Speaker 1: What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to
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smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for
your support. Mecklenburg County Commissioners gave the green light for
a referendum to be put to us we the voters,
on whether we would like to raise the sales tax
by one percent to take it from seven and a
quarter to eight and a quarter. It'll raise billions of
dollars over decades, and it will be used for Forty
percent of it will be used for roads, but that
includes sidewalks and street lights, forty percent for rail, and
another twenty percent for other transit related things like micro transit,
which is basically government run Uber. I have concerns about
that because now you are going to be putting Uber
out of business. Lift out of business, right, like, why
would people pay the full cost of those rides when
they can get gov code to come to. However, chances
are the micro transit government service probably won't be as
efficient and probably won't be running all of the regular
hours that Uber and Lyft do. I don't know, We'll
see how it works. Look, I'm a I would prefer
there be micro transit versus buses seriously, because like the
cost per rider is probably cheaper. You got buses that
ride around, they have very few people on them, Like,
get rid of that bus service and just run taxis
or something. But I would say, do it as a
voucher program. Give people a card, you know, do so
it means testing, So you get a preloaded card and
you could use that, or you can buy cards and
then use those cards for your Uber and Lyft drivers.
I would say that's a better way to do it
as a voucherized kind of a program. But what do
I know. I mentioned also that there was a presentation
made like twenty years ago talking about how a lot
of our roads have been designed and you know, particularly
here in the in the southeast where you know, we
have a long there's a long history, you know, two
hundred plus years, well three hundred, four hundred years, and
how did these roads come about? A lot of them
were built based on animal paths, because the hunters followed
the animals, and then the trading paths. There was already
a path here, so let's go ahead and follow this path,
and then it takes you to this town. And so
then when you know, the automobile comes along, they just
pave those roads. And so a lot of the you know,
road planning quote unquote was done by animals, and Dave
wanted to know if he can read more about that history. Look,
I just remember the story that was told to me
during this presentation, this discussion about road planning twenty years ago.
So I know I do not have a source for
you on that. I also heard that, like, for example,
why are our roads as wide as they are? Because
you go overseas, you go to other countries and they've
got different sized roads, like real like you know, cities
that have been around for thousands of years whatever, they
got these tiny little roads and all of that right,
because they built up before the automobile. But why does
the automobile, Why is it as wide as it is,
which dictates how wide you build the roads? How did
that come about? Well, Initially you had the roads built
to the horse and carriage. You see where this is going, right,
So how wide is a horse And that's how wide
you built the road because the ruts would dig it
in and so you knew where the road was. Right.
So then when you come in and you're finally going
to put cobblestone down or pavement down, you do it
over this existing road. And that's based on literally the
width of a horse's ass. That's so there you go.
That's how we ended up. Anyway, Now, one of the
problems in any of these types of projects, or because
by the way, part of the other deal is the
state legislation that allowed for this vote. It also creates
a transit authority. This is part of the Pave Act.
It does not specifically carve out seats for public transit users,
which is what a lot of the people who were
speaking at the County commission meeting were demanding. They want
they want riders, users of the system to have a
voice on the governing authority, the transit authority. This is
going to be this According to a story WBTV by
Naomi Coles, the specifics of how to spend a large
portion of the funding would be decided by a tightly
controlled twenty seven person group. I don't know what the
tightly controlled adjective refers to, because it's appointed. You get
appointments by Again, this is twenty seven total seats. You
have two that are appointed by the General Assembly, one
appointed by the governor, twelve appointed by the City of Charlotte,
six appointed by the County Commission, and then another six
appointed by each of these six quote unquote small towns.
The other municipalities in Mecklenburg County Huntersville, Cornelius, Matthews, Minhill, Davidson, Pineville.
So that's the makeup of this authority, right. They're all appointments,
but there's twenty seven members on the body. They cannot
be current elected officials, they cannot be lobbyists. Two appointments,
one from the Charlotte designation and one from the Mecklenburg
County designation, would be reserved for quote otherwise qualified people
who are also active users of cats. But if you
can't find anybody qualified to fill those seats, then it
releases the commission of that requirement. And that's not enough.
According to Robert Dawkins of Action and See, which has
been opposed to this plan. They're not opposed to mass transit,
they're just opposed to this plan. And what Dawkins said
is what I see as an unhealthy alliance for six
spots which will always make you able to run the board.
So I don't know who those six spots are. He says,
that's the three people that will get appointed by the
folks in the General Assembly. But that's not true. Only
two are actually coming from the General Assembly. One is
from the governor, but he counts that as three for
some reason. And then the three corporate appointments and then
two small business people. Okay, because that is they laid
out like you got to have some small business representation,
corporate representation, that sort of thing. So okay. But even
if I take mister dawkins math at face value and say, okay,
you have six members on that body, and you think
he says, you put them all together and they're going
to always be able to run the board. But I'm
at a loss to understand how six members control twenty
seven or twenty one others. How does six members of
a twenty seven member board control that board? So look
piece of Advice to Action n C and Robert Dawkins,
I think you have to come up with some better
arguments because this does this one doesn't make any sense.
One of the biggest issues has always been whether it's
consolidation of the local government. You know, because I've heard
you know, this has been debated for decades. Get rid
of the County Commission, there's no need for them anymore,
and just consolidate into Charlotte.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Of course, the county won't do that because they don't
want to give up their power and whatever. So the
other problem, though, is that whenever you comprise a body
and you're looking at the six small towns and then
you're looking at the City of Charlotte, you have seven municipalities.
Charlotte has way more people. So any kind of way
that you design these boards or authorities or commissions, you're
you're always running the risk of creating a perpetual majority
vote for either the City of Charlotte if you do
it by population or square mileage or something, or amount
of money being confiscated through taxes and diverted into the
commission or agency. So if you were to wait it
in some way per capita or something, Charlotte's going to
have the run of the roost, right, they're going to
be able to veto or vote against anything else that
comes from the small towns. So the small towns never
want to be a part of that because they're then
abdicating power and control. Okay, well, if you go the
other direction, can we find a way to make like
the empower the small towns. Well, then the city of
Charlotte won't go in on that because they're like, we
have more people, we spend more money, whatever, So they
don't want to abdicate control and power either. It's always
a problem with these types of things. And so this
twenty seven member authority is, you know, the intent is
to try to get at that balancing between the towns,
the city, the county, with some input from the state.
The idea is you have basically a team of rivals.
It sounds like, so I'm not really sure if this
is the best argument for action, and see to oppose it.
All right, if you're listening to this show, you know
I try to keep up with all sorts of current events,
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ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. Alrighty,
this is from David. Let me get to the text line.
David writes in Hi, Pete, this is David from Matthews.
Why trust the people that run the trains? Remember a
couple of years ago when the trains were jumping the
rails because they hadn't done the proper monthly maintenance to
the cars, and it was oversight and abuse and neglect.
Yeah right, that's like that's the problem here is like
you guys have been running a system that has had
a whole bunch of problems already, and now maybe with
the new transit authority, you create this transit authority and
now maybe some of this stuff gets fixed now. I also,
you know, I got a little bit of PTSD coming
out of you know, New York Low those many years ago.
I mean, I've been down in the Carolina since nineteen
ninety two. But there's always problems with these transit authorities
and eventually, like the one up there, I forget what
it's called. I think it's just the MTA. I think
they call it. It's Jersey, New York. Maybe Connecticut is
in there, and it's like the Port Authority or something
like that. I don't even remember. But like it's basically
it's it's its own, like unaccountable government. I don't want that.
David also adds Lama, You're welcome regarding the sales tax
for light rail. Here's another Texter. Get the federal money first,
then come to the voters. For the one sent sales tax.
I am sixty three years old. I don't have thirty
years to pay that penny. If I was thirty three,
I still wouldn't have thirty years to pay that penny.
So you can't get the federal money because it's a match.
You can't get the grant until you lock down state
and local funding sources. That's that's my recollection of how
the process works. Roger says, Pete, give our city officials
some credit. They have a proven record with properly spending
on our money on the light rail repairs and bulletproof
vests for bus drivers. Yes, that's right. How do I get?
Harry wants to know how he gets a supervisor's job
with the city. I don't know. And then, uh wait,
hang over this thing. Sorry the text line. I'm reading
this thing and it bounces, so I'll start reading something
and then it bounces out of my screen. So I'm sorry,
So where was I here? Don't forget the new v
A t AKA the tariffs on imports, says Jefferson, and
Kevin says, when I just tuned in, at first, I
thought you were talking about the new US tariffs. I
fear those are going to do the same thing. The
Meckelberg tax increase will do drive up cost on all products,
even those coming from inside the US are going to
go up because companies are going to raise the prices
to increase profit. It's not a matter of increasing their profits, Kevin.
It's a matter of maintaining their profit margin. Okay, they're
not going to raise It's not that you raise the
prices to make more money. It's that you raise the
prices to offset your losses that you're now incurring. As
long as they are cheaper than the foreign goods, that's
all that matters to consumers. Somebody wants to know what
the name of the Oh, did you already answer them?
On the bumper music? Somebody did? I think having Charlotte
spend the money as it's supposed to because I'm reading
the feed. I'm not reading that other screen. Having Charlotte
spend the money as it is supposed to and not
being able to divert money is what Braxton Winston was
referring to having their hands tied. I did not hear
this from Rodney. I did not hear Winston's comments. Former
Mayor pro ten Braxton Winston he's part of the action
and see opposition to this plan. I did not hear
the comment that Rodney's referring to. Aaron says, let us
know the let us know that weather also plays a
big part in road construction. If things are too cool
or too hot, things can happen. The weather has to
be like in between. Basically, oh, let him know. That
was to the caller Tony who called in at the
end of the last hour complaining about, you know, the
length of time it takes to do the road projects,
which a lot of that is also regulatory, but also
shifting of cruise around, you know, working on different projects. Scott,
I'll see there it goes. It just bounced out on
my screen again. Scott says, why don't the items that
are causing the issue get charged? The tax cars? Well,
they are, they are charged, but actually the cars aren't
causing the issue. The people are calling causing the issue.
I always say this, people complain about traffic. You are traffic.
You okay, me, we are traffic. Those cars aren't driving
around on their own, even if they were autonomous, they
still got people in them, right, Those are people in
those cars. So that's why you tax the people, one
of my And by the way, this goes to something
that former Governor Jim Martin told me years ago, which
was this old saying, see that man behind the tree,
go tax him, don't tax me. And that is the
driving philosophy on like all of this stuff, which is
I don't want to pay any more taxes, but I
want this stuff, so go tax them. One of my
customers is large. This is from Kevin again, one of
my customers, large enough to handle anything the city needs.
But he has said Mecklenburg and the City of Charlotte
is miserable to work with. He stays away from them specifically.
Lots of other cities and municipalities are much easier to
work with. Well, get this, there is no cap on
the amount of comments and recomments and recomments that the
city can do four projects. So if I'm building a
project and I go to the city for my permits
and they make a bunch of notes, They're like, you
got to do this, do that, correct this, change that,
and I do all of the things that they said,
I then have to resubmit for the permit. And then
instead of just going through and saying, okay, we listed
four things, you did all those four things you're approved,
they do they do a whole different review, a whole
new review. So you address the four things they asked for,
and then they find other stuff, and then you got
to you got to take it back, you got to
re review, You bring it back to them again, and
that process can go. You can go back and forth
with the city forever. There's no limit on how many
times they can re review, which is kind of nuts, right,
Like if I submit a project, here are my plans,
and you approve them, except or you say you got
to do these four changes. I make those changes, that
would tell me now I'm proved. I don't think you
should be able to then go back and say, Okay,
good job on those four things. Here's five more. Here's
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Let me jump over to the phones here and get
Jerry on the program. Hello, Jerry, how are you?
Speaker 2: Uh? Oh?
Speaker 1: Turn down the radio, Jerry, okay, okay, okay, Pete, I'm Okay,
are you okay?
Speaker 2: Yeah, good, I'm good. Thank you, yeah, thank you had
great show as usually, Thanks sir, Hey Pete. The city
is a mess. It is more dangerous than ever. And
I know this isn't news, but I just think we
need to talk about it more. My goodness.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think the CMPD put out their
crime stats that showed the crime was down. They were
touting it. I forget if it was a specific was
it murder that was down a little bit or something,
but they were touting their crime stats a couple of
weeks ago saying that it was lower. And I mean,
this is one of the things like like, yes, there
is crime in Uptown. Absolutely. My wife works in Uptown.
I go up there pretty regularly to you know, meet
her at the office and that sort of thing. I'm
in uptown. My doctor's in Uptown. So I am uptown
enough to see what has become of Uptown. And it's
way more, you know, busier, a lot more people than
you know, twenty five years ago. No doubt, crime is definitely,
you know, worse than than it was in recent years.
But historically speaking, and this is the case across America,
violent crime has been declining for decades. Did you know that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the thing that you know, I know, there were
several restaurants, several I think there was a half a
dozen or so restaurants that they came out this week
said that, you know, business just wasn't there. Yeah. I'm
in the food service business, and and I just feel
like people are afraid to go uptown.
Speaker 1: I well, yes, you are correct. So therein lies the
conundrum is that if there is a perception that it's
dangerous that keeps people away. You're absolutely right, and that
perception is driven by high profile, you know, violent acts,
that sort of thing, but it's also driven by the
large vagrancy problem, the homeless problem.
Speaker 2: And absolutely right.
Speaker 1: And so when people see and look again, Christy works
up there every day, and I hear stories virtually every day,
people passed out on the sidewalk, screaming at each other,
screaming at passers by, screaming at nobody. You know, it's
just it. It does not feel safe, even if the
crime stats don't show that.
Speaker 2: Pete, you obviously have some concerns because your wife lives
up there. I'm sure, I mean because your wife works
up there. Yeah, I mean through throughout the day. You
probably think about that from time to time.
Speaker 1: I'm sure, yeah, yeah, absolutely, Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know, I just thought of something. I'm giving my
my daughter some football tickets to go to the game tonight.
But there's no way I would let her go up
there with with a girlfriend. She's going up there with
her with her boyfriend. There's no way I would let
her go up there with another gal. There's no way.
I just wouldn't do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Again, that's the perception of the perception of not
being safe. And how does the city combat that. I
would say, you probably need more police presence on the
streets so people feel safer.
Speaker 2: How about how about a police chief that that, uh,
maybe we had a better that maybe had a little
better persona than what he's projected.
Speaker 1: Maybe. Yeah, I mean, you know, it comes from the top.
So yeah, I mean, like all of these things are
choices and priorities that local leaders have made, and you know,
voters will suffer it as long as they continue putting
the same people back into office. Jerry, I appreciate the call, Buddy,
good to hear from you. Thank you all right, man,
have a great weekend. Let me get back to the
text line. Here because it's kind of blowing up. One
of my customers is large enough to handle anything the
city needs. Oh, I already wrote that. I read that one.
Here's another one. I'm fifty seven years old. I grew
up in Atlanta, moved to Charlotte in my late twenties.
When Marta expanded in Atlanta, there was a correlated spike
in crime along the new routes that largely never dissipated.
This drove a lot of families even further out into
the new suburbs away from the rail system. Ultimately it
makes drive times even longer. Oh and Atlanta's projections from
Marta never panned out either. Yeah, that's another thing too.
Here the ridership numbers, you know, like that's the project
on the cost they never meet the what is sold.
In fact, I got a story in here also about
the NASCAR Hall of Fame. I remember when that whole
thing got built. Those visitor projections are way off, and
people like me back then said this is probably not
going to be an accurate prediction. This is from Brian
who says, I'm a degreed engineer that has worked on
large capital projects for the past thirty years. That last
caller said there was an abundance of design engineers and
he was wrong. Not the last caller, but in the
last hour caller Tony said that it was infinite and
you are correct. There are only a few firms in
the US that could handle the design and construction of
a light rail system. This is from Rodney. Tony apparently
doesn't that's caller Tony doesn't understand. The firm has to
have the money to do the work because the state
will not give you an advanced payment. There's also a
list of on tractors the state picks from, and you
have to meet certain qualifications. Bucky says, before any more
spending on light rail, is the existing system repaired? Is
it running at full speed? I do not know. It's
a good question. Remember they had to they had to
reduce all of the train speeds because the failure to
maintain the trucks underneath the wheelbase, you know there. They
were like, if you go too fast, like the thing
could fall off and derail. With regard to rail, it'd
be a great idea to do a deep financial dive
into the Chicago system and how much waste and abuse
in that system versus ridership actually using the system. Steve says,
what happened to the good old days when private business
donated to pay for these things for a tax?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Well, they can still do that if they want to.
I'd say, what happened to the days when the private
sector actually operated this stuff? But oh no, you can't
do that, because when someone built a toll road, everybody
lost their minds. Right, arena deal taxes, ask Glenn Wheeler.
George says, Lynn Wheeler passed away, So you mentioned the
pay of engineers. I've always loved Chu Choo trains. Ever
been to tweet see, says Joey? I have not. When
will the residents of South Charlotte, who rarely receive any
positive impact from these initiatives, rebel and vote against these items?
We pay tons of taxes but a very little, if
any transit service in our part of town in this case,
throwing Matthews in Minhill as well, since they're on the
short end of the stick regarding not getting light rail.
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dot com. The Texter before the break said, when will
the residents of South Charlotte rebel? There was actually an
attempt about twenty years ago to create a new town
in Balentine, not balant They wouldn't call it Valentine. I
think it was pitched as Providence because there is no
Providence North Carolina, and that idea got kicked around from
the local movers and shakers down in that part of
the city. They wanted to secede out of the City
of Charlotte and become their own town. It did not
go anywhere, but it has been discussed in the past.
One Texter says, I enjoy the show. My question is
what keeps Raleigh from keeping more of our money since
we are going to create our own local fund. So
Raleigh much just might just say, hey, they got it covered.
I'm not sure I follow Usually with these deals, you
get a chunk of money from Dot, a chunk of
money from the local, and then a chunk of money
from the Feds. So another Texter says, I can't afford
this county anymore. They increased my city tax, they increased
my county tax, They almost tripled my property value so
they could get more revenue on those taxes, and now
they're increasing the sales tax again. It's unaffordable and unlivable.
Another one asks what happened to the violence interrupters? Yeah,
I don't know. Maybe they have been interrupting violence. I'm
not sure. Maybe they haven't. Yeah, Kirk says, talking about
all this transit stuff reminds me of Keith Larsen's likening
the subject to the Wizard of Oz. The traffic, congestion, pollution.
Oh my, he used to say that because those were
always the arguments why we needed to build the trains.
Steve in China Grove, whoa whoa China Grove. Decades ago,
when light rail was in its infancy, insinuations were made
the project could actually pay for itself. Hasn't been long
enough to turn profits? No, I thought that argument was
some people tried to make that argument that I believe,
if memory serves correctly, I think I did a whole
package of stories about no interviewed different cities. It never
pays for itself. Never, It's always subsidized. It does not
make a profit. Couldn't those profits finance the newly proposed project,
saving Mecklenburg citizens a lifetime of added taxes? Double rim shot? Please,
I don't know if you get a double. I don't
even know if you get won for that, Steve. They
mentioned the runaway Texas Democo that during the news break. Okay,
I'm not going to that's off topic. Thirty years ago
I got married. You would not be caught dead uptown,
No pun intended after five o'clock because of safety issues.
Then it became a great place to go. And now
it feels like it's back to what it was thirty
to thirty five years ago. Yeah. Look, as one who
has been here now long enough to have seen the
arc of growth and dynamism and excitement and people getting
lured back to Uptown, restaurants opening, it's all activated. There's
stuff going on. But also keep in mind that a
lot of people don't like that. They don't want to
live in the city. They don't care about living in
an urban environment, but that a lot of people do.
But cities are expensive, and they are noisy, and they
are crowded. That is what cities are. So I worked
up Town for the better part of thirty years. Always
felt safe until recently. A friend and I used to
walk and one time a homeless man threatened us and
told us I'm gonna kill somebody. I'm just warning you,
I'm gonna kill somebody. Another time, my grandson and I
were leaving Discovery Place and we didn't hardly get out
the door before a homeless guy approached me asking for money.
I felt very vulnerable, especially since I had a child
with me, so I gave him five dollars just to
get him off my case. But I shouldn't have. Yeah,
I mean, that's the thing. It's perception of insecurity, and like,
the only way to change that is to make people
feel more safe. So how do you do that? You
remove the things that are making people feel unsafe. And
the main thing that makes people feel unsafe, well two
number one random mass shootings and parks at major events. Right,
you got a bunch of people together, and so you
get gang beefs that come from other neighborhoods. They bring
it into Rome or beard In Park and they start
fighting each other. Like that's a big one obviously, But
the main one is the vagrancy problem. That's the big
one that is contributing to the perception of insecurity in uptown.
I mentioned the NASCAR Hall of Fame. They're asking for
more money twenty five million from the City of Charlotte.
Attendance and revenue are both on the rise, they say,
but it's still nowhere near what it was projected to
be when it originally opened. The Hall of Fame started
facing attendance and revenue problems soon after opening in twenty ten.
According to Mary Ramsey's piece at the Charlotte Observer, officials
back then projected eight hundred thousand visitors in the first year,
four hundred thousand in the second year. Actual attendance two
seventy two two hundred and seventy two thousand in the
first year, which then dropped to one hundred and ninety
seven thousand. Look, I've been to the NASCAR Hall of
Fame twice, once to actually, you know, go through it,
and then another time there was an event there and
it's cool, but it I don't know if it has
the replayability, you know what I mean, Like, unless you
are really into NASCAR history. Once you drive the simulated car,
once you walk along the the you know, the the
racetrack tarmac, which is cool, when you visit the gift shop,
maybe you change you do one of the pit crew
drills where you change a flat tire kind of thing.
Like once you do those things, everything else is kind
of like, Oh, here's Fireball Roberts, you know, fire suit
or whatever. And I like, again, for a NASCAR fan,
that's probably great, but I'd also don't know, like, what
is it that keeps them coming back?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: What keeps them coming back to that Hall of fame
when they're in town for the Coca Cola six hundred
or something or the All Star Race. Revenue is up
and exceeds expenses now according to the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority,
which is good. That's good, but it is nowhere near
what it was originally intended to attract, much like you know,
much like these transit systems. And I will say though,
that this is paid for with the two percent tax
on hotel motel, the occupancy tax, so at least this
isn't like a sales tax hit or a property tax
hit for us. This is generated by the hotel motel,
you know, the occupancy tax. So at least there's that.
All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you
so much for listening. I could not do the show
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for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.