State Sen. Ellie Kinnaird is frustrated that local officials in Orange County aren’t busting their humps to get a Costco located in Orange County. (The story, in the N&O’s Chapel Hill News edition, does not seem to be available online, so I can’t link to it. See image below.)
Some local officials are fretting about all the sales tax money that comes into Durham County to places like Southpoint and New Hope Commons. The irony is exquisite, because when those projects were in their infancy Chapel Hill was gloating about how pristine it was keeping its “village” while evil development and money-grubbing was being allowed to occur in Durham by less enlightened public officials seeking filthy lucre. How things change.
My first reporting job was in Columbus, Ga., which is the home of Fort Benning. If you look at a map you’ll see that Interstate 85 crosses well north of Columbus on its way to Alabama, even though one of the main intents of the interstate program was to connect large military bases to a good, fast highway. The positioning of I-85 was the result of textile mill owners in Columbus prevailing upon their powerful congressional delegation (Sen. Richard B. Russell and other long-serving Democrats) not to bring the interstate into Columbus for fear unions would follow. They now regret that decision.
Chapel Hill and the self-styled “progressives” in Orange County now see that they need the tax revenue that comes from economic development to continue their big-spending programs, like free public transit. Somebody, they have found, has to pay for it. Some of them anyway.
