Sometimes this happens–citizens and the media get all worked up over an issue and then it just goes on the back burner for a while, if not forever. That seems to be the case even more in the Trump era.
So it goes for calls to change the name of Winston-Salem’s Dixie Classic Fair, which was proposed back in April by certain members of the community offended by the word ‘Dixie.’ In May there was a heated public hearing over the proposed name change, and forgive me if I believed at the time that public officials would quickly buckle under and rename the fair.
But today the Winston-Salem Journal reports the process has bogged down:
Assistant City Manager Ben Rowe said Monday’s meeting of the marketing committee of the Public Assembly Facilities Commission, along with next week’s meeting of the full Public Assembly Facilities Commission, was canceled.
Under the city council’s original timeline for considering a name change for the fair, the canceled meetings would have been held to come up with a potential new name that would take effect in 2020 after coming before the council in August.
Instead, Rowe said, city staffers plan to put together a proposal to hire a consultant to help the city come up with a new name, one that would go into effect in 2021.
Interesting that Rowe added he’s “hopeful a consultant hired to help the city find a name won’t be too costly.” Cost is a fluid term in government circles. And with that in mind, here’s the question– what if the consultant is “too costly?” Does that mean the whole issue of changing the name of the Dixie Classic Fair just goes away–permanently?
