unreasonably high ticket prices that often are higher than airfare. Believe me, I have done some comparison shopping just within the past week.

I just had the conversation with a buddy of mine about the amount of use that such a platform would get. He said he knows folks who come to Selma just to sit, watch trains, and listen to the railroad radio traffic on scanners. My reply was that instead of spending $28,000 for an overblown gazebo (albeit a nice gazebo), I could spend $40 a piece for some benches at Big Lots and mount a scanner and speaker for far less.

I was also informed that some of his friends who come pack a lunch, take lawn chairs, and make a day of train watching. First, I can not imagine what it would be like to not have a life, like those folks, but bringing a lunch and loitering at the station does not bring tourism dollars except maybe for a few Coca Colas at the local Short Stop convenience store.

If you enjoy paying for police officers to summarily execute stags and does for breathing air and taking up space, or can equate train spotting in Selma to seeing planes take off at RDU Airport from observation decks, then you are going to love staying here in Johnston County. And if Selma does build such a train observation deck, at least I can hook up the town with someone I know who does excellent work. I am sure I can get a kickback somehow, thereby returning some of my tax money to me.