By another split vote, Graham’s city council this week vetoed allowing the city’s new mayor, Chelsea Dickey, to take a trip to a conference in New Bern sponsored by the North Carolina Main Street program.
Last month, councilman Bobby Chin had struck a $1,500 budget allocation for Dickey’s trip from the “consent agenda,” a list of putatively non-controversial items. The motion to delete the funding passed 3-2, with Chin, Bonnie Whitaker, and Ricky Hall voting to delete the funding; Dickey and councilman Jim Young were opposed.
This month, the objections came from Whitaker to another “consent agenda” item that proposed the same allocation, $1,500, for Dickey’s trip, this time funded by a donation from a Graham business owner who wanted to allow Dickey to make the trip.
Whitaker took issue both with the substance of the trip, what she considered to be the “bad look” for the council and the city in represented in having a private sponsor, and the methodology of having the item included on the consent agenda. Whitaker said the item had been “sort of slipped in” both last month and this month.
“We have never used private donations for council travel or to attend any kind of conferences,” Whitaker said.
Whitaker took issue with the mayor’s planned attendance at a conference sponsored by North Carolina Main Street. Whitaker said the city had previously participated in the program and “hadn’t gotten a lot out of it.”
The Main Street program says it provides “downtown strategic economic development planning and project-specific technical assistance to communities in the Main Street program” across the state, to quote its own description.
The Main Street program touts itself as building “local capacity for downtown revitalization, small business development, and rehabilitation of historic properties.”
Last month, Chin did not elaborate on the underlying reasons for his objection to the expenditure when he moved to strip the money from the consent agenda; the council voted 3-2 to delete the funding.
In response to questions from The Alamance News at a subsequent council meeting, Chin observed that Graham already has a vibrant downtown, complete with lots of historic preservation. “We’re already doing all that,” Chin said.
But in addition to her objections to the underlying program the mayor wanted to attend, Whitaker also targeted the private nature of the donation. While the business owner had originally made the contribution anonymously, because it involved government finances, The Alamance News had learned that the donor was Jane Albright, the owner of the Things Above bookstore on Court Square, and published that fact in a news story in last week’s edition.
While Albright’s name was not mentioned during this week’s council meeting, Whitaker challenged the mayor on whether the donor was someone with whom she had worked on council business.
“I think this is a bad look for our council to accept something like that,” Whitaker said.
“I would like you to go on record,” Whitaker told the mayor, “that you’ve had no interactions with this donor on anything that’s been on our agenda since you have become mayor that you have voted on.”
Dickey initially responded that she had not originally known who the anonymous donor was.
But when Whitaker pressed again, Dickey acknowledged that once she learned that the donor was Albright, “Now that I am aware of who it was, yes, I have worked with this community member.”
Albright, like Dickey, has been an outspoken opponent of moving the Sesquicentennial Park to a new location in place of part of a parking lot on West Elm Street, a move Whitaker, Hall, and Chin have supported.
Whitaker said it was “highly inappropriate.” It leads one to believe that there could be “some impropriety there.”
“I don’t think this is something we want to start doing,” Whitaker said.
For her part, Dickey said she thought there was “extreme value” in the Main Street program.
In response to Whitaker’s suggestions that she had slipped the item in, Dickey also insisted that she had not known that the item was put on the consent agenda, either last month or this, and that city manager Megan Garner had developed the agenda, which included 14 individual items on the consent agenda.
Duke Energy easement also under the microscope
Another consent agenda item that drew scrutiny, this time from Young, was an item to grant a proposed easement across North Jim Minor Road (near the city’s Regional Park) to Duke Energy.
Young questioned whether the city couldn’t do better than the $2 charge that Duke was going to pay the city for the easement, and he pointed to a recent notice from the energy company proposing a three percent rate hike.
“Duke Power is making a lot of money,” Young said, suggesting that the company could afford to pay the city more.
Young also questioned the power company’s rejection of Graham’s previous request to paint utility poles in the downtown area. “It’s like pulling teeth to get them to do anything,” he said, while the proposed agenda item was giving the company an easement for a mere $2.
When assistant city manager Aaron Holland said it was possible the city could get an appraisal of the value of the easement, Young chimed in, “I don’t think it would kill them.”
Hall, however, interjected that Duke Energy could probably get the easement through eminent domain.
Saying he was not “going to stand in the way of this [easement],” Young expressed frustration that cooperation between the city and the power company seemed to be a one-way street, where the company always got its way.
But Young did not ask that the item be struck from the consent agenda.
Whitaker ultimately made a motion to approve the entire consent agenda, with the exception of the $1,500 donation for the mayor’s trip, with the donation to be returned “to the very gracious donor.”
Whitaker’s motion passed 3-2; she was joined by Chin and Hall in voting to delete the $1,500; Dickey and Young voted against.
