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Publisher's Pen: Parking in downtown Fayetteville: Figure it out!

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Tuesday, 11 February 2025

Written by Bill Bowman

I am pleased to see Fayetteville’s Downtown Alliance organization taking an active role in surveying Fayetteville residents on how they felt about the City Hall electees wanting more revenue from the paid parking program to offset the deficit that currently exists with the program.
From those people I talked with downtown about the possibility of raised parking rates came back with an emphatic “hell no! Not only did the city staff propose a rate increase of 25%, but they also recommended rolling back the enforcement hours from 9 a.m. to 8 a.m. and extending the enforcement hours from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. This is not unusual for Fayetteville government elected officials to take three giant steps forward toward progress and then four steps backward toward regression.
At first thought, I felt the Greater Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce and the Woodpeckers baseball team would have significant objections to this, as would every Downtown event promoter.
The Downtown Alliance has sent out a survey to request input on how residents feel about these proposed changes and how they would impact the success of downtown businesses and organizations.
Because Up & Coming Weekly newspaper is located downtown and has written countless articles supporting Downtown Fayetteville, its businesses, organizations, and cultural amenities, I want to make sure there is no misunderstanding about where our newspaper stands on this issue and the many other concerns that affect the prosperity of our Historic Downtown Fayetteville.
To this end, I have submitted my survey to the Downtown Alliance and printed it below so we can go on the record in support of a beautiful, welcoming, hospitable, and prosperous Downtown community. I strongly suggest our readers do the same. You can find the survey at bit.ly/40M3qem.
Enjoy. Feel free to contact me at 910-391-3859 if you need more information on this topic or have any questions.
And, by the way, Thank you for reading Up & Coming Weekly. Fayetteville’s community newspaper for over twenty-nine years.

DOWNTOWN ALLIANCE PARKING SURVEY
Part 1: Downtown Parking Issues
Downtown business owners have identified the following issues with downtown parking as having a negative impact. Please consider each and rate each item on a linear scale from 1 (least) to 5 (most) as affecting your business, your customers, and visitors. You can give the same rating to multiple items if you feel that way. There's no need to rank or prioritize your answers.
1. Lack of informative signage
2
2. Pay Station-Kiosks that do not work
4, 5
Your comments on this issue.
Most impact: Dysfunctional Pay Station-Kiosks reflect poorly on our Downtown image as does the broken clock atop of the Market House
3. Enter/Exit Equipment in decks do not work
3
Your comments on this issue.
Again, malfunctioning equipment reflects poorly on our city, as does a Parking Deck without an elevator.
4. Loading Zones and 20-minute quick pickup spaces being used as parking spaces that go unticketed
3
5. How does limited on-street parking, caused by business owners and workers parking all day in those spaces, impact the access of customers and visitors to your business?
4, 5
Your comments on this issue:
This is a widespread problem for downtown merchants, and its history dates back to the 1950s. And the remedy to this problem can be found only with the merchants and businesses themselves and their influence over their staff and employees.
6. Does uneven enforcement of on-street parking, where some individuals park without paying and are not ticketed, affect parking availability for customers or visitors?
3
Your comments on this issue.
If this is really happening, then it should be addressed with the City and management of the Parking Company.
7. Misinformation about parking on key websites and lack of current parking information for the public (City, CSDD, etc.)
4, 5
Your comments on this issue:
Without a doubt, miscommunication and NO communication about Downtown Parking are huge hinderances to bringing residents, visitors, and guests into the Downtown community. The City and the Downtown merchants both fail to market, promote, or advertise the charm, uniqueness, cultural, and historic significance of Downtown, let alone the countless amenities and ease and availability of safe parking.
With thousands of new residents coming into our community every month, how will they know about what Downtown Fayetteville offers? They have no preconceived negative attitudes about our downtown community. They only need to be invited. A case in point is the Franklin Street Parking Deck. It's a beautiful-spacious building, reasonably priced, and conveniently located in the heart of Historic Downtown.
But how would a visitor, guest or newcomer know that? Fayetteville and the Downtown District must do more to create awareness and "tell their story" rather than allowing others to create negative narratives about downtown and our community.
8. Enforcement and revenue is focused on ticket writing of customers and visitors, an average of 60 tickets a day
4, 5
Your comments on this issue:
Wow! This is bad and is perceived as a predatory practice with a tremendous negative effect on Downtown's image and BRAND. At 60 tickets a day, Fayetteville celebrates over 15,000 negative opinions of our downtown area. And, like all disgruntled customers, these 15,000 tell at least ten additional people about their unfortunate downtown experience. This is not the scenario that develops a welcoming image or develops a prosperous downtown business community.
9. Lack of effective signage.
3
Part 2: Current Paid Parking Statements
1. Monday-Friday Paid Parking 9-5 is acceptable
5
Your comments on this issue:
Absolutely, agree. The schedule has proven itself to be feasible and accepted and follows the trends of other cities and downtown districts.
2. Parking should be free on Nights & Weekends
4, 5
Your comments on this issue:
Again, absolutely! And it should be widely advertised and marketed. This schedule has proven feasible and accepted and follows the trends of other cities and downtown districts.
3. Increasing the hourly rate for on-street and deck parking is okay
1
Your comments on this issue.
Until Downtown Fayetteville becomes a "must-see" destination, high parking fees will deter visitors, growth, and development.
4. Extending paid parking back to 7 p.m. is acceptable
1
Your comments on this issue.
Absolutely unacceptable. Again, this only creates a profound and negative image of our community.
5. Increasing the Event Rate only in the Hay Street Deck from $5 to $10 is a good solution for fixing the City's revenue gap.
1
Your comments on this issue.
The revenue gap is a problem and the responsibility of City Hall. They should find a solution that doesn't negatively affect the Fayetteville community. A little DOGE in the city and county governments would go a long way to lowering our taxes and enhancing our quality of life.
6. Short-term street-level parking that is evenly enforced would positively impact the number of customers and visitors circulating to downtown businesses.
4
Your comments on this issue.
Sure, short-term street-level parking (evenly enforced) would greatly benefit downtown businesses and organizations. Two-hour minimums have worked beautifully for years and should be reinstated. Additionally, when Downtown decides to market and promote itself, businesses (merchants) should implement a "FREE Parking" promotion when customers and clients utilize the parking decks while patronizing their businesses. This would be E-Z to do.
The Downtown Alliance thanks you for completing the survey. If you have any comments or suggestions about the paid parking program or the proposed changes, please share them below.
Every thriving city has a vibrant downtown community. Businesses, organizations, visitors, guests, and prospective new residents gravitate to a city's downtown community and use their first impression as a barometer of its vibrancy and hospitality. Unfortunately, our Fayetteville downtown community, with its unique businesses and all it has to offer historically and culturally, has a perpetual tarnished reputation that is perpetuated mainly by the government's self-inflicted rules, laws, and regulations (i.e., parking fees) that run contrary to developing a thriving, prosperous Historic Downtown. Even more detrimental is the LACK of enforcement when enforcing self-inflicted rules, laws, and regulations. I am referring to patron safety, the growing homeless population, the numerous panhandlers, and the constant abundance of street litter.
SOLUTION: Downtown Fayetteville is an easy turnaround if only the people and agencies influencing the downtown community would dissemble their protective silos and start communicating and cooperating with one another.
Downtown needs ONE solidified voice to start marketing, promoting, and creating positive awareness of the Downtown community. Creating enthusiasm and showcasing the amenities, businesses, and historic and cultural aspects of Downtown is easy. Up & Coming Weekly newspaper has been doing it for twenty-nine years. In other words, Downtown needs to create its own awareness, tell its own story, and take control of the NARRATIVE. Our community's negative (mostly false) aspects are primarily communicated through traditional outside media (TV), social media, and poser journalists claiming to provide local news. For some unknown reason, Fayetteville, as a community, fails to take control of our own narrative and convey Fayetteville's unique and fascinating story. How often have you heard "Fayetteville is its own worst enemy?"
It's all under our control. Yes, City Hall must stop implementing rules and ordinances that impede Downtown Fayetteville's growth, development, prosperity, and BRAND.
Yes, Downtown residents, businesses, and organizations must unite to aggressively tell their stories and create positive countywide awareness of what Downtown Fayetteville and Cumberland County have to offer its citizens, visitors, and guests.

Federal pause: States should reclaim responsibilities

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Tuesday, 04 February 2025

Written by John Hood

Reacting a few days ago to President Donald Trump’s brief attempt to suspend payment on a broad swath of federal grants, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer warned that “virtually any organization, school, state, police office, county, town or community depends on federal grant money to run its day-to-day operations, and they’re all now in danger.”
North Carolina’s new attorney general, Jeff Jackson joined others in challenging the Trump policy, issued by a U.S. Office of Management & Budget memo on January 27 and withdrawn (sort of) two days later. Jackson called the administration’s “sudden freeze in federal funding” so “sweeping that it could cause widespread and immediate harm across our state — delaying disaster recovery in our western counties, undercutting law enforcement, and affecting children and veterans.”
While it is OMB’s responsibility to ensure that federal grants are authorized by law and properly expended, I won’t defend the administration’s shambolic performance. The memo should have been more clearly worded and its import clearly understood by Trump’s own officials.
Nevertheless, the episode could have a salutary effect — because Schumer and Jackson are largely correct. Federal funds do play a huge role in the day-to-day operations of many state, local, and private agencies. That’s a big problem.
For starters, Washington is careening wildly toward fiscal crisis. We can’t just keep running massive deficits. The ratio of federal debt to gross domestic product is already higher than it’s ever been outside of wartime or the Great Depression. For North Carolina policymakers to expect an uninterrupted flow of (borrowed) federal funds is foolish. At some point, preferably sooner rather than later, Congress and the White House will have to act.
Even if you think they should hike taxes, the proceeds won’t come anywhere close to closing deficits denominated in trillions of dollars. Nor will Washington politicians slash Social Security and Medicare benefits for most seniors — wealthy retirees, don’t be so sure — or defense spending. Indeed, international events will likely compel America to spend vastly more on our military, not less.
That means virtually all other categories of federal expenditure, from housing and infrastructure to education and social services, must shrink. This isn’t ideology. It’s math. Federal funds comprise about a third of North Carolina’s state budget and smaller but significant shares of local budgets. These practices are fiscally unsustainable.
Although the arithmetic case for federal retrenchment is strong, I find another argument more compelling. Washington should never have been funding transportation, housing, education, and social services in the first place. These are state and local responsibilities, not federal ones. The United States Constitution only authorizes Congress to levy taxes and spend money on a specific list of truly national functions.
Past politicians pretended otherwise. They cited passages from Article 1, Section 8 conferring on Congress the power to levy taxes to “provide for the general welfare” and to “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution” the powers otherwise specified. But these clauses were intended as limitations, not expansions — as secure fetters, not elastic bands. The “specification of particulars” in Section 8, wrote Alexander Hamilton, “evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd as well as useless if a general authority was intended.”
One of the document’s framers, James Madison, explained that the general-welfare language was lifted from the previous Articles of Confederation and intended to limit the new government’s role to purely national functions. “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare,” he wrote, “the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.”
Under no circumstances should the ordinary operation of state and local government be contingent on federal funding (or borrowing, in this case). North Carolinians should take back these responsibilities, as should our peers elsewhere.
No, it can’t be done overnight. But it must be done.

Editor’s Note: John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).

Opinion: What a difference four years can make

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Tuesday, 04 February 2025

Written by Mary Zahran

As I watched Donald Trump take the oath of office as the 47th president of the United States, something many Americans thought would never happen, I felt an overwhelming sense of amazement and gratitude.
I was amazed because Trump's return to the White House was American history's most astonishing political comeback. I was grateful because Trump promised to reverse the dangerous, costly policies and gross abuses of power we have endured for the last four years.
Four years ago, many Americans felt relief when Joe Biden became the president because they believed he offered them a calmer and more secure country in contrast to what they saw as the political and social chaos that dominated much of Trump's first administration.
Some of us, however, believed that Biden's presidency would be detrimental to our country because of the Democratic party's shift to the left. This movement was on full display during much of Trump's first term and especially during the summer of 2020 when there were riots throughout our country because of George Floyd's death.
Although Biden campaigned as a moderate and a unifier, many of us had seen enough of his party and its deep hatred of Trump and his supporters to know they had no intention of being either moderate or unifying.
They had a radical agenda and found a man so desperate to be the president that he would support any policy, no matter how extreme, in exchange for the White House. Biden was far more interested in obtaining power than doing what was best for the American people.
And so began four years of the very same political and social chaos many Americans hoped to escape by voting Trump out and replacing him with Biden. Unfortunately, they would soon learn what Biden and the Democratic party had in store for them.
On his first day as president, Biden signed several executive orders that immediately set the tone for the next four years for Americans. He froze student loan payments and revoked the Keystone pipeline permit, costing thousands of Americans high-paying jobs.
He issued stricter emissions and fuel economy standards for vehicles. He stopped the construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall. He issued an order that stopped discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in violation of Title IX; a law passed in 1972 that led to the creation of women's sports.
In a single day, Biden released students from repaying money they owed to taxpayers, dealt the fossil fuel industry a serious blow, opened our border and invited the whole world in without any vetting or likelihood of deportation, and enabled biological males to compete against biological females in sporting events.
By contrast, on the first day of his second term, Trump issued entirely different executive orders. He issued an order ending federal censorship and established the Department of Government Efficiency to track fiscal abuse and reduce government size.
He ended a diversity, equity, and inclusion policy, commonly known as DEI, and returned the merit system to the hiring process in government. He ordered all federal employees to return to work in their offices instead of working remotely.
Trump declared a national energy emergency to permit the fossil fuel industry to refine more oil and gas. He secured the borders by telling border agents to deport migrants without granting asylum claims, and he designated cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
And last but not least, he signed an order stating that the federal government recognizes only two genders—male and female.
The differences between these presidents cannot be more obvious. For the last four years, we endured an administration determined to impose its radical agenda on us, no matter what the consequences. Biden did not care a bout our safety or our financial hardships. He only cared about his power as president.
Unlike Biden, Trump's only concern is for the welfare of the American people. He ran for the second time, hoping to reverse the course our country has been on for the past four years, and he will work tirelessly to achieve that. Trump refers to his second term as the beginning of a "Golden Age," in which we will accomplish extraordinary things.
With Trump at the helm, I would say that such an age is possible.

Editor's Note: The views expressed in this article are those of Mary Zahran and do not reflect the views of all of the staff at Up & Coming Weekly.
Up & Coming Weekly encourages editorials from the community, and will print letters to the editor as long as they are not submitted anonymously.

Bitcoins: The story of the origin of the species

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Tuesday, 28 January 2025

Written by Pitt Dickey

Have you ever wondered what Bitcoin is? Where it came from? Where it is going? Is it too late to buy some before it collapses? You have come to the right place. The Brothers Grimm explained it all in their story “The Donkey Cabbage.” No need to pay a broker to obtain Bitcoins. All you need is a Magic Wishing Cloak and willingness to swallow the heart of a bird. Intrigued on how to get rich quickly? Keep reading.
Once upon a time a young man went out into the forest to go hunting. He came across an old woman who was weak and hungry. She asked for spare change which he gave her. In return, she told him to look for a tree with nine birds fussing over a cloak. She said: “Shoot into the middle of the birds. They will drop the cloak and one will fall dead. Cut the bird open and eat its heart. Make a wish and the cloak will take you anywhere. The bird’s heart will create a gold coin under your pillow each night.” The Hunter did so, getting the cloak and a growing pile of gold. (Author’s note: This is where Bitcoin comes from- magic money from a dead bird’s heart.)
When the Hunter had a big pile of coins he decided to see the world. He came on a castle where he met a witch and her beautiful daughter. The witch knew about the heart of gold and wanted it. Naturally, the Hunter became besotted, falling in love with her daughter. The witch made a potion and forced her daughter to get the Hunter to drink it. After drinking it, he became sick, vomited out the bird’s heart, and passed out. The girl washed off the heart and ate it.
Getting daily gold Bitcoins wasn’t enough for the witch. She wanted the Wishing Cloak too. She made her daughter pretend sadness. The Hunter asked her what was wrong. She told him she wished for the jewels on Mount Garnet but it was too far away to get them. The Hunter wrapped both of them in the Wishing Cloak and away they went to Mount Garnet. Unfortunately, the witch put a spell on the Hunter causing him to fall asleep on the mountain. Daughter gathered up a passel of jewels, wrapped herself in the cloak, and wished herself back to the castle. The Hunter woke up alone. He realized he had been betrayed by a woman. This was the only known time a man has ever been fooled by a female.
The Hunter climbed to the top of the mountain. He rode a cloud back to a garden near the castle. There were two kinds of cabbage in the garden, pointy and round. He ate the pointy cabbage and turned into a donkey. He then ate the round cabbage and turned back into himself. He took both cabbages with him and went to the castle. He told the witch the pointy cabbage was delicious. The witch and daughter ate it. Both turned into donkeys. Happy with his revenge, the Hunter gave the donkeys to a miller, conditioned on the miller beating the old donkey 3 times a day and never beating the younger donkey.
The Miller did as he was told. The Hunter went to live in the castle. Eventually, the miller came to the castle with the younger donkey. The old donkey had died and the young donkey wouldn’t work. The Hunter took back the younger donkey and gave her the round cabbage. She turned back into the beautiful girl. She apologized for tricking the Hunter, explaining her Mom made her do it. The Hunter, being still in love with her, forgave her. Men are dolts. She offered to take a magic potion to vomit up the bird heart so the Hunter could eat it to get the Bitcoins for himself. He refused because he wanted to marry her. Once wed, all the coins would be marital property anyway. They got married shortly afterward and lived very happily until they died.
Now you know where Bitcoins come from. A witch’s daughter near the Chinese Garnet Mountain swallowed a bird’s heart to produce the first Bitcoins. Bitcoin alleged “experts” tell a science fairy tale about Bitcoins coming from mining blockchains, whatever that is. Their explanation is hooey. The truth is, Bitcoins are magic. They are created in the Cloud due to herds of witches’ daughters ingesting bird hearts. Bitcoins will only crash if we run out of witches’ daughters. Feel free to invest. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.