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Got this e-mail, sent to a large number of recipients, from a former Charlotte City Council member who, like many of you, doesn’t support light rail. Here’s his comment, unedited:

“It is my belief that truth always wins. The fact that socialist propagandists and smart growth advocates want public rail systems for control and taxation to redistribute wealth, will fail. America is strong because Americans are good. We should begin the process of eliminating the negative messages produced by those who would overthrow our values and culture by countering them at every turn. Let’s get the message out .”

Um, does that mean if you support light rail you’re a socialist? Good grief.

And that to support light rail means you want to overturn American values and culture? Note, the e-mailer says “negative messages” should be eliminated. Down with that pesky freedom of speech thingie.

Reality: Plenty of Americans think light rail is a good public investment. Plenty don’t. There’s room for many opinions in America. Many of you who comment on this blog are living proof of that.

To disagree about what kind of public transportation should get public money doesn’t make anyone a socialist. Some folks need to get a grip.

Got this e-mail, sent to a large number of recipients, from a former Charlotte City Council member who, like many of you, doesn’t support light rail. Here’s his comment, unedited:

“It is my belief that truth always wins. The fact that socialist propagandists and smart growth advocates want public rail systems for control and taxation to redistribute wealth, will fail. America is strong because Americans are good. We should begin the process of eliminating the negative messages produced by those who would overthrow our values and culture by countering them at every turn. Let’s get the message out .”

Um, does that mean if you support light rail you’re a socialist? Good grief.

And that to support light rail means you want to overturn American values and culture? Note, the e-mailer says “negative messages” should be eliminated. Down with that pesky freedom of speech thingie.

Reality: Plenty of Americans think light rail is a good public investment. Plenty don’t. There’s room for many opinions in America. Many of you who comment on this blog are living proof of that.

To disagree about what kind of public transportation should get public money doesn’t make anyone a socialist. Some folks need to get a grip.

You watch. We, the taxpayers, are going to wind up shelling out to fix the mess left behind by elected officials who let developers rape East Charlotte.

This morning a panel from the nonprofit Urban Land Institute presented its recommendations for what to do about Eastland Mall. Read tomorrow’s Observer for details. Here’s the story from Friday’s Charlotte Observer. The report is also on the city’s web site.

The ULI panel is recommending a far-reaching redevelopment of almost the whole Eastland site. New name, new streets, scraping the site clean and starting afresh. It will be expensive and will likely require public investment in better infrastructure, and possibly other incentives. Without it, they said, East Charlotte will be in trouble.

If property values there tank, and crime rises, the whole city will be in trouble because East Charlotte is a huge chunk of territory.

Mayor Pat McCrory, who spoke at the presentation, was pointed but precise in his “corridors of crap” analysis. “We built pure crap in a lot of these corridors,” he said. He referred to the design of commercial buildings throughout East Charlotte, built in the 1960s and ’70s under what he rightly termed “lousy zoning,” and slack local ordinances that didn’t require sidewalks, trees, parks or much of anything.

Here’s the underlying problem. For decades your elected officials – both city and county – just rolled over for developers. They took their money, in campaign donations, and let the developers have their way. Didn’t even need pimps.

The ULI panel found one reason Eastland Mall has been in such distress the past 10 years is a “dramatic oversupply of retailing in the area.” The number of retail square feet built (30 square feet per capita) is 50 percent more than the national average of 20 square feet per capita.

The panel found “obsolete, deteriorated” strip shopping centers. It found the public realm – that means streets, sidewalks, parks and public open space – “does not match consumer expectations.” It found that multiple big box stores allowed to be built in the area have taken away Eastland’s customer base.

The market in the area isn’t bad, they said. There’s just way, way too much retail space to serve it. And who approved all that excessive retail space? Your City Council. (In earlier years, the county commissioners approved stuff outside city limits, so they probably share blame.)

Whose zoning rules were so slack they allowed ugly strip shopping centers? Your City Council. Whose ordinances were so slack they didn’t require sidewalks or trees or open space? Your City Council and your county commissioners.

They were sweet-talked by developers and didn’t believe in putting onerous restrictions on the private sector – anywhere, not just in East Charlotte. Let the market sort it out, they said as they cavalierly over-zoned retail space in the University City area in 1993.

In 1999 the City Council approved a rezoning for Lowe’s and Target big box stores on Albemarle Road that the planners, the planning commission and neighborhood residents begged them to deny it, saying it would cause ugly sprawl and undermine Eastland Mall’s viability. Thanks to Patrick Cannon, Malachi Greene, Mike Jackson, Nasif Majeed, Don Reid and Lynn Wheeler, who voted for the rezoning, those predictions came true.

Now, 30 years after Eastland Mall opened, it’s clear somebody (mall developer Henry Faison tops the list, but it’s a long list) made a ton of money on the mall and the attending “crap” on Albemarle Road.

And if anyone ever has to clean up the mess elected officials allowed them to leave behind, it’s probably going to be all of the rest of us.

This is an open letter to the state education official who was kind enough to send a letter to our home last week:

Dear Dr. Elsie C. Leak:

If someone gave Nobel Prizes for impenetrable writing, I’d nominate your recent letter. Your command of educratese is superb. I have read it through several times and still haven’t the faintest idea what it is about or why you spent state money to mail it to me.

You must understand, Dr. Leak, that I’m not an illiterate or uncaring parent. As it happens, I scored over 700 on my verbal SAT and I graduated Phi Beta Kappa from a well-respected university. I have made my living writing – and reading – for decades. But I can’t make heads or tails of your letter.

It is notifying me that Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools “is entering Title I District Improvement under No Child Left Behind.” I even know what a Title I school is – and that my daughter’s school is NOT a Title I school! And still you’ve managed to baffle me.

Here’s what my buddy, Observer education reporter Pete Smolowitz, says the letter means: CMS has slipped into what’s known as Title I District Improvement status, because it did not hit federal benchmarks under the No Child Left Behind Act. Half the state’s school systems now fall into that category. CMS must now spend a certain percentage of federal money on professional development for teachers. Because of the change in status, the money can be used at a wider range of schools, not just the ones with the highest poverty rates.

Dr. Leak, you work at the N.C. Department of Public Instruction. You are associate superintendent of curriculum, instruction and accountability services. Whatever that is. You have a doctorate in education.

Did they teach you how to write this way in education school, or are you just naturally gifted?

Perhaps the work you do does not require clear communication. We, the taxpayers, can only hope that is the case, and that this letter is the only instance during your career that you will be expected to write anything, to anyone.

A word of advice, if you’ll permit me to offer it: Don’t ever even think of going near a job in the classroom. Those kids would eat you alive!

It looks as if the greenway protection gang in south Charlotte won its fight with City Hall. (To be precise, they were fighting Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities, a city department, and the county Park and Recreation Department.)

I wrote about them in my Urban Outlook column Jan. 20, “Once foes, now greenway fans work to save it.” Then I got sick in February (as did everyone in my house) and I didn’t close the loop to make sure what looked likely at the Feb. 7 Mecklenburg county commissioners’ meeting really did happen. It did. Unanimously. The commissioners agreed to use a compromise route for a new sewer line that wouldn’t plunder a bottomland forest along the Lower McAlpine Greenway.

Barry Shearin, CMU’s chief engineer, said today the utility department is proceeding with what was called Alignment 1A, which doesn’t cross the creek or require any disruption of the greenway forest. It turns out, he said, the cost of Alignment 1A (an estimated $4.7 million) is roughly equivalent to the cost originally projected for the project, along what came to be known as Alignment 1, before development in the area made that alignment more expensive.

Here’s the good news and the bad news. I’ll start with the bad. Not only was CMU not looking very creatively for ways to protect the creek and the greenway from sewer construction and easement disruption, the county park and rec department did not appear to be pushing them very hard to do that. After all, the county owns the greenway.

Here’s the good news. Neighbors in the area DID push to protect their greenway, and it was their pressure that inspired CMU to find a more environmentally benign option that didn’t cost much more money. It’s too bad they had to push the park and rec department, too. They used to full advantage the park department’s admirable network of citizen advisory committees, up to and including the park and rec commission.

It worked. Bravo!

South Charlotte neighborhood activist Angela Pumarada shares her perspective, after reading my column of Feb. 17, “Got enough schools? Roads? No? Read on.”

Pumarada, like many who live in fast-growing Charlotte, is fed up with development that gets a green light when we lack enough schools, roads, or other infrastructure to serve it.

But before I get to Angela’s remarks, Jonathan Wells of the city planning department says if you’d like to take that survey on infrastructure needs online, it’s posted now. Here’s a link.

Here’s what Angela said in an e-mail to me:

Over the years I have fought rezoning petitions and won. I have attended meetings with planning staff and developers. One time, at one of those 6 p.m. meetings, I was one of three non-developers in the room. At that meeting I was amazed at how developers argued every change [then-Planning Director] Martin Cramton proposed and how they got their way every single time. Stores the size of Target are allowed pretty much anywhere.

I was involved when the General Development Policies were updated a few years ago. Those are the ones with the infamous grid with points [which make a proposal more likely to win planners’ recommendation] for when a school is nearby. I witnessed how one major developer argued for points when farmland was across from a proposed development and there was not enough infrastructure to get a point, saying planners should envision the future and give points for what could be built there someday. Do city planners have a crystal ball they can consult? I would like to have one of those.

Residents get sick and tired of the developers getting their way. I have an acquaintance who tried hard to get the City Council to adopt an adequate facilities ordinance, but nobody wants to take the heat. Impact fees are taboo here. Other communities thrive even when impact fees are in place. Developers there build schools and roads and some pay a hefty fee to build houses.

In Charlotte, developers line their pockets with money, then walk away, leaving an undue tax burden on local residents. They argue impact fees are taxes on new residents and that taxes should be spread among all citizens. That is hogwash. New development should pay for itself when it comes to schools, roads, parks, fire stations, libraries, etc.

My neighborhood around The Arboretum is pretty much built out and we are seeing incredible traffic issues. With a few newer schools, we are seeing fewer trailers. I feel sorry for the residents of the Ballantyne area.

As far as attending meetings, Charlotte should allow for meetings at other times besides 6 p.m. I can go to an occasional meeting at that time but I cannot commit to regular meetings at 6 p.m.

If the city wants input, they can hold two sessions, one in the morning and one in the evening. I am sure I can get a few people there during the day.

I will be contacting Jonathan Wells and asking for more information on the planned nfrastructure discussions.

Are you sick of trucks and other sloppy drivers gouging huge tracks in your front yard?

Some residents in the southern Mecklenburg subdivision of Providence Plantation got fed up and planted a bunch of 3-foot wooden posts to fend off drivers, and protect their lawns. The city ordered them to remove the posts, saying they were a hazard and violated code.

The residents fought back and – get this – they won. Here’s a story about it.

The Charlotte Department of Transportation looked at the posts and concluded they weren’t much of a hazard because they were relatively small and were on low-speed streets. CDOT rescinded its removal orders and drafted new guidelines.

In our neighborhood people have used metal spikes with plastic tape, fancy metal grillwork (what ARE they thinking?), decorative plastic dividers, wooden stakes with string – you name it.
At our house we use big rocks.

Still the big construction trucks just plow into all those supposed barriers. Anyone have any success stories to share?

Grow ’Em Big

Huntersville is now bigger than Monroe, Salisbury and Statesville.According to 2005 Census estimates, Huntersville has also topped Shelby, Lenoir, Albemarle and Boone, among other well-known municipalities. The 2005 Census estimate puts Huntersville at a little more than 36,000. But Huntersville town staff used 2000 Census data and certificates of occupancy to come up with an estimated 40,082 residents. That puts it neck and neck with Hickory, which was at 40,232 in the 2005 Census estimates. Here’s a story about it.

Update on infrastructure survey (see post just below this):
I’m trading voice mails today with city planner Jonathan Wells, and he leaves word that the planning department hopes to put that survey online. But because I haven’t reached him, I can’t tell you when. “Soon.”

One fact to add to the comments below – love the new arena or hate it, but that money couldn’t have gone to build schools. That’s because city of Charlotte built the arena, but city money doesn’t and can’t by law build schools. County money builds schools. Yeah, I know, it’s confusing. (The arena money could have built roads or hired more police officers, however.)

Another fact to add, to Rick’s comment about the land transfer tax: The main stated reason city and county folks are interested in a land transfer tax more than impact fees is that it brings in millions more per year than impact fees would and isn’t felt as directly by those who pay it. It just gets folded into the closing costs.

And just one last thing, in case you aren’t confused enough: In North Carolina, counties can’t build roads. No such thing here as a “county road.” We have city streets and roads, and state roads. Not that anyone brought it up, but it’s another thing newcomers (and even old-timers) have a hard time figuring out.

If you’d like to send a message to the city planners, here’s your chance.

First, a yes or no question: Do you think infrastructure availability – that is, schools, roads, etc. – is adequately considered when development decisions are made?

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg planning department is kicking off an attempt to add a chapter to the city’s general development policies to deal with how the city plans for infrastructure. Thursday night at a public meeting, folks who attended got a chance to fill out a questionnaire.

It began with the question above. If you want to offer your thoughts to the planners, take that question and those below, fill them out, and then mail them to Jonathan Wells, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Planning Department, 600 E. Fourth St., 8th Floor, Charlotte, NC 28202.

Or you can copy them into an e-mail and e-mail to me, and I’ll forward to the planner running the process: mnewsom@charlotteobserver.com.

A couple of ground rules. First, this initiative applies only to Charlotte or unincorporated Mecklenburg. Also, “infrastructure” in this case means buildings and equipment, such as school buildings, streets and roads, water-sewer pipes, firetrucks, parks, etc.

The rest of the questions:

2. On a 1-to-4 scale, with 1 “not concerned,” 4 “very concerned,” how concerned are you about the community’s ability to provide:
-Schools (buildings – not teachers, curriculum, etc.).
-Public safety (capital costs, not the employees).
-Transportation (streets, roads, sidewalks, etc.).
-Water and sewer.
-Storm water (drains, ditches, etc.)
-Parks.

3. On the same 1-4 scale, with 1 “not needed” and 4 “very much needed” what types of policies are needed to more closely link land development decisions and the availability of the infrastructure (see the above list) to serve it:
-Policies to better manage the increasing demand for infrastructure.
-Policies to use existing/future infrastructure resources more efficiently.
-Policies involving seeking new or innovative means of providing infrastructure.
-Policies to ensure infrastructure development minimizes environmental impacts.
-Other policy areas (please specify)

4. Any other comments?

In the category of “my, things change,” we have Starbucks in Pittsboro. To be specific, TWO Starbucks in Pittsboro.

Pittsboro – if you’re not from North Carolina or don’t get out much – is a formerly small town just south of Chapel Hill and the county seat of Chatham County. It’s where you used to turn left to get to Chapel Hill if you were driving the back way through Asheboro and the Blue Mist. (Though some of my Asheboro-savvy friends have pointed me to the Henry James on U.S. 220 for even better barbecue. No, it isn’t named for the novelist.)

Pittsboro has a great old county courthouse in a traffic circle in the middle of town. Or at least, it used to. If Starbucks has come to town it’s entirely possible things have changed.

Let me note here that while Pittsboro may be chi-chi enough to attract TWO Starbucks, most of East Charlotte remains Starbucks-free. South of University City and east of Monroe Road, you’re out of luck. (Starbucks’ web site shows stores way out Indy Boulevard and one apparently tucked into a place called Northlake Commons either in or near Mint Hill.) Indeed, if you drive the rural route to Chapel Hill, either heading out Albemarle Road or up N.C. 49, you’re in Starbucks-free land until you hit Pittsboro and 15-501.

Think Starbucks will ever recognize East Charlotte as a market? Does it need to?

And just for fun, reader Don May, who lives near Lake Wylie Elementary shared this photo with the Observer. It was shot Jan. 20, on Laurel View Drive. “Thought you might want to show your readers that neighborhoods and wildlife can coexist,” he says.