Kirk Ross
For some folks, the summer doldrums are starting. Others are hitting the road or the beach. But a few of us are on the edge of our seats waiting for filing season and the start of the local elections cycle.
I’ve never been able to figure out why most people don’t take much of an interest in local races. Around here, there are no elections in which your vote has more of an impact than in the off-year municipal and school board races. The composition of the various boards of local government is likely to have the biggest effect on your life.
This is the season when you have the most leverage over the people making decisions in your name. Even if you’re happy with our local leadership, this is the time to convey your take on issues before them. You may even knock someone sitting on the fence on something one way or the other.
And it’s not just the people running who are listening. Their fellow board members, knowing their own reelection is just a cycle away, are paying attention as well.
Critical decisions facing the leaders of both Carrboro and Chapel Hill will be shaped by the results of the 2011 races. Carrboro’s downtown evolution, including what becomes of the library site and the continued quest for a commercial area in its northern reaches, comes to mind. Chapel Hill’s list includes a new comprehensive plan, the eventual plopping of a much-rumored big-box store and how the town will deal with its properties, including building a new police station and repurposing the old library and the soon-to-be-former downtown shelter.
Some of the fire and fury in this election will be a referendum on the current leadership of both towns. It always is. But much of what has happened in local government in the past few years has been management in tough times. There has been some progress, or whatever you want to call it, but the tough decisions have mainly been about putting things off, like delaying the library project, rather than pushing ahead. And with a slower economy, the towns have had fewer controversial developments come to a vote.
The record of the past couple of years will certainly be up for discussion in the months ahead, but the election of 2011 promises to be less about the past two years and more about the next 10.
Hold the champagne
Ah, the smell of a new fiscal year – all fresh and clean and quite underfunded. Bleh.
As of July 1 – this Friday – the 2011-12 state budget takes effect. It is no longer hypothetical – and though crafted by many an anti-government type, it did not do away entirely with government. There are still schools to open, kids to teach, roads to repair, justice to distribute, science to do and so on.
I’m not sure what the percentage is now, but for a long time roughly six out of every 10 payroll dollars in this community came from the public purse – state, local or federal. Now there are fewer of those payroll dollars going around, and the reality is settling in.
Not only are times tight, but whole programs, even those thought of as highly successful, are being mothballed. While some of the cuts have been locally directed, others were done from far-away Raleigh in often-indiscriminate fashion. People who have gone above and beyond for years are losing their jobs. Survivors, naturally, are taking on their chores and looking over their shoulders. In that way, government really is being run more like a corporation.
The downsize-government folks may have demanded leaner operations, but it’s the people who work for you and me – our friends, family and coworkers – who have to get up each day and make that happen. Godspeed, y’all, and happy new year.