During City Council meetings you can often hear trains pass by just outside the meeting room. It's loud enough to stop the meeting temporarily. Sadly, this is not the only railroading going on. Tuesday night, Council is set to give $53000 to downtown interests. I can only assume Sally Fox will vote on this even though she has a downtown business, is a member of the Hickory Downtown Development Association, and has an obvious conflict of interest.
First, $50,000 is requested for the HDDA. While there is money for the Economic Development Association, which promotes the whole City, HDDA doesn't work for the whole community, just downtown. Personally I think the traditionally thought of boundaries of downtown aren't really accurate, 127 and some adjacent streets should be included as well, but this is not what they are talking about. And you can be sure that the Ridgeview area, which is downtown as well hasn't even been thought of. There is no review process for seeing that the taxpayer will get any value out of this other than a nebulous "downtown is good" slogan. There is no accountability. How about seeing if our sales tax revenues are increasing as a result of this so called investment. What did we get for last year's appropriation of money? Where is any accountabilty?
The next appropriation is $3,000 for the city to help to pay for vandalism by graffiti. I detest vandalism and would like to see them caught, but why is the City paying for a private business's costs in the name of appearance? The City does not buy me a sign or pay to clean my business. It's a shame when businesses have to bear unbudgeted costs but welcome to the business world. If we as a City are going to start insuring against damages from crimes, then we would have a line of business owners stretched around the block waiting for our reimbursement checks. We should not be like Washington DC and subsidize politically connected interests with taxpayer dollars. This is what led to the fiscal mess we have at the Federal level and creates a lot of the cynicism and disenfranchisement we have in this country today. The City should not be in the disaster insurance business or promote some selected businesses at the expense of others. I urge Council not to do this.
Here is a link of investments made by the City of Hickory in "Downtown Hickory" since 2002.
