Changes need to be made in N.C. rail policies

We are pro-rail. We think railroads remains a viable transportation option forNorth Carolina, and that state policymakers should pursue a systematic strategy of removing impediments to the expansion and success of the railroad industry.

 That’s one reason why we rail so much against taxpayer subsidies for passenger rail.

Long ago, railroads became primarily a freight business, not a passenger business. Other than a few lines in the Northeast, Amtrak service is a subsidized luxury, not a viable business. While passengers finance virtually the entire cost of the alternatives — roads and airlines — through user taxes and fees, passenger rail is the only transportation alternative that is heavily subsidized by nonusers.

Trucking long ago became the mainstay of the freight business in North Carolina and the nation, and rail isn’t really an option for many kinds of customers. But if you are hauling bulk goods – and particularly coal for North Carolina power plants – rail is the logical, least-cost choice.

The best way to allow North Carolina businesses to make efficient use of rail transportation in the state would be to:

• Require passenger-rail service to pay for itself through tickets, advertising, or other revenue. If it does, fine. If it doesn’t, clear the tracks for the paying customers.

• Reform environmental and other regulations that unnecessarily increase the cost of the rail lines themselves or of the industrial customers who make up the majority of the demand for rail transportation.

• Sell the state-owned North Carolina Railroad to the highest bidder. Use the proceeds to pay down state debt and invest in valuable state infrastructure such as roads and bridges that cannot practically be shifted into private management or ownership.

Carolina Journal

December 2011 Vol. 20 No.12

 The decisions follow a campaign in which four candidates who described themselves as conservatives won election, vowing to answer complaints from some residents about actions taken by the former council.

 About halfway through the meeting, council voted to release Jim Palenick as city manager. The vote was 4-2, with the four newly-seated council members in the majority. Palenick had been city manager since August 2007.

According to the Gaston Gazette, Palenick responded to the vote by giving a short speech, gathering his personal belongings, and walking out of the meeting chambers.

The new council members — Walter Kimble, Jim Gallagher, Todd Pierceall and Porter McAteer Ward — had promised during the fall election campaign to reverse a controversial solid waste fee approved by the former council. That fee, which would have been collected from all residents, was to start Jan. 1.

 But by a 4-2 vote Tuesday night, with the new members in the majority, that fee was postponed indefinitely.

 Also postponed was the delivery of new recycling bins to 27,000 residences in the city. That delivery was to have started this week. The bins had electronic tracking chips and had drawn the ire of some residents.

 The two hold-over members from the old city council, Dave Kirkin and Brenda Craig, voted against firing Palenick and against delaying the solid waste fee collection.

 According to city budget records, Palenick was earning $140,000 a year. Two assistant city managers were named by council Tuesday night as interim co-city managers.

 Copyright 2011 The Charlotte Observer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 By Steve Lyttle

The Charlotte Observer

Posted: Wednesday, Dec. 07, 2011

Some lawmakers may return for the 2012 legislative session with road-building on their minds. At issue is the state Department of Transportation’s tendency to favor building highways with a median rather than a center turn lane. Some lawmakers believe medians limit access to roadside businesses. Medians are one of a long list of transportation-related topics to get study before the General Assembly’s session begins in May. “I want to apply efficient processes in the road-building process from start to finish,” said Rep. John Torbett, R-Gaston and chairman of a subcommittee that will address the issue. Torbett said last week he wants factors like maintenance costs and costs for adjoining landowners taken into account, an issue highlighted in Asheville last summer when Rep. Tim Moffitt, R-Buncombe, unsuccessfully pushed for an $800,000 project to tear up a median to benefit a convenience store owner.

Kevin Lacy, a traffic engineer at DOT, said the department began moving toward building more four-lane roads with medians as research indicated such changes produced safety benefits. And DOT officials say fears about impacts on businesses are overblown and they have no funding to install medians on lots of existing roads in any event. Many state legislators have been skeptical in debates over the issue this year. The General Assembly considered, then shelved, legislation last year that would have barred DOT from constructing medians in a handful of locations. “Just like in fashion and music … DOT has picked out a fad, and it’s currently in medians,” Rep. Marilyn Avila, R-Wake, said during floor debate in the House in June. Lacy said DOT engineers tailor the design of each roadway to its particular location instead of simply having a blanket policy. “We have more information, and we’re making what we believe to be better decisions. We are not a one-size-fits-all organization,” he said. A five-lane design is often a better fit for roads with lower speed limits, a large number of driveways and lots of turning traffic, Lacy said. And several studies indicate little negative impact on most businesses when a median is installed, the Federal Highway Administration and the state DOT say.

Rep. Ray Rapp, D-Madison, questioned whether lawmakers should be telling the department how to build a particular road. “When DOT does its traffic studies … and says to us that there’s a safety issue, I think that always should trump other considerations,” he said last week. Rapp also wondered whether the legislature could craft a good statewide policy on the median issue. “I think we need to treat (highway projects) individually given the road conditions. That’s why you have engineers to do this,” he said.

Mark Barrett

Asheville Citizen-Times

12/03/11

RALEIGH – Members and staffers at the North Carolina League of Municipalities were understandably upset when the General Assembly enacted a major annexation-reform bill during the 2011 legislative session. But their latest legal gambit to overturn the legislation is not likely to work to their advantage.

For decades, North Carolina municipalities possessed a virtually unlimited power to annex residents against their will. Defenders of the law argued that the state’s forced-annexation law was good for cities and fair to residents, and should have become the national model. In reality, North Carolina had arguably the most extreme, backward, and abusive annexation law in the nation, and no other state felt compelled to emulate it against the will and interests of their citizens.

In most of the United States, it has long been impossible to force people into the jurisdiction of a municipality without some kind of oversight, either by state commissions, counties, or a vote of the people affected. Virtually all states also had stronger, enforceable requirements that municipalities actually provide meaningful services to annexed areas.

According to defenders of North Carolina’s extreme annexation law, these states should have been plagued by higher taxes, municipal bankruptcies, and widespread disaffection among city residents. Hasn’t work that way, of course. Of the 11 states with at least four cities maintaining the highest possible bond rating, only North Carolina permitted forced annexation. The truth is, our annexation law was primarily a political tool for raising revenue for cities without having to raise property taxes on existing city residents.

So you can understand why city leaders were loath to give up this power. They delayed the inevitable as long as they could, but when Republicans secured majorities in both houses of the General Assembly in 2010 with the assistance of annexation-reform activists at the grassroots, the handwriting was on the wall.

The urban lobby hasn’t given up, however. Frustrated by the actions of the legislative branch, it first attempted to involve the executive branch – the federal Department of Justice. Cities argued that the petition process created by the new law was actually an election, the particulars of which would need to be precleared by the Justice Department under the Voting Rights Act.

Advocates of annexation reform, including the John Locke Foundation’s Daren Bakst, challenged the odd notion that petitions are the same thing as elections. As Bakst argued in a letter to the Justice Department:

The protest petition process isn’t a vote, because only those who oppose the annexation sign the petition – there’s no choice made by affected property owners either to favor or oppose the annexation. The annexation is simply presumed to take place unless enough people oppose it.

Furthermore, the cities’ argument proved too much, in a sense. If the veto-petition process had been deemed an election subject to Voting Rights Act oversight, other petition processes would have been subject to the same oversight – including voluntary annexations.

The Justice Department didn’t bite. So now the cities are trying out the same argument in the North Carolina courts, arguing that the petition process is an election that does not comply with the state constitution’s provisions about voting.

I doubt the cities will succeed. I suspect they simply will use additional taxpayer resources in a futile attempt to challenge the actions of the General Assembly. If I’m wrong, however, I still don’t think the story will end in a way the urban lobby will like.

The most likely response of legislative leaders to successful litigation will be to amend the law to require a real vote for any city-initiated annexation – a referendum among the affected county residents. In the past, the League of Municipalities has opposed this idea vociferously. Now, its members have chosen a legal strategy that, even if successful, will result in a policy they have steadfastly opposed in the past.

Look before you leap, ladies and gentlemen.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.

By John Hood

Monday 5th, 2011

CHARLOTTE — The Queen City hosted this year’s fall meeting of the North Carolina Metropolitan Mayor’s Coalition.

Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx and other mayors from North Carolina’s 27 largest cities gathered Thursday and Friday to share ideas regarding municipal growth in North Carolina.

“What’s significant about this is, it represents the tenth year that the coalition has been together. So we had an opportunity to bring together the founders of the organization, an opportunity to speak with the leadership and the general assembly, and to talk about really how we can forward the partnership going forward,” said Durham Mayor Bill Bell.

The group was founded in 2001 to promote the continued development of north carolina’s urban areas.

 By: News 14 Carolina Staff

Updated 12/03/2011 01:23 PM

Fayetteville’s long struggle to forcibly annex Gates Four took a new turn this week that puts the matter back before a judge.

The city is one of five that filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging the state’s annexation reform law, which allows landowners to petition to fend off annexation. The lawsuit says the petition drives violate the North Carolina constitution.

 A lawyer representing the five municipalities asked a judge Thursday to temporarily halt the petitioning process until the broader issues in the lawsuit are decided. The Wake County Superior Court judge ruled that the petitioning in some of the affected cities can continue for now, according to The Associated Press.

Legislation adopted by the General Assembly this summer blocks involuntary annexations if 60 percent of landowners in the targeted area sign petitions. But the Republican-led legislature went one step further, requiring the petition drive to apply specifically to Gates Four and other annexation efforts under way under previous state rules in Lexington, Goldsboro, Kinston and Wilmington. In the case of Goldsboro, the petition drive had to be applied to a community that was annexed three years ago.

Those cities are plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Gates Four is a gated community in western Cumberland County with about 650 homes and an 18-hole golf course. On Monday, the county Board of Elections certified that more than 90 percent of petitions to deny annexation were signed by Gates Four landowners.

The lawsuit has placed that petition outcome in jeopardy. According to the lawsuit, Gates Four would have been annexed into Fayetteville on Sept. 30 had it not been for the annexation-reform law and petition drive.

Municipal officials in the lawsuit argue that the petitions discriminate against renters who don’t own property in the area and deprive other city residents of their right to vote.

Fayetteville first tried to annex Gates Four in 2003. Both sides reached a settlement the next year preventing annexation.

The city tried again in 2008. The Gates Four homeowners association sued again but lost its legal fight this year when the state Supreme Court declined to intervene.

Mike Molin, a spokesman for Gates Four, said the latest lawsuit wasn’t a surprise given the amount of tax revenue Fayetteville stands to gain if it wins its fight.

City planners have estimated Fayetteville would gain more than $2 million in new tax revenue over five years by annexing Gates Four. The city has spent more than $190,000 in legal fees fighting for the Gates Four annexation since 2008.

Members of the Fayetteville City Council have been tight-lipped about the ongoing litigation.

“I’m going to have to direct that to the city attorney’s office,” Councilman D.J. Haire said Thursday.

Councilman Bill Crisp, who voted against the Gates Four annexation, said the state’s annexation reform law “was hastily crafted and needs to be re-assessed.”

Mayor Tony Chavonne said the council members decided in a closed meeting Monday to be a part of the lawsuit, but the decision wasn’t unanimous. Chavonne declined to reveal his stance on the lawsuit.

The cities involved with the lawsuit will share the legal costs.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice pre-cleared the petition process, disagreeing with the contention held by Fayetteville and the other cities that the process was discriminatory against voters.

Chavonne told The Fayetteville Observer then that he personally opposed the city taking any further action against Gates Four.

The lawsuit names as defendants the state of North Carolina, the state Board of Elections and the local boards of elections in Cumberland and four other counties.

“They’re basically suing the (county) Board of Elections for following state law,” Cumberland County Attorney Ricky Moorefield told the county commissioners Thursday.

The lawsuit blind-sided the commissioners. Commissioner Jeannette Council said a courtesy call by the city would have been nice.

“That does not pass the common-sense test to me,” Council said.

Commissioner Kenneth Edge, president of the N.C. Association of County Commissioners, said the association might file a motion in support of the counties being sued.

By Andrew Barksdale

Staff writer

Published: 08:35 AM, Fri Dec 02, 2011

The following member mayors won their local elections today: Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly, Burlington Mayor Ronnie Wall, Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton, Chapel Hill Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt, Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx, Durham Mayor Bill Bell, Fayetteville Mayor Tony Chavonne, Huntersville Mayor Jill Swain, Jacksonville Mayor Sammy Phillips, and Wilmington Mayor Bill Saffo.   All incumbent city councilors were reelected in Salisbury, including Mayor Susan Kluttz, and the council will meet in December to choose their Mayor.

Gastonia, where Mayor Jennie Stultz did not run again, elected former N.C. House of Representatives member, former city council member and real estate broker John Bridgeman as Mayor. Greensboro Mayor Bill Knight lost to Robbie Perkins who is a commercial real estate broker and city council member. Greenville Mayor Pat Dunn lost to Allen Thomas, a local business owner.

SALISBURY — Mayor Susan Kluttz has been appointed to serve on the newly formed N.C. Governor’s Gang Task Force.

The task force will work to develop a comprehensive plan to ensure a well-coordinated, statewide enforcement program, while increasing the flow of gang-related information among various law enforcement agencies, correctional institutions and the judicial system.

 The mayor will serve until June 30, 2012.

 “Your leadership and commitment are critical to this commission as a part of our efforts to strengthen our communities and improve the quality of life for our citizens,” Gov. Bev Perdue wrote to Kluttz.

 Task force members will investigate and identify current and emerging gang issues and suggest policy changes to better prevent, mitigate and address gang activity. The task force will make recommendations to Perdue’s office and the state legislature.

 The Governor’s Gang Task Force, established in October 2010, was created through North Carolina Executive Order No. 69. The task force is housed within the Department of Crime Control and Public Safety, under the Division of the Governor’s Crime Commission. The commission will report its progress, findings and recommendations to Perdue at least every six months.

 Kluttz was recommended for appointment due to her extensive work with gang prevention and positive youth intervention, according to a press release.

 In 2007, Kluttz led residents to action following the death of a Salisbury teen, gunned-down in gang crossfire. More than 500 people attended youth summits and offered feedback and support to organize efforts for deterring local gang activity.

 Kluttz also has served as a charter member of Project SAFE Neighborhoods Salisbury-Rowan for the past eight years.

 In 2008, Kluttz co-chaired the Metropolitan Mayors’ Gang Task Force with Mayor Bill Bell of Durham and successfully lobbied for gang legislation. In August 2009, Kluttz and the Salisbury City Council hosted a statewide summit on public safety at the Salisbury Station on Depot Street.

Perdue and N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper attended the meeting, titled “Seamless Solutions to Urban Crime.” Kluttz presently co-chairs the Metropolitan Mayors’ Public Safety Committee and chairs the Gang Sub-committee for Mayors.

 The initial meeting for the Perdue’s gang task force will take place Nov. 10 at the Governor’s Crime Commission Division in Raleigh.

 “By working together to identify current and emerging gang issues, we can better prevent and tackle gang activity in both our local communities and across the state.” Kluttz said. “We must continue to stand united in a strong approach to deter gang violence.

 “Our children are our future and they deserve to reach their full potential. We must strive to protect them from gang involvement at all costs.”

 Salisbury Police Chief Rory Collins said Kluttz is committed to the safety of residents and the well-being of local youth.

“Her efforts to provide positive youth opportunities and to combat gang activity are paramount,” Collins said. “The mayor’s leadership and vast experience will greatly strengthen and support the vital work of the Governor’s Gang Task Force.”

 Contact reporter Emily Ford at 704-797-4264.

 Published Thursday, October 27, 2011 11:00 pm

 A federal judge has rejected an effort by environmental groups to stop construction of a 20-mile toll road in Union County. In a November 2010 lawsuit, the North Carolina Wildlife Federation, Clean Air Carolina, and Yadkin Riverkeeper contend that the N.C. Turnpike Authority failed to follow correct procedures with environmental studies on the project. The suit alleges that the Turnpike Authority’s procedure was biased toward building the road. U.S. District Court Judge James Dever III ruled Tuesday that the authority didn’t violate the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. Transportation officials, who had halted planning on the bypass, say they now plan to move forward. “Judge Dever validated our work by ruling in favor of allowing the Monroe Connector/Bypass to finally proceed,” he said in a news release. Work on the project is now expected in 2012, according to Turnpike Authority spokesman Reid Simons. The $800 million toll road east of Charlotte would extend from U.S. 74 near Interstate 485 in Mecklenburg County to U.S. 74 between Wingate and Marshville in Union County.

(Ken Elkins, CHARLOTTE BUSINESS JOURNAL; THE ASSOCATED PRESS, 10/25/11).

History, the arts and fine living come together in the foothills of North Carolina.

Entertainment, design, green spaces and unique cultural aspects of America’s downtowns were reviewed by Livability, a resource that covers small to mid-sized places to live. The resulting top-ten list touted Winston-Salem in the number two position as an eclectic venue offering a magical piece of history.

In addition to Old Salem, where the past comes alive, visitors and residents can enjoy the arts, restaurants, shopping and industry wrapped in Southern hospitality and charm. The Livability rating also garnered Winston-Salem attention on Forbes’ America’s Best Downtowns list.

 The city is also known as the City of the Arts due to the Moravian influence on the Piedmont crafts movement. As potters and cabinet makers, the Moravians helped lay the foundation for the furniture manufacturing industry in the region. They are also credited with forming the first community orchestras and chamber music ensembles as well as building the first organs.

Winston-Salem is located at the foothills of the breathtaking Blue Ridge Mountains. It is an integral part of the Triad, a three-city geographic area that includes Greensboro and High Point. This central location enhances the city’s ability to support its bustling downtown lifestyle with quick and easy commuting as well as convenient, comprehensive market access. Winston-Salem is situated among Interstate-40, Business-40 and U.S. Highways 52, 158, 311 and 421. The highway system ties directly with local and regional mass transit systems as well as airports and freight and passenger rail services, providing for regional, national and global access.

 It comes as no surprise this North Carolina city was also featured in the May 2011 Business Facilities article, The Carolinas: An East Coast Engine for Growth.

 North Carolina Department of Commerce Editorial Staff

10/20/2011