Graham’s city council has now voted, twice, to move Sesquicentennial Park from its location on the northwest corner of Court Square without its citizens being shown the plans, in advance, or being able to speak on the issue. This even though residents made their desire to keep the park where it is crystal clear just one week ago.
In doing so, the council has also decided, unilaterally, to take away valuable downtown parking spaces from a city parking lot – 20 spaces removed in last month’s plan, 19 from the one adopted this week, leaving only 23 or 24, respectively, of the current 43 available spaces.
Now, ironically, this week’s plan supposedly includes nine “additional” parking spaces. The problem is the parking shown in the architectural renderings seems to show that those new spaces are actually on adjacent private property – property that no one has even attempted to buy, or otherwise ask about.
And we hardly think “eminent domain” would be attempted, since it’s not likely to succeed for a totally discretionary project.
We suspect, as usual, that this is an unexpected and undiscussed dimension of their premature plans that was conveniently glossed over during their rush to approve their newest favorite location, but which will ultimately come back to haunt, and slow, or stop the project altogether.
Oh, did we mention they also don’t currently have a clue what the move will cost? Last month, Ricky Hall claimed his idea would be $600,000 to $800,000. But this month, nobody even bothered to guestimate. It clearly doesn’t really matter.
The council majority can’t find any money to make repairs to the current park (despite having $483,000 left from a state grant they’ve been sitting on for 2½ years), but somehow thinks there are hundreds of thousands of dollars somewhere that could be spent to move the park.
Graham currently has three members who are apparently so hellbent to move the park that they believe their insights and wisdom about the subject are far more important than dozens of citizens who turned out to voice their unanimous opposition to the first plan at last week’s city council meeting (24 public speakers against moving the park during the open-ended “public comments” portion of the meeting) and hundreds more who voiced their opinion against moving the park (412 out of 450 respondents, or roughly 92 percent of survey’s respondents, on an online survey).
While the council sat for over an hour through the procession of citizens who took to the podium last week, this week the council majority decided to totally ignore the citizenry, in favor of voting 3-2 to do what they want.
In doing so, the council majority demonstrated a self-conceited arrogance that was so patently obvious and obnoxious as to be, frankly, embarrassing, even shameful.
The comments of council members Bobby Chin and Bonnie Whitaker were particularly inflammatory and condesending, making explicit that they would not be dissuaded from their demands to move the park, no matter the magnitude of public sentiment.
Since the issue first arose two years ago, they’ve led the council drumbeat for moving the park. The fact that both are relative newcomers to the city, not present for the 150th anniversary celebration that the park represented when constructed in 1999, is probably not just coincidental.
It’s to their advantage that North Carolina law doesn’t provide a broad methodology for recalling public officials (only 25 cities and some school systems do), because we suspect some of these Graham council members would quickly be subject to such reconsideration. Chin was just reelected in November, leading the ticket of city council candidates, but his affinity for public participation and approval was long gone.
Last week, it was Chin who challenged those present who wanted to keep the park to get busy raising private funds to go toward the necessary repairs.
But this week, he and Whitaker said “we’re not going to fix it [the existing site. We intend to sell the land [of the existing site].”
Forgetting their campaign promises
In a particularly galling example of governmental amnesia, or potentially hypocrisy, two members of the prevailing council majority (Chin and Hall) had claimed, when they were originally campaigning for their seats, to be opposed to the very type of reconfiguration of downtown Graham that they just approved this week.
During his first run for the council in 2019, when asked if he agreed or disagreed with a previous city consultant’s recommendation to “eliminate part of the city parking lot along West Elm Street, substituting in its place a small park,” Hall claimed to disagree.
Similarly, when he first ran for a seat on the council in 2021, Chin also claimed to disagree with the previous consultant’s same recommendation to eliminate part of the parking lot on West Elm Street and put a park in its place.
But this week, they both voted to do precisely that.
Other potential conflicts are on the horizon. Asked whether he supported or opposed the use of eminent domain for the city to acquire privately-owned property to implement the earlier “downtown master plan,” Hall said he opposed it. “Eminent domain should never be used against property owners for city projects,” he told the newspaper in 2019. Yet the current iteration of the new location for Sesquicentennial Park could do exactly that – if the city presses to use private property next door to the city’s parking lot (as shown on the consultant’s plans).
Concerns with the adequacy of downtown parking have long since been forgotten. When he was asked in 2019 whether the statement “there is more parking availability than demand for parking in downtown” was true or false, Hall said it was false.
But this week and last month, he voted to cut downtown parking spaces available to residents.
Hurry up and spend, spend, spend
Part of the impetus for the rush to move the park is to “use” the $483,000 in remaining grant funds from the state budget that was designated for Graham “downtown revitalization” in the 2023 budget.
Those funds are scheduled to run out June 30, but members of the legislative delegation – primarily state senator Amy Galey, who authored the provision in 2023 – supposedly have been approached to see if an extension could be granted.
The council majority expressed an interest only in using those funds to move the park, not to repair it.
But regardless, they refused to listen to the public – because they didn’t want to hear a contrary view to the decision they had already made among themselves.
It’s been almost about two decades since the General Assembly had to step in to “make a law” requiring public bodies across the state to allow the public to make public comments at their regular meetings.
One would think that was an obvious purpose for municipal and county boards, planning boards, boards of education, and so forth. But some places were so intent on steamrolling their constituents, they wouldn’t even take time to hear from them. So the legislature instituted a required “public comment” period.
It seems it may be time for the General Assembly to take note again, this time perhaps requiring a public hearing when proposals with significant budget impact – like, say, a half million dollars or more – are at stake.
When public officials – like Graham’s current majority – are so deaf, even hostile toward their constituents, it’s sometimes necessary for state legislators to intervene to require them to at least go through the motions of weighing their constituents’ concerns.
Of course, in Graham’s case, we’re not sure more public hearings would do any good.
After all, the current majority clearly isn’t listening and doesn’t seem to care what its constituents think or prefer.
We keep hoping and thinking Graham’s council can’t get any more obnoxious or embarrassing in its contempt toward its citizens.
And yet, they seem to get worse week after week.
