Author: marynewsom

Go to almost any city in America, and if you want to find the neighborhood that was urban renewed out of existence, look for Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Bingo.
So you guessed it! The Charlotte street some people want to rename MLK Drive runs smack through what used to be the historic black neighborhood called Brooklyn. It was mostly urban renewed out of existence. It was further plundered when I-277 was built along one side.
Now that part of downtown is a rather desolate sector of government buildings, parking lots and an underused (except by Canada geese) park.
Here’s another funny thing. A bunch of Southern traditionalist types are pouting because they say the street, named Stonewall, honors a Confederate War hero. However, there’s no evidence that it does or doesn’t. More on that below.
One more funny thing. A big chunk of Stonewall Street years back (my guess is 1950s) was renamed Independence Boulevard. Wonder if the same folks kicked up a fuss then. When I moved here in 1978, Independence ran along Stonewall Street. It came past CPCC, as now, past Charlottetown Mall, and then shot up toward the Observer building, but at some point (I can’t quite remember where) it curved left, then right again and went down what’s now called Carson Boulevard. Somewhere around there Independence magically changed names – this IS Charlotte, after all – into Wilkinson Boulevard. The coming of I-277 rerouted that section of then-Independence and the city restored its older name: Stonewall.
Back to Stonewall. Dan Morrill, local historian, says it’s his “reasoned judgment” the street wasn’t named for Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, whose widow, Anna Morrison Jackson, was from Charlotte and lived here for years. “The street name is old,” Morrill says. “I looked at two maps, one dating from 1890-something and the other 1877.” Both maps showed it named Stonewall Street, he says.
What makes him think it wasn’t named for Stonewall Jackson is that, as he says, “I would have thought that in all of my meanderings about Charlotte that I would have heard that that was what it was named for. … I read every edition of the Charlotte Observer from 1890 to 1925, and I never saw any reference to that.” He also thinks that if it had been named for Stonewall Jackson, it wouldn’t have been called just Stonewall Street, but would have been Thomas Jackson Street or something.
“I’ve got a feeling, “ he says, “that if somebody wants to go down there [the Carolina Room at the main library] and spend a week cranking microfilm, they might find something.”
Tom Hanchett, historian for the Levine Museum of the New South, who’s done a lot of research into old Charlotte neighborhoods, also isn’t sure. “It’s a strange street to pick for that name,” he says. He also mentions: “It’s a sucky street to name after King. Can’t we do better than that?”

More on the “is New Urbanism a good idea?” theme. Comments welcome, below:

Longtime west Charlotte activist Sue Friday sent this note:
“I just don’t think anyone should be advocating new urbanism. I doubt you and I could afford to live in Seaside. The problem with NU is that it encourages people to set themselves up in elitist communities and feel good about it. Birkdale, built away from everything out in a cow pasture and on the wrong side of 77 is a prime example. I think part of its “charm” is exclusivity — price and distance from undesirable people. Places like that damage Charlotte, drain off strength, $, and energy. It would be so much more exciting if it had been done as redevelopment in some of the older, poorer neighborhoods accessible to everyone. What has been done to the northern end of the county and the small towns there is inexcusable. The worst part is how smug so many of the planners and developers are because they can paste on a NU label.”

I disagree. Here’s my response:
“Lord knows, there’s plenty of elitist development going on around Charlotte, and most of it isn’t New Urbanist at all. I don’t think it’s fair to condemn New Urbanism because it’s being applied, in many cases, in suburban locations like Birkdale. In Charlotte, the ‘burbs are where almost all the large-scale development is going on. Why condemn New Urbanism — one style of design — just because it’s being used in greenfield development? Would you rather have a Birkdale looking the way it does, or have another standard-issue regional shopping mall there, a la Northlake?
Yes, we’d both prefer that more development was happening in older, poorer neighborhoods. But it isn’t Birkdale’s New Urbanist design that caused it to be built where it is or target the markets that it does. The villain in that is the whole larger picture of metro-area development economics.
Since suburban development is going to happen anyway — much as you and I would prefer to see underused, in-town sites developed instead –why shouldn’t it be better designed, better for the environment, more suited to support public transit and more like the neighborhoods that have stood the test of time? Plenty of New Urbanist developments aren’t elitist — although Seaside sure isn’t among them. One key New Urbanism principle is to include a range of housing at a range of prices, by including more “affordable” options: apartments over stores, garage apartments and live-work units, etc. etc. Seaside has those places, but Seaside got so popular even the tiny places built to be “affordable” aren’t, any more.
Like you, I like places with more age on them. They have more soul. I’d much rather live in Elizabeth than Baxter. I’m not going to be attracted to anything new, even New Urbanist new. But new stuff keeps getting built. And I think New Urbanism is a better option for it than replicating Piper Glen or Hunter Oaks or Foxcroft the ga-zillions of subdivisions named for the landscapes the developer destroys.

The head of the Knight Program for Community Building at University of Miami, where I have a yearlong fellowship, sent a note responding to comments from one or two fellows who criticized New Urbanist developments because they aren’t redeveloping existing city neighborhoods, etc. His name is Chuck Bohl. Here’s what he wrote:
“In the words of one new urbanist realist, ‘New Urbanism cannot prevent tooth decay.’ It is not a panacea for all of the challenges of community building, and neither is zoning, housing policy, traffic engineering, social services, economic development, community development and environmental regulation in a vacuum.
“New urbanism restores physical planning and design to the toolkit, and, rather than the urban renewal and heroic Modernist architecture and planning of the 1960s, it espouses relearning how to make walkable, mixed-use places with an attractive public realm of great streets and public gathering places, civic institutions, and a mix of housing types. [New Urbanist] principles have been applied to HOPE VI [public housing] projects, manufactured housing neighborhoods, and all manner of urban infill.”

Plenty of comments to yesterday’s post on whether school board member George Dunlap should reply to a racist e-mail he received, and if so, what he should say. Feel free to add your own thoughts.
Today I received this from reader Jim Jordan in Laurinburg, about 100 miles east of Charlotte if you head toward Wilmington. Jordan wrote:
“Once I was sitting at the dinner table talking about the integration of the University of Mississippi. My father suddenly called me a ‘n—– lover.’ I told him that he might be correct and I also loved him.
“I’ve discovered over my years in teaching that there are people of all races who dislike to the point of hatred people of other races. Usually this has to do with something that happened up to five hundred years ago and had only a nominal effect of the people doing the hating. We recipients of the hatred have to consider the source and move on with our lives.
“I can understand the problems with the CMS system. It isn’t simply that the voters continue to elect idiots – not especially their fault when good people refuse to run for the School Board and your only choice is the lesser of the two idiots. It also has to do with the history of integration in CMS.
“Court ordered busing and really long bus trips all over the county aren’t going to please many people. More important than that, it puts kids who do not know each other and have never had any experience dealing with each other in the same school. One group will consider the school ‘theirs’ and the other group will be the interlopers. It’s not going to be a pretty sight.
“Then in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s the CMS Board and administration sent out a message to teachers and administrators. ‘We expect you to keep order but if you get into trouble you swing in the wind alone.’ That in itself was enough to create a hemorrhage of teachers out of CMS that the system is dealing with today. More importantly it created the idea of an acceptable level of chaos.
“Kids, whether black, white, Asian, or whatever are going to act like kids. That means quite often irresponsibly and always on the edge of the boundaries. It only takes one kid going beyond the pale every day to destroy the learning environment in the classroom. If the classroom teacher gets no support and no help in managing a disorderly student and is also held accountable for all the testing – well, you have problems.
“Now having said that, I’ll say this. I taught from 1966 until I retired in 2000. At no time, even during the darkest days of school riots, did I ever see black students as more of a discipline problem than white students. I realized early on that black students were more likely to be referred to discipline than white students. If they were referred they were more likely to be suspended or expelled. But the problem tended to be this zero-tolerance, one-size-fits-all policy that we developed to avoid being sued. Kids are individuals, we’re told. Why not treat them as individuals and let the lawyers have at it?
“Should Mr. Dunlap reply? I think not. What difference would it make to the person who wrote him? What should Mr. Dunlap do? Deal with the CMS problems, that begin with a childishly acting board, and move on to everything else that troubles the system.
“There will always be people around who don’t like you for some reason. Don’t worry about it and do your job.”

Plenty of comments to yesterday’s post on whether school board member George Dunlap should reply to a racist e-mail he received, and if so, what he should say. Feel free to add your own thoughts.
Today I received this from reader Jim Jordan in Laurinburg, about 100 miles east of Charlotte if you head toward Wilmington. Jordan wrote:
“Once I was sitting at the dinner table talking about the integration of the University of Mississippi. My father suddenly called me a ‘n—– lover.’ I told him that he might be correct and I also loved him.
“I’ve discovered over my years in teaching that there are people of all races who dislike to the point of hatred people of other races. Usually this has to do with something that happened up to five hundred years ago and had only a nominal effect of the people doing the hating. We recipients of the hatred have to consider the source and move on with our lives.
“I can understand the problems with the CMS system. It isn’t simply that the voters continue to elect idiots – not especially their fault when good people refuse to run for the School Board and your only choice is the lesser of the two idiots. It also has to do with the history of integration in CMS.
“Court ordered busing and really long bus trips all over the county aren’t going to please many people. More important than that, it puts kids who do not know each other and have never had any experience dealing with each other in the same school. One group will consider the school ‘theirs’ and the other group will be the interlopers. It’s not going to be a pretty sight.
“Then in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s the CMS Board and administration sent out a message to teachers and administrators. ‘We expect you to keep order but if you get into trouble you swing in the wind alone.’ That in itself was enough to create a hemorrhage of teachers out of CMS that the system is dealing with today. More importantly it created the idea of an acceptable level of chaos.
“Kids, whether black, white, Asian, or whatever are going to act like kids. That means quite often irresponsibly and always on the edge of the boundaries. It only takes one kid going beyond the pale every day to destroy the learning environment in the classroom. If the classroom teacher gets no support and no help in managing a disorderly student and is also held accountable for all the testing – well, you have problems.
“Now having said that, I’ll say this. I taught from 1966 until I retired in 2000. At no time, even during the darkest days of school riots, did I ever see black students as more of a discipline problem than white students. I realized early on that black students were more likely to be referred to discipline than white students. If they were referred they were more likely to be suspended or expelled. But the problem tended to be this zero-tolerance, one-size-fits-all policy that we developed to avoid being sued. Kids are individuals, we’re told. Why not treat them as individuals and let the lawyers have at it?
“Should Mr. Dunlap reply? I think not. What difference would it make to the person who wrote him? What should Mr. Dunlap do? Deal with the CMS problems, that begin with a childishly acting board, and move on to everything else that troubles the system.
“There will always be people around who don’t like you for some reason. Don’t worry about it and do your job.”

So, how would you respond?
Say you’re a black elected official, and you get racist e-mail, complete with racial slurs and references to body parts. Do you reply? If so, how?
Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board member George Dunlap sent the following to a number of people he knows, including a member of the Observer’s editorial board. (No, I wasn’t one.)
Here’s the original, racist message to Dunlap. (I’ve edited some offensive language, and deleted the sender’s e-mail address.) It comes from “Online Feedback from CMS Website”:
“Comments: Sir, I remember fondly my elementary school days at Cotswold in the ’60’s. Most of us were generally good boys and girls. We had 2 negro children in the whole school, and nobody mistreated them. They were good boys, so far as I know. None of our parents would have allowed us to use disparaging language against negroes, or colored people. This was the way things were. Then came Randolph Jr. High, then forced busing. The negroes were n—–s, and they damn well acted every bit of it. Disruptive to the extreme, pulling out their p—–s and beating them on the desk in class. Beating white children, rioting, full of slavery-blaming. Just generally ALL a bunch of god-damn n—–s. All day, every day. Whatever white Liberal speaks their PC baloney in the public forum, is just that – a turncoat liberal. And “African Americans” are just a dreadful species of naughty children. I can’t change that, no matter how much you Libs tax me.”
Here’s what Dunlap asks, in an e-mail this morning (Dec. 29):
“This is a test. Each time I respond to folks like ——–, they seem to not like my response and run to the media to tell them what a nasty person I am and why I should not have responded the way I did. As the new year approaches, I plan to try something new. This is the plan. When I get email that I want to respond to, like this one. I plan to send it to a number of people. If you are receiving this, it’s because I want to respond to this email. Your job is to tell me in 100 words or less why I should not respond or to suggest a response for me.”
One final thought: If you think this sort of racist talk has vanished, think again. It’s not uncommon for black people in prominent jobs – or even white newspaper columnists – to get similar letters and e-mails. Charlotte – like most places in America – hides plenty of racial tension under the surface. I generally ignore them. Most of the letters arrive without a name and return address, anyway — as though the writers were ashamed. Fancy that!
What would you tell Dunlap? Or the e-mailer? I’ll try to reach Dunlap later today and ask if he’ll share some of the advice he gets.

So, how would you respond?
Say you’re a black elected official, and you get racist e-mail, complete with racial slurs and references to body parts. Do you reply? If so, how?
Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board member George Dunlap sent the following to a number of people he knows, including a member of the Observer’s editorial board. (No, I wasn’t one.)
Here’s the original, racist message to Dunlap. (I’ve edited some offensive language, and deleted the sender’s e-mail address.) It comes from “Online Feedback from CMS Website”:
“Comments: Sir, I remember fondly my elementary school days at Cotswold in the ’60’s. Most of us were generally good boys and girls. We had 2 negro children in the whole school, and nobody mistreated them. They were good boys, so far as I know. None of our parents would have allowed us to use disparaging language against negroes, or colored people. This was the way things were. Then came Randolph Jr. High, then forced busing. The negroes were n—–s, and they damn well acted every bit of it. Disruptive to the extreme, pulling out their p—–s and beating them on the desk in class. Beating white children, rioting, full of slavery-blaming. Just generally ALL a bunch of god-damn n—–s. All day, every day. Whatever white Liberal speaks their PC baloney in the public forum, is just that – a turncoat liberal. And “African Americans” are just a dreadful species of naughty children. I can’t change that, no matter how much you Libs tax me.”
Here’s what Dunlap asks, in an e-mail this morning (Dec. 29):
“This is a test. Each time I respond to folks like ——–, they seem to not like my response and run to the media to tell them what a nasty person I am and why I should not have responded the way I did. As the new year approaches, I plan to try something new. This is the plan. When I get email that I want to respond to, like this one. I plan to send it to a number of people. If you are receiving this, it’s because I want to respond to this email. Your job is to tell me in 100 words or less why I should not respond or to suggest a response for me.”
One final thought: If you think this sort of racist talk has vanished, think again. It’s not uncommon for black people in prominent jobs – or even white newspaper columnists – to get similar letters and e-mails. Charlotte – like most places in America – hides plenty of racial tension under the surface. I generally ignore them. Most of the letters arrive without a name and return address, anyway — as though the writers were ashamed. Fancy that!
What would you tell Dunlap? Or the e-mailer? I’ll try to reach Dunlap later today and ask if he’ll share some of the advice he gets.

Nan Bauroth, a former community columnist for the Observer, e-mails to suggest I read “Sprawl: A Compact History,” [by Robert Bruegmann] recently reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. “This proves that far from unenlightened, sprawl has been with us since time immemorial for good reason,” she says. “Interested in your take!”
My reply:
I’ve seen the reviews, haven’t had a chance to read it, though it sounds interesting. Here’s my take, with the caveat that I haven’t read the book: The process of people moving out from cities is age old, due to the inevitable crowding, noise, and – in many cities until modern sewer systems – disease-ridden filth. People who could afford it built villas, country houses, etc., and kept a place in town. People who couldn’t afford it didn’t. I think that’s a natural economic process that really can’t be stopped.
But in the 20th century, the form that natural process took changed dramatically, as governments, influenced by planners and would-be social reformers as well as automakers, began mandating vast territories of nothing but single-family-home dwellings on mandated large lots, and other vast territories of nothing but stores, and yet more vast territories of office-only buildings (a.k.a. office parks). That’s not the way cities evolve naturally when left to their own devices. Plus, governments began catering to, and subsidizing, automobile travel in unprecedented ways. Traffic engineers came up with the theory that dead-end streets feeding onto large thoroughfares would make traffic move smoothly. They were right – up to a point. When there’s too much traffic, those thoroughfares get horribly clogged.
So while the process of suburbanization is natural, the form it began taking in the 20th century was decidedly unnatural, as well as more costly to governments (all those streets, longer sewer lines, more police cars covering more miles, ditto school buses, etc.)
In addition, in previous centuries, those suburban villages could easily be absorbed into the city as it grew out to meet them. Examples: Montmartre, Greenwich Village, etc. The zoning-law/traffic-engineer-designed suburbs of the 20th century aren’t so easily absorbed, with their highway-like thoroughfares and cul-de-sacs that distort traffic dispersal, their lack of pedestrian amenities, and legally enforced, unnaturally low densities.
I think suburbs in general are a natural phenomenon. What isn’t natural is the style in which Americans have been building them for the last 60 or so years. There’s also a lot of research pointing to some very harmful rules on the part of banks/insurance companies/mortgage firms, etc., that prevented city property owners (or anyone owning property anywhere near black people) from getting loans. The federal government, to its shame, supported and enforced that discrimination during the first half of the 20th century. The removal of official and unofficial red-lining is one reason, in my unresearched opinion, that city living has seen a renewal recently.

Nan Bauroth, a former community columnist for the Observer, e-mails to suggest I read “Sprawl: A Compact History,” [by Robert Bruegmann] recently reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. “This proves that far from unenlightened, sprawl has been with us since time immemorial for good reason,” she says. “Interested in your take!”
My reply:
I’ve seen the reviews, haven’t had a chance to read it, though it sounds interesting. Here’s my take, with the caveat that I haven’t read the book: The process of people moving out from cities is age old, due to the inevitable crowding, noise, and – in many cities until modern sewer systems – disease-ridden filth. People who could afford it built villas, country houses, etc., and kept a place in town. People who couldn’t afford it didn’t. I think that’s a natural economic process that really can’t be stopped.
But in the 20th century, the form that natural process took changed dramatically, as governments, influenced by planners and would-be social reformers as well as automakers, began mandating vast territories of nothing but single-family-home dwellings on mandated large lots, and other vast territories of nothing but stores, and yet more vast territories of office-only buildings (a.k.a. office parks). That’s not the way cities evolve naturally when left to their own devices. Plus, governments began catering to, and subsidizing, automobile travel in unprecedented ways. Traffic engineers came up with the theory that dead-end streets feeding onto large thoroughfares would make traffic move smoothly. They were right – up to a point. When there’s too much traffic, those thoroughfares get horribly clogged.
So while the process of suburbanization is natural, the form it began taking in the 20th century was decidedly unnatural, as well as more costly to governments (all those streets, longer sewer lines, more police cars covering more miles, ditto school buses, etc.)
In addition, in previous centuries, those suburban villages could easily be absorbed into the city as it grew out to meet them. Examples: Montmartre, Greenwich Village, etc. The zoning-law/traffic-engineer-designed suburbs of the 20th century aren’t so easily absorbed, with their highway-like thoroughfares and cul-de-sacs that distort traffic dispersal, their lack of pedestrian amenities, and legally enforced, unnaturally low densities.
I think suburbs in general are a natural phenomenon. What isn’t natural is the style in which Americans have been building them for the last 60 or so years. There’s also a lot of research pointing to some very harmful rules on the part of banks/insurance companies/mortgage firms, etc., that prevented city property owners (or anyone owning property anywhere near black people) from getting loans. The federal government, to its shame, supported and enforced that discrimination during the first half of the 20th century. The removal of official and unofficial red-lining is one reason, in my unresearched opinion, that city living has seen a renewal recently.

No one called Kaye McGarry “sweetheart.”
But testy tempers over school bonds, growth, and – never spoken but usually present – racial tension erupted this morning (Friday, Dec. 16) at a usually staid intergovernmental committee called the Planning Liaison Committee.
This wasn’t posturing for the press. Local TV cameras don’t cover this process stuff. It was an audience on only four: two folks from REBIC (Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition), a guy who I think was a developer, and me.
I’ll spare you most of the play-by-play. It involves nonsexy things like cost-containment and the difference between general obligation bonds and Certificates of Participation.
But county commissioner Dumont Clarke looked like he was channeling Law and Order’s Jack McCoy, or maybe a Rottweiler. Commissioner Norman Mitchell, usually congenial, got steamed, at one point telling fellow commissioner Dan Bishop, “Your point of view is not correct.”
“Welcome to a school board meeting,” school board member Kit Cramer quipped at one point, trying to defuse the tension.
Kaye McGarry – the at-large school board member who wants extra security because George Dunlap yelled at her last spring and called her “Sweetheart” last month – must have gotten under Clarke’s skin. It’s easy to see why.
Her continual refrain – that all of CMS’s crowding problems could be solved if only they’d build schools more cheaply and efficiently, i.e., they’re wasting money left and right – typically lacks specifics. Thank goodness today she didn’t go on and on about all the “bells and whistles” they’re building into today’s schools. (Bells? Whistles? Teachers reading this who see bells and whistles, please let me know.)
Today she parroted something she’d heard somewhere, that COPs require schools to be built for less money. That was patently inaccurate, because they’re just another way to borrow money. Clarke kept interrupting her, saying “That’s not right.”
Later, Clarke demanded specifics – what percentage of the school building plans could or should be eliminated through cost-containment? “I plead, I beg you, to get away from these generalities – ‘We can do this cheaper.’ “
McGarry would only say, “We can do better.” Clarke burrowed in: “You didn’t answer my question.” Eventually, Bishop said: “I didn’t know it was an inquisition.”
There was more – too much more. And it was not at all collegial. Example from Clarke: “People who say you’re overspending are not in touch with reality. They have another agenda.”
What to make of it all? Here’s my take:
Other elected officials don’t hesitate to publicly criticize school board decisions, although they’re far more courteous with other elected bodies’ occasionally knuckle-headed decisions. “We’re the weak man down, and everyone’s taking a turn kicking,” is how school board member Kit Cramer put it after Friday’s meeting.
The school board has four members (McGarry, Dunlap, Larry Gauvreau and Vilma Leake) who can’t play well with others. They are crusading, not governing.
Their spats – especially the ones with an under-the-surface racial tinge – are making their political allies mad, too. The nastiness is spreading to other elected bodies, if Friday’s Planning Liaison Committee meeting was any indicator.
That’s not a cheerful thought.

No one called Kaye McGarry “sweetheart.”
But testy tempers over school bonds, growth, and – never spoken but usually present – racial tension erupted this morning (Friday, Dec. 16) at a usually staid intergovernmental committee called the Planning Liaison Committee.
This wasn’t posturing for the press. Local TV cameras don’t cover this process stuff. It was an audience on only four: two folks from REBIC (Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition), a guy who I think was a developer, and me.
I’ll spare you most of the play-by-play. It involves nonsexy things like cost-containment and the difference between general obligation bonds and Certificates of Participation.
But county commissioner Dumont Clarke looked like he was channeling Law and Order’s Jack McCoy, or maybe a Rottweiler. Commissioner Norman Mitchell, usually congenial, got steamed, at one point telling fellow commissioner Dan Bishop, “Your point of view is not correct.”
“Welcome to a school board meeting,” school board member Kit Cramer quipped at one point, trying to defuse the tension.
Kaye McGarry – the at-large school board member who wants extra security because George Dunlap yelled at her last spring and called her “Sweetheart” last month – must have gotten under Clarke’s skin. It’s easy to see why.
Her continual refrain – that all of CMS’s crowding problems could be solved if only they’d build schools more cheaply and efficiently, i.e., they’re wasting money left and right – typically lacks specifics. Thank goodness today she didn’t go on and on about all the “bells and whistles” they’re building into today’s schools. (Bells? Whistles? Teachers reading this who see bells and whistles, please let me know.)
Today she parroted something she’d heard somewhere, that COPs require schools to be built for less money. That was patently inaccurate, because they’re just another way to borrow money. Clarke kept interrupting her, saying “That’s not right.”
Later, Clarke demanded specifics – what percentage of the school building plans could or should be eliminated through cost-containment? “I plead, I beg you, to get away from these generalities – ‘We can do this cheaper.’ “
McGarry would only say, “We can do better.” Clarke burrowed in: “You didn’t answer my question.” Eventually, Bishop said: “I didn’t know it was an inquisition.”
There was more – too much more. And it was not at all collegial. Example from Clarke: “People who say you’re overspending are not in touch with reality. They have another agenda.”
What to make of it all? Here’s my take:
Other elected officials don’t hesitate to publicly criticize school board decisions, although they’re far more courteous with other elected bodies’ occasionally knuckle-headed decisions. “We’re the weak man down, and everyone’s taking a turn kicking,” is how school board member Kit Cramer put it after Friday’s meeting.
The school board has four members (McGarry, Dunlap, Larry Gauvreau and Vilma Leake) who can’t play well with others. They are crusading, not governing.
Their spats – especially the ones with an under-the-surface racial tinge – are making their political allies mad, too. The nastiness is spreading to other elected bodies, if Friday’s Planning Liaison Committee meeting was any indicator.
That’s not a cheerful thought.