After nearly 90 minutes of library budget talks Wednesday night, we wish we had some brilliant flash of insight that would allow us to slice through the Gordian knot of Henderson finances and lead the way to a triumphant future for our fair city.
No such luck.
No matter how you slice it, the city is stuck with a problem of its own creation: Henderson must fully fund its share of the H. Leslie Perry Memorial Library’s budget request now and into the foreseeable future. (In our case, if not the city’s, the foreseeable future stretches until mid-2012, when HomeinHenderson staff writer Joshua Jacobs will graduate high school and force us to confront college tuition bills; if you are a parent or student counting down until graduation May 27 or 28, you’re already slipping into the outer limits of the foreseeable future.)
As library trustee Bill Barnett said Wednesday night, it’s incomprehensible that the city would throw its support (and its $1.8 million) behind the library construction project, then not be prepared to pay bigger bills for personnel and electricity for a facility that’s triple the size of its predecessor.
This is where we see the shortsightedness of the vision thing that the Embassy Square Foundation likes to talk about, which is ironic when you consider how far down the road the Embassy project’s biggest fans claim to be looking. The Embassy project may be the key to a great future full of employment and culture for all, but isn’t that glorious outcome a lot more likely if the beautiful buildings are open for business when corporate scouts visit Henderson?
The fact is, we have a chronic edifice complex. We’re obsessed with erecting bigger and better buildings than any other town 40 miles from the nearest bookstore (our preferred measure of civilization), and we can’t see past the steel beams shaped bricks to look at what is or isn’t inside.
We could get philosophical here and say that perhaps the hollowness of our beautiful buildings reflects an emptiness in our hearts and our souls. We’re tempted in that direction by something state Sen. Doug Berger said during the Faith Summit at First Presbyterian Church last month: Vance County has the nicest courthouse in the four counties he represents, but it has no money for crucial school construction. That’s not a good combination for a community that wants to present a positive image for prospective employers.
But our illness is only skin-deep. We are in love, or at least deep like, with beautiful things, and we want to surround ourselves with them. It’s a common affliction in this modern age. But like the universities that are perpetually building lecture halls named after rich alumni while underpaying the teaching assistants who run the classrooms, we pour all our money into the fancy facades and ignore the important work that should be happening inside.
We wish we had recorded John Charles Rose’s rant on this issue from Thursday morning’s “Town Talk” because he was propelled by the passion and frustration we wish would sweep up more folks around here. But here’s our version: We built a palatial courthouse, but we don’t hold enough court sessions to avoid a backlog bad enough to let murder suspects out on bond. We built a recreation center that should answer many of the complaints about a lack of things for kids to do, but we don’t figure out a good way to get the kids there, and we don’t hire enough staff to keep the center open for enough hours anyway. We build a police station that should accommodate our needs well into the 22nd century, but we pay our young police officers so little money that our Police Department becomes an extended training academy for better-heeled departments. Now we build a library that will be the envy of residents of small towns across North Carolina, but our own residents will be lucky to find the doors unlocked when they need a book or some computer time. And we’re supposed to move ahead with building a theater?
It’s time to say enough. From now on, let’s figure out what buildings we’re going to need and how we’re going to operate them before we turn that first shovelful of dirt. Let’s spread out construction to a pace we can afford and enjoy each new building a bit without the din of further building. Let’s create financial and operational plans and try to stick to them.
Unfortunately, none of those resolutions will do a thing to pay the bills at the new library when it opens next March. For that, we need to consider the least of many evils. Raise property taxes, putting a further burden on our economic development efforts and on all of us (including elected officials) to pay our bills? Cut back on hours or close off portions of the new building, putting an embarrassing burden on our economic development efforts and blocking all the lifelong-learning potential of the facility, not to mention risking people‘s refusal to fulfill their Embassy pledges? Pull the money out of the “bloated” budgets for other city departments, figuring that we have crime despite the police and fires despite the firefighters, so how much worse could things be? Plead with Vance County to swallow a bigger piece of the funding pie for the library, the rec center, etc., etc., shifting the complaints from Beckford Drive to Young Street?
We’re not going to pretend to have the answers on this problem, although we’re bracing for a bigger tax bill. But we do think it’s time to stop the insanity of putting buildings ahead of the people who work in them. Buildings don’t provide the services we all pay for; people do. Until we operate under that common-sense premise, we’ll continue to move down the path toward building the finest 21st-century ghost town borrowed money can buy.xxx throat movies deep free gaggingfree xxx lingerie moviesfree xxx movies pornoreal video clip movie free xxxmen clips sample black gay moviegay dildo moviesmovie scene porn georgette index sandersgirl next pics movie door Map