Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/882795
OCTOBER 4 - 10, 2017 UCW 11 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM OPINION MISS - City council members and county commissioners don't agree on much of anything: which lo- cal government should run a joint emergency call center; the formula for future sales tax revenue sharing; and whether county government will make good on its promise to help financially support the new minor league baseball stadium. Shameful! HIT - Raeford's NC Fall Festival has become a fall tradition. Founder Jean Hodges dubbed it the NC Turkey Fes- tival back in the day, and the turkey still rules the roost. The highlights in- clude the annual "Turkey Bowl" high school football game and the "Stuffin and Stompin" community dinner. MISS - Street construction contrac- tors should not be allowed to close more traffic lanes than necessary. Case in point: Recently, on busy Ramsey Street on at least two occa- sions, two of the three inbound lanes were closed off with orange barrels while work was being done on only one lane. It's about time NCDOT cracked down on these contractors. MISS - Fayetteville police close off entire roadways sometimes to investi- gate serious traffic accidents, with no apparent regard for the inconvenience of the motoring public. Road closures, which can last for hours, may be nec- essary in some instances, but there are situations where lanes of traffic could be left open. HIT - Fayetteville's annual Interna- tional Folk Festival observed its 39th year last month. It was three days of fall fun in Festival Park and down- town Fayetteville. A parade, music, dancing, food and games made the event a big hit for tens of thousands — as it always does. MISS - Fayetteville City Council needs a better understanding of who its customers are. Take trash collec- tion for example. Half the homes in Fayetteville are occupied by renters. They come and go, and don't know the rules — and shouldn't be expected to. The city's weekly garbage and yard debris collection regulations must be relaxed. After all, this is a basic service of municipal government. As former City Councilwoman Juanita Gonzalez famously once said, the city should "just pick it up." HIT - The annual Best of Fayetteville awards dinner was in- deed the best yet. It publicly acknowl- edged winners of Up & Coming Week- ly's best of the best as determined by readers. You'll find all of them in this year's special edition of Fayetteville's only locally-owned newspaper. HIT - PWC, Fayetteville's home- town utility, had line crews in Florida to help with recovery from recent hur- ricanes. It's an obligation that dozens, if not hundreds, of utilities have as part of statewide and national mutual aid agreements to help each other when needed. Praise and gratitude to the PWC crews who responded. MISS - Motorists in Fayetteville need to understand that center turn lanes on five-lane roads are not for merging into traffic. They are for making left turns only. Cops should enforce this law — and red-light running, and speeding, and reckless driving, and drunk driving and ... If they did, they would find many viola- tors don't have driver licenses, proper registration or insurance. Fayetteville needs more traffic cops. Hits and Misses by JEFF THOMPSON JEFF THOMPSON, Senior News Reporter. COMMENTS? news@ upandcomingweekly.com. (910) 484-6200.