The only thing more shocking than city councilman Jim Young’s duplicity (see above) was that the ringleader of Tuesday night’s ambush for moving the Sesquicentennial Park was the one councilman who over the past two years had been the most opposed to moving it.
In fact, mayor pro tem Ricky Hall had been the only council member opposed to closing the current location.
It was Hall who two years ago first brought up the need for the city to invest in repairing the park. It was Hall who voted against previous council efforts to demolish it.
But Tuesday night, it was Hall who had developed his own master plan for moving the very park he had heretofore voted to save. He dressed it up by adding his own bells and whistles: by emphasizing the “doubling” of the park’s size, its possibilities for raising money through renting it out for rentals for special events, and portraying the new spot as quiet and inviting, away from the hustle, bustle, and noise of Court Square.
He had opposed previous efforts by council members Bonnie Whitaker and Bobby Chin, who have consistently wanted to close down the current park’s location; they had been joined periodically by former mayor Jennifer Talley, who insisted that the Court Square corner lot should be sold off. Talley never revealed an opinion on where it should be moved, but she never wanted it to stay where it is. (In our view, that’s one of a complex set of reasons for why she was defeated.)
Instead, Hall took a half-baked idea from Russell Compton, the only resident who ever spoke up at any city council meeting for moving the park. And Hall expanded on it – while in the process eliminating almost half the municipal parking spaces in the lot across from The Alamance News office and beside the Roasted Coffee Depot.
Hall presented a colorful vision for his idea, proposing to take the courtyard behind the Graham Historical Museum which Compton had identified as a site for the park’s replacement. Hall also eliminated 20 of 43 parking spaces in the city parking lot behind the historical museum – to make room for a doubling of the park’s footprint.
Only the city’s new mayor, Chelsea Dickey, resisted the bum’s rush to move the park. Dickey, to her credit, also maintained the position she expressed during the campaign that the park should remain where it is. She’d even come up with a way to pay for part of it, which she presented before being outmaneuvered by Hall.
Dickey was unable to hold back the stampede of other council members, who wanted nothing to do with hearing from the public.
We’re generally opposed to spontaneous council actions on most topics, and the idea that a seemingly mundane agenda item for “discussion” about the Sesquicentennial Park would lead to a final action on its fate was brazen and high-handed, indeed.
The council members didn’t like what they’d heard from the public before: almost universal opposition to moving it. Council member Bonnie Whitaker reinterpreted that opposition by citing, repeatedly, the fact that “only” seven or eight residents had spoken out against moving it at a public hearing last fall.
Indeed, over the course of various public comments over the past two years and one public hearing, “only” about a dozen residents had ever voiced publicly their view that the park should remain. The council decided that others present who supported that position, often by applause, must also be ignored. And only one solitary resident, Compton, ever revealed a preference for an alternative location.
While Chin once urged it to be moved behind the Graham Civic Center, he later disavowed his own alternative, although he continued to urge that the park be moved from its current location.
Chin and Whitaker insisted, as they have before, that “lots” of people have told them they want the park moved, even though none had come forward publicly.
And Chin was fast to embrace Hall’s proposal Tuesday, moving for its immediate adoption.
No examination of the underlying potential cost (Hall said it would be $600,000 to $800,000, but there’s been no bidding, no real evaluation) or how to pay for it.
No examination was made on whether the city could afford to lose 20 parking spaces in the heart of downtown. (Oh yeah, Hall said there are plenty of other city parking lots two and three blocks away.)
No deliberation about whether the city really wants to have a park accessible only by lock and key (the park would be locked every night, Hall described).
No confirmation about whether the county will actually allow some sort of shared access to a small county parking lot near the municipal one whose capacity is being halved. When asked about the county’s purported willingness to sacrifice some of its parking spaces in a joint venture with the city, as Hall had described, assistant county manager Brian Baker said, “That’s not a conversation I’ve had.”
It’s hard to know which was worse: the substantive ambush of unilaterally making a decision on the issue with so little thoughtful consideration or the procedural ambush of not allowing Graham residents to see, comment on, or even contemplate Hall’s idea.
Nope, less than 30 minutes of discussion and the council was so eager to make a permanent decision, overturning a quarter-century of history, that it wouldn’t entertain Dickey’s suggestion of waiting even one month to the next council meeting.
If Hall’s new park idea is so grand, surely it could withstand a month’s worth of consideration by the general public and a public hearing about the parameters of his specific recommendations.
So eager were the advocates that they wouldn’t even hear comments from two residents who wanted to speak during the designated public comment period at the end of the council meeting – even after the council members had already made their decision, voting 4-1 for Chin’s motion to adopt Hall’s plan to move the park.
The council decided by a 3-2 vote that if you didn’t sign up to speak before the meeting (i.e., before anyone knew that the council was going to take substantive action on the issue), you’re not entitled to express your opinion. (Hall, Whitaker, and Chin wanted to shut out any further input that night, while the mayor and Young would at least have allowed the two residents to have their say.)
All in all, it was one of the sorriest performances by this or any other local municipal council we’ve observed in over the past 35 years.
It’s not just a matter of disagreeing on the substance of the park’s most appropriate location; the council members’ arrogance and condescension toward the citizens they ostensibly serve was on full display.
Chin, Hall, Whitaker, and Young should be ashamed.
