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When individuals speak against accepted truths, they often find themselves in hot water. Folks in Europe thought Columbus was pretty crazy when he said the world was round. Councilwoman Val Applewhite drew the ire of local leaders recently when she suggested that there was more to Fayetteville than downtown. GASP! Heresy! But, I, along with a lot of people, happen to agree with her.
{mosimage}Fayetteville’s downtown is a wonderful asset to our city. I have noted numerous times in this very space how much my family and I enjoy our afternoons in the city center. But we enjoy a lot of our time in other areas of the city as well. We love Lake Rim Park. Yeah, I know those of you who think the city drops off at the end of the city center, are asking yourselves, “Lake Rim Park? I thought the only park we had was Festival Park.” But it’s not. We enjoy shopping at the mall (don’t start your bonfire yet), just as we enjoy the shops downtown. Over the years, we’ve found some unique restaurants all over the city — that doesn’t take away from the joy we have in dining downtown. It just is.
And Applewhite, one of the newbies on the council, has yet to learn that you don’t go around yelling “the emperor has no clothes.” She has taken to heart her charge to represent the people who elected her. And they don’t live and breathe and have their being downtown. They live in west Fayetteville.
You know, the folks who came kicking and screaming into the city limits. They are the folks who are paying for services they don’t get — for water and sewer that won’t be their way for a number of years, for buses that come nowhere near their neighborhoods. You remember those people, don’t you?
So when Applewhite spoke in opposition to the hiring of a downtown manager, she wasn’t doing it because she didn’t understand how important the downtown is to economic development — she did it because she saw the need in her district. She saw a sector of the city that’s getting left in the cold, but asked to pay the heating bill. And she stood up.
Local businessman John Malzone recently took her to task for her comments at the city council public forum. Malzone is a champion of downtown, and we salute him for that. But Applewhite is a champion for the people and that carries a lot of weight. She wasn’t, and we aren’t, suggesting the city abandon downtown or investigate its needs. But what she was saying, and we can agree with, is that if our community is to grow and prosper, then all areas of the community must grow and prosper.
She understands that if the emperor has new clothes, but the rest of the city is shoeless and in rags, we haven’t really achieved anything.
The Emperor's Got New Clothes — Why is Everyone Else in Rags?
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