One summer I taught summer school at a different school from the one I taught at during the regular school year.
One of the lady custodians at first seemed very cold to me, but, as the session went on, she warmed up and would finally talk and joke with me. At the end of the term, she confessed that she had really had a grudge against me for many years for what I had done to her son when he was in my class years before. Of course, I wanted to know what I had done.
She told me her son came home and told her that I had made fun of his shoes, and that I said he needed to get some that weren’t so ratty. Now, believe me, I had never made fun of any students’ shoes, and I told her so. She started thinking, and finally told me that he had been pestering her to death to get him some special tennis shoes, and she did not think he needed them, but she bought them for him so I would not make fun of him anymore. It dawned on her that he had totally misled her to get his way. He knew what button to push and what lie to tell.
She had never thought about that possibility.
The boy knew how to get his way, and he had gotten what he wanted. It did not bother him that he had poisoned his mother’s opinion of me. All those years later, she had finally gotten a wake up call about what had really happened.
The city council and the city attorney need to send a big wake up call to the owners of America’s Best Value Inn and Beacon Light. It is time for the city to start playing hard ball if we are going to protect investments around here, especially those around those properties.
It was a mistake for the Zoning Board to issue a special use permit to the America’s Best Value Inn. If it were not enough that a fatal shooting took place there, or that a meth lab was discovered in a room, or that a burned out room had been abandoned and boarded up, or that the entire second floor is closed, or that there were serious fire code violations, or that there were 267 police calls to the business since 2007, then maybe a health department inspection would be enough.
If you pulled off of the interstate looking for a place to stay and you ended up at America’s Best Value Inn, would you be impressed with our city if you were to find in your room hair on the linen, holes and stains on the sheets, bugs and rodent droppings in the bed, a box spring with a missing top, mold on the shower curtain, dirty bed spreads, stained pillows, or spiders? These violations were reported on a health department inspection May 22, 2009 in the rooms they inspected. A source told me on Monday that during the most recent inspection, an infestation of carpet beetles was discovered.
The owners say they need “time to build a good reputation.” I say this is just a tale told to get what they want. They need a wake up call like one member of the Zoning Board tried to send them by saying: “I don’t believe what they told me. It’s a dump.” But that message was not sent, seeing as how the Zoning Board gave them a special use permit. Granted, it came with stipulations, but if the city keeps a check on its special use permits, it’s news to me. It takes guts to run a city correctly, and, in this case, it does not seem that we have the guts it takes.
There was another time during my teaching career when the other teachers and I were very concerned about a student who had no coat, torn and filthy canvas shoes, and very dirty, ill-fitting clothing during the colder part of the year. We bought a pair of Timberland boots and told him that they were left in the lost and found from the previous year. We said if he wanted them, they were his. He was thrilled. He got them and put them on.
The next day, his daddy came to school and screamed at us. He told us that he could buy his son shoes, and he did not need anyone’s help. He made the boy give the boots back, but… from then on this student had good shoes, a coat, and clothes that fit and were clean. We did not know we were pushing the right button to give his parents a wake up call, but we had.
A button needs to be pushed to give the owner of Beacon Light Apartments a wake up call. He might come and rant at the city council and threaten a law suit, but he has failed to live up to his obligations and deadlines in both a legal contract and a city ordinance. He is just like the daddy who had to be shamed into doing what he should do, could afford to do, but had chosen for whatever reason not to do. Fortunately, the city does not have to shame the owner of Beacon Light into living up to his legal responsibilities. Henderson has the law on its side. The council and their attorney must stand up for what is best for that neighborhood and this city. What is best is to tear that mess down.
Why waste any more time talking? Time’s up. Everyone is wide awake and waiting for the law to swing the wrecking ball.