Last night’s City Council meeting was the first meeting for this new year of 2013. If last night’s meeting set the tone for this year, then an Americanized Chinese dish best describes the coming year. Last night the City Council served up a great plate of sweet and sour government.
The City Council did one man’s bidding and allowed gambling dens (internet cafes) to be located next door to a barber college. As it was explained to me after the adjournment of the meeting the morality of gambling dens was settled in Raleigh sometime ago. I might add that the very man being rewarded with this zoning change played a part in settling the moral question on gambling dens. The question the Council had to answer was whether to allow a gambling den to be next door to a barber college as an example. The only person to publically speak favoring the zoning ordinance change was the beneficiary of the change a former State Representative Jim Crawford. Mr. Crawford concluded his rational for profiting from this ordinance change saying, these are grown folks not children, and this should not affect children. In other words one’s gambling losses do not take food from the mouths, clothing from the backs, or warm dry shelter from children. That’s good to know. I do wonder now why there is all the handwringing from the pulpits of the tragedy of gambling when as the former State Representative said it should not affect children. Only Councilman Kearney had the testicular fortitude to object to the ordinance change. Councilwoman Coffey slathered sweet molasses over her approval of the ordinance saying she had voted to approve gambling dens to be located in shopping centers in the City so she would vote to approve this ordinance change. Mr. Ray Griffin before the vote was taken justified approval saying there is tax revenue at stake. So for the sake of the Almighty dollar the City Council voted to change the city zoning ordinance allowing gambling dens to be located next door to “Near Professional Training Schools for Adults” because gambling should not affect children.
That was the sour part of our plate of sweet and sour government.
The sweet part of the meal was the Council’s approved to fund the long overdue replacement of a vital part of the city’s infrastructure, the waste water plant. There is an old joke about which part of the body is the most important. The jokes starts with the brain, the heart, and the stomach all arguing who is most important for the body as a whole, then another part of the body just shuts down ending the debate and the joke. Past Councils have approved several Rube Goldberg solutions patching a design that was not adequate for the exponential growth of the community and the environmental contaminants in waste water. The approval to fund the complete replacement of our 75 year old waste water plant is something the Council can take great pride as an improvement to a part of the City’s infrastructure. The dedication and diligence of the Water Reclamation’s management and staff have kept and will keep the waste water plant from making the City as a whole the butt of an old joke.