There’s nothing a little taxpayer dollars can’t fix. AppalCART, the transit provider for Watauga County, wanted to build a new headquarters a couple years ago. They procured $5.5 million in porkulus. Then, they were blasted by the ever-amplifying reverberations from Bush’s economic turndown. To make matters worse, some weird microclimate caused extremely cold winters to occur at the work site, when the rest of the world was warming at an accelerated pace.

Why the project should have run into difficulties, however, remains a mystery. After all, it features such green features as solar heating and rainwater collection. However, the FTA did not like the fact that a change of plans called for $700,000 steel canopies. They should have been green roofs growing hemp. Regardless, the NCDOT came to the rescue and agreed to provide a cool $300,000 to get the show back on the road.

The project is, reportedly, “on budget.”