Funniest Story Of The Day, Cheatham to be “more visible”

I just had to laugh.  The StarNews striving for a puff piece on city governance gave me a good laugh with the following headline:

Wilmington city manager could take more visible role

That was just hilarious!  Heck, being seen in public would be more visible than what we see now.  Cheatham’s role in city government has almost been Rasputin like.  In the most visible and poorly envisioned project last year, the baseball stadium, Cheatham ducked all leadership instead letting assistant city manager Tony Caudle do the legwork and take the hits. He even had to make a multi-hundred thousand dollar change in the budget that he had forgotten to put in at the last minute on that very project.

What the StarNews essentially says is that Cheatham has survived, not that he has shown leadership.    A good excerpt from the StarNews praise piece:

In council meetings, Cheatham relies upon his staff, routinely deferring to his department heads or their designees to give presentations before the council.

Understand, this isn’t personal, but there is no real leadership coming from the city of Wilmington and certainly not from the city manager’s office.  Former councilman Jason Thompson said it best,  “I would not say he’s a risk-taker at all. I would say he’s more risk-averse.”

And Wilmington’s clearly not a city, under this leadership, that has shown anything truly remarkable  At $173,679 a year, we should expect something more than just delegating to staff and showing up.  He has a standing offer to come on my radio show for two years and has never done so.  More visible?  Ha!  And doesn’t want to take tough questions!

This could become an election year issue!  And what prompted such an odd story from the StarNews?

City Once Again Refuses To Use Science, Preferring Opinions Instead

After the dramatic failure of the city with respect to a taxpayer funded baseball stadium (which was supported by their non-scientific surveys), they’ve decided to gather more wisdom from the same failed technique.

(PortCityDaily.com) As an extension to its recent “debriefing” with stakeholders on the positives and negatives of last month’s Martin Luther King Parade downtown, the City of Wilmington has posted an online survey asking residents’ opinions on its route, time and parking situation among other aspects.

Sadly, the survey will be useless, provide nothing of value and won’t be worth the paper it might well be printed on.  If they city truly wanted to solve a problem, they might actually use their highly compensated staff to do some research or work along those lines.  Heck, even putting together a Citizens Advisory Committee would provide more useful information.  But again, this council and this management team does not have a strong record of looking for solutions. It does have a habit of seeking out external validation.

Councilman Charlie Rivenbark tried to add some saliency to the situation saying the event’s apparent problems, like the gaps and the access points for business employees to come and go, were individually “minor” concerns that could disappear with some tightening and tweaking. “We ain’t got to reinvent the wheel here, and they can make that thing run just as smooth as butter,” said Rivenbark.

Sadly, the city seems hellbent on reinventing the wheel with virtually everything it does from convention centers, to baseball stadiums, to parade route planning, to parking and to a stubborn refusal to get actual data.

Economic Development, Is It Really Worth $8m of YOUR Money?

WECT paints a pretty stark view of Economic Development (government trying to create jobs, not to be confused with Economic Growth which is what happens when government stays out of the way) jobs in the area.

Here’s the sad truth (via the story):

1) A conservative estimate of the amount of public money funneled into these local non-profit organizations last year, is $8 million.

2) Wilmington – Chamber of Commerce CEO Connie Majure-Rhett is making almost $150,000 in salary and benefits.

3) Wilmington Business Development. The non-profit is primarily funded by private money, but it also does work for the City of Wilmington, New Hanover County, and Pender County, and accepted $310,000 in public funding last year.

4) Their CEO,  Scott Satterfield makes $303,426 in total compensation a year – including a $27,515 bonus.

One of the funniest lines in the story by Ann McAdams was,  ”We asked Satterfield if it was difficult to explain to people why the director of a non-profit with 3 full-time employees would be so highly compensated. His reply: ‘My board sets my compensation, and I do the work.’ ”

Really?  That’s a lot of wasted money out there!  And what the heck have ANY of them actually accomplished?

Sea Level Rise. . Again. . . and Again. . . and Again

If the prediction made in the early 90s held true, most of the area beaches would have moved inland by now.  If Al Gore’s prognostications from the early 2000s had come true. . . again we’d lots of recently transformed beachfront property.  Now we’re still addressing the long sought after sea-level rise via the N.C. Coastal Resources Commission:

(StarNews) – The 15-member commission, which oversees development in the state’s 20 coastal counties, will meet in Room 162 of the University of North Carolina Wilmington’s Education Building, 970 Reynolds Drive, beginning at 1 p.m. Wednesday. The initial report, released in 2010, originally recommended that coastal communities prepare for 1 meter – or 39 inches – of sea-level rise by 2100.

It will never stop.  And when we arrive at the year 2100 with beautiful coastal areas that will have been ravaged from time to time by naturally occurring hurricanes, such meetings will still be taking place.  Or maybe we’ll be be talking about sea level fall by then.