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.
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4 UCW FEBRUARY 14-20, 2018 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM PUBLISHER'S PEN STAFF PUBLISHER Bill Bowman Bill@upandcomingweekly.com ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER/ EDITOR Stephanie Crider editor@upandcomingweekly.com OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Paulette Naylor accounting@upandcomingweekly.com ASSISTANT EDITOR Leslie Pyo leslie@upandcomingweekly.com SENIOR REPORTER Jeff Thompson news@upandcomingweekly.com SENIOR SPORTS EDITOR Earl Vaughan Jr. GRAPHIC DESIGNER Elizabeth Long art@upandcomingweekly.com CONTRIBUTING WRITERS D.G. Martin, Pitt Dickey, Margaret Dickson, John Hood, Jim Jones, Shanessa Fenner, Jason Brady, Lauren Vanderveen, Matthew Skipper, Shane Wilson SALES ADMINISTRATOR/ DISTRIBUTION MANAGER Laurel Handforth laurel@upandcomingweekly.com MARKETING/SALES Linda McAlister Brown linda@upandcomingweekly.com ––––––––––– Up & Coming Weekly www.upandcomingweekly.com 208 Rowan St. P.O. Box 53461 Fayetteville, NC 28305 PHONE: (910) 484-6200 FAX: (910) 484-9218 Up & Coming Weekly is a "Quality of Life" publication with local features, news and information on what's happening in and around the Fayetteville/Cumberland County community. Up & Coming Weekly is published weekly on Wednesdays. Up & Coming Weekly wel- comes manuscripts, photographs and artwork for publication consideration, but assumes no responsibility for them. We cannot accept responsibility for the return of unsolicited manuscripts or material. Opinions expressed by contributors do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher. The publisher reserves the right to edit or reject copy submitted for publication. Up & Coming Weekly is free of charge and distributed at indoor and outdoor locations throughout Fayetteville, Fort Bragg, Pope Air Force Base, Hope Mills and Spring Lake. Readers are limited to one copy per person. ©2007 by F&B Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction or use of editorial or advertisements without permission is strictly prohibited. Cover art/Various ads with art graphics designed with various elements from: vecteezy.com and freepik.com. HIGH 76 HIGH 79 HIGH 52 HIGH 62 HIGH 73 HIGH 78 FEBRUARY 15 FEBRUARY 16 FEBRUARY 17 FEBRUARY 18 FEBRUARY 19 FEBRUARY 20 AM Clouds/PM Sun AM Showers AM Showers Partly Cloudy Cloudy Mostly Cloudy LOW 61 LOW 55 LOW 49 LOW 41 LOW 33 LOW 58 This week, Up & Coming Weekly Pub- lisher Bill Bowman lends his regular space to columnist Jason Brady. Brady shares his thoughts about and possible solutions for an issue that has recently affected many Cumberland County residents – an issue that will present itself again and again in the coming years. Every time I see the horse lazily graz- ing at the corner of Stoney Point and Dundle roads, it makes me think we need to change the makeup of the Fayetteville City Council. Soon that horse will be gone, and some commercial monstrosity will replace one of the last bucolic scenes in that neighborhood. To be fair, I must mention that across the road is the Four Way, a mom and pop grocery store and gas station built in 1948. It dispenses gas, drinks, lottery tickets and food. But it fits in. Miller's Too restaurant is attached to the vinyl-covered cinderblock building. It's a country-style eatery that serves break- fast and lunch, the type that may not be healthy but tastes darn good. On Thursday nights, there are blue plate specials, and the regulars who've eaten there for years fill up the seven booths and three tables and patiently wait for their fried pork chops, beef tips over rice or country-fried chicken steak with white gravy. The landowners across the street, who I'm sure aren't making money out of a corner lot with a horse grazing on it, sought commercial rezoning. They were smart, very smart. They hired a politically sav v y law yer who made the right argu- ment. Plus they had the planning board and city bureaucrats on their side. They figured since the new I-295 bypass was going to dump more traffic onto the area, why not dump some more. The newly elected council in mid- January voted to rezone the 8.6 acres on the corner from residential to commer- cial conditional. It was a controversial issue that came up this past summer, but council members hoped the landown- ers and opponents could come up with a compromise. If not, they would revisit the issue – after the election. The 200-plus people who signed a peti- tion wanting to keep the area residential – or, in downtown vernacular, "in keeping with the fabric of the community" – didn't have a chance. I recently ran into a council member who asked me how things were going in western Fayetteville. I suggested things would be better if council hadn't com- mercialized my neighborhood. He then brought up the property rights argument. People have a right to use their property for its best use. What if it were my prop- erty, he asked. My thoughts are that I wouldn't screw over my neighbors. He did have a point. People should have control over their property and thus their financial destiny. But the property rights argument con- fuses me. Why do people have property rights that can negatively affect their neigh- bors but don't have property rights when it comes to cutting down trees in their own yards, or annexation or utility easements? I'm wondering where my neighbors' property rights are when it comes to the highway department. My friend Art lost half his front yard, Kenny is losing about 4 1/2 acres of his business, and another friend lost her home. But that's government pointing to other units of government. To me, government is government. Here's why I think city residents are un- der-represented. Right now, nine council members, each elected in their separate districts, don't have to be accountable to all voters. Only the mayor is elected by the entire city. So, voters in any specific district can only hold their council mem- ber, and possibly the mayor, accountable for any unpopular council action. The remaining eight can dump on any district without worry of voter backlash. Here's an idea. Let's go back a few years and reorganize city council like it used to be: six districts with three at-large members. It seems to work for the county commissioners. Do the math. That means a council member from a district and three at-large members may be more responsive to vot- ers in a given geographical area of the city. Throw in the mayor's vote, and people not wanting to have their neighborhood com- mercialized could have a fighting chance. I'm guessing we'd have to get out from under the federal government's 1963 Voters Rights Act, which was created to ensure minority representation in local elections, to include Fayetteville. Right now, the ham-fisted Department of Justice tells us how we can organize the city's voting districts. But this is 2018, and depending on which report you read, African-Americans are no longer a mi- nority in Fayetteville. Besides, six of the 10 members of city council are African- Americans. I'm thinking African-Ameri- cans will no longer have problems getting elected in Fayetteville. Maybe it's time we start making council a tad more responsive to all voters. Rezoning issues plague western Fayetteville by JASON BRADY JASON BRADY, Columnist. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcom- ingweekly.com. 910-484-6200. The horse that lives on the corner of Dundle and Stoney Point roads will have to be relocated.