Category: Edwin Peacock

Why cities need Republicans

When a Wake County district school board election is being hailed nationally as evidence that the whole Tea Party movement is defunct, as in this not-at-all-objective piece from the Huffington Post, you know the hyperbole is hyper, indeed. Should the Charlotte City Council election be considered another piece of evidence that Republican power is withering nationally?

I am not at all sure it should be. Nevertheless, it’s still worth pondering the implications of moderate Republican Edwin Peacock’s loss in a Democratic sweep of all four at-large positions. In addition to Mayor Anthony Foxx, Democrats will have a 9-2 edge, with district representatives Andy Dulin (District 6) and Warren Cooksey (District 7) the council’s only Republicans.

I sought the thoughts of a well-known local political observer, Bill McCoy, a political scientist who handily for me is the emeritus director of the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute, where I work. “I don’t remember anything like a 9-2 split on City Council,” McCoy said.  “I was totally surprised that Peacock lost.”

He went on to say this, about such a heavily Democratic council: “Although I might fall in the category of a yellow dog Democrat, I believe a balance among the parties is a good thing, particularly when the other party has a person like Peacock – a great role model for what a moderate Republican should be like.”  Whether a “balance” has to be 6-5 or could be 7-4 or even 8-3 is debatable, he said, but 9-2 is beyond the pale for a “good balance.”

Charlotte has become more Democratic-leaning in recent years, although Mecklenburg County commissioners are less so (5-4 Democrat-Republican). The legislative delegation is also mixed: 6-4 Democrat-Republican in the N.C. House, and 3-1 in the N.C. Senate, or 3-2 if you county Tommy Tucker, whose district is mostly in Union County.

McCoy’s point is one I heard articulated in slightly different form at a roundtable discussion last month in New York, where the topic was urban regions and their relationships – political, economic and otherwise – with state governments. Sitting next to me was Joe McLaughlin, a former lobbyist, former adviser to Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell and now director of Temple University’s Institute for Public Affairs in Philadelphia. As we all chewed over the issue, McLaughlin said that one overlooked need cities have is, as he put it, “rebuilding” the Republican Party in urban areas.
He elaborated on his thinking to me this week, sharing a 2003 paper he wrote which said, “Particularly in a competitive two-party state like Pennsylvania, Philadelphia benefits from having two viable parties; many big cities do not.”
That reminded me of the oft-told story of how then-Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, a Republican, and then-Mecklenburg County commissioners’ chair Parks Helms, a Democrat, teamed up when they visited Washington to lobby for transit funds. McCrory courted the Republicans, Helms the Democrats.

In many states, large cities are viewed with suspicion or jealousy at the state level. Georgia legislators have been known to compare Atlanta to Sodom and Gomorrah. Last year two former presidents of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, ex-Mayors Manny Diaz of Miami and Greg Nickels of Seattle, told me they knew of no U.S. cities whose relationships with their states worked well.  And of course we know the derisive term, “The Great State of Mecklenburg,” has not vanished from the halls of Raleigh.

So it’s important for urban regions to be able to speak with a unified voice on important topics such as transportation, economic development and the environment. If suburban jurisdictions are Republican-dominated and city ones are Democratic, that poses one more hurdle to a region’s effectiveness at the state and federal levels.

Depending on how one defines “moderate,” Peacock may well be the last of the moderate Republicans elected to a partisan office from Charlotte, a tradition that includes, among others, former Gov. Jim Martin, former U.S. Rep. Alex McMillan, former county commissioners Carla DuPuy, Tom Cox and Peacock’s father, Ed Peacock, and former council members Velva Woollen, Lynn Wheeler and John Lassiter, to name just a few. (Whether some of today’s conservative Republicans might be more moderate if the Republican Party itself hadn’t veered strongly to the right is essentially unknowable.)

Finding ways for Democrats and Republicans to find common ground in solving common local problems remains important. But it’s likely to get a lot harder.

Recycling, redux

If you didn’t see my Saturday column on recycling in Charlotte, take a look here. And in a related matter, in a previous posting, I promised follow-up information on the new recycling bins, and whether we could recycle the old red ones.

Some answers, courtesy of Gerald Gorbey, deputy director of solid waste services for the City of Charlotte.

Can or will the city recycle the old red bins (which are No. 2 plastic)?

Gorbey: The city will not require that red bins be returned. Citizens will be allowed to use them for marshalling bins for their recyclables or for storage use, etc. If citizens prefer to throw their red bin away, the City will collect it and recycle it. The exact process for doing the bin pick-up has not been determined yet. The bin will be recycled either through the county’s material recycling center or through a contractual arrangement with the roll-out cart company that provides the new recycle carts.

What color will the new, rollout recycling bins be:

Green

Any plans to begin recycling of compostables/kitchen scraps?

No plans are underway for providing this service.

And to repeat:

The new rollout recycling will be “single-stream” which means you don’t have to sort it, just dump it all into the bin, which will have a lid to keep it dry and, in theory, keep out varmints. However, they are not raccoon- or possum-proof. Yes, I once encountered a possum that had crawled into our gray rollout bin. And another time, a trail of peanut shells led away from the bin, where I had tossed some stale peanuts after a trip to the circus.

As to whether we’ll ever see the sort of easy recycling bins uptown that I mentioned in my column, well, who knows? City council member Edwin Peacock told me today that “phone calls have been made.”

Can we recycle the recycling bin?

As of next summer the city of Charlotte is changing the way it collects recyclables. The red bins will give way to large rollout containers (an example is shown above) where you’ll dump everything and roll it to the curb every other week. This will, in theory, inspire more people to recycle more things. (Clarification: You’ll have a recycle rollout bin as well as a regular garbage rollout bin.)

Even if it doesn’t, at least now you can roll it out instead of having to haul a bin loaded with newspapers, magazines, cans, glass, etc.

But what should the city do with the red plastic bins? I was talking today with council member Edwin Peacock III, who chairs the council’s environment committee, and he said he’d be interested in hearing suggestions.
He noted his own family’s red bin had been used for sledding and for washing a dog, as well as recycling. At our place we have three red bins (we read a lot of newspapers), and two are held together with duct tape, having had close encounters with various vehicles.

I vote for recycling the bins. But are they No. 1 or No. 2 plastic?
If not, maybe there’s a public art project awaiting, involving a collage of red plastic shards …