Last week, the Charlotte area made the American Lung Association’s top 10 most ozone polluted city list, sliding in at No. 10.
That’s not something I spend a lot of time worrying about, given the massive and ongoing declines in air pollution here and across the country due to much stricter automobile pollution and industrial emissions regulation from the Clinton and Bush administrations. Even with its surging growth, Charlotte’s air is cleaner than it was a decade ago and much cleaner than it was two decades ago.
Still, making the list does indicate that Charlotte has a higher level of ozone than most places. That is probably because we spend so much time in our cars stuck in traffic while going from place to place. In the 1980s and 1990s, folks around here were so eager to see growth that they’d approve almost any development just about anywhere without giving much thought to whether two- and four-lane roads could carry all the traffic.
Then road building went out of style entirely. People who bought the homes in the suburbs that city and county politicians eagerly rezoned just years before were deemed evil for merely wanting to drive to work. Increasing road capacity to help traffic flow was deemed short-sighted, compounding the problem. A large portion of transportation spending was shifted to mass transit. A large share of the city’s road money in recent years has gone to reconfiguring roads along light rail and transit corridors or roadwork in uncongested areas wanted for economic development and revitalization, like the Freedom Drive corridor.
Meanwhile, a 2009 report by the Transportation Committee of 21 sits gathering dust. The diverse group included local transportation planners, politicians of all political stripes, members of the development community and the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce.
“The magnitude of the problem we face as a community is enormous,” the report concluded. “Escalated over 25 years, a $12 billion transportation funding gap stands to impede any significant improvement to roads and traffic in Charlotte-Mecklenburg for decades. In the absence of new and increased funding, our road system will simply break down. If we take action now we can solve many of our most serious challenges.”
The report caused a buzz for a week and then was forgotten. Since then, city leaders have spent millions launching the $30 million first leg of what will eventually be a $500 million Uptown streetcar. They still don’t know how many people will ride it, because in typical Charlotte spend-first-ask-questions-later fashion, they haven’t studied that. This came on the heels of the abandonment of a trolley that cost the city at least $50 million and ran its full course for less than five years.
I’ve always wondered what the Committee of 21 meant when they wrote that the road system “would simply break down.” I guess eventually we’ll find out.
What is a life worth?
Two years ago, police found UNCC instructor Narayan Dhakal face down on 8th Street in a pool of his own blood. He was beaten so badly it took police days to identify him. He spent months in a coma. He’s still in rehabilitation, with brain damage severe enough that his family wonders if the bright young man with the gift for math will be able to live independently again. His brother Abi Dhakal worries that without his family around to constantly care for him, he’d end up homeless. What upsets Abi Dhakal the most is what he calls the “murder of his brother.” As is often the case with brain injury patients, his brother has changed into someone Abi Dhakal often doesn’t recognize.
So what kind of sentence would you expect to get if you robbed someone and then beat them as badly as Dhakal was beaten? Thirty years? Twenty years? Fifteen?
Try two years and 11 months.
That’s the sweetheart plea deal Maurice Weaver, 19, got for his crime. As an added sweetener, the district attorney’s office allowed him to serve the time for the robbery charge concurrently. In a more rational criminal justice environment this would have netted an attempted murder charge and a robbery charge served separately. But hey, this is Mecklenburg County.
His two accomplices have not been sentenced yet.
This article appears in Oct 12-18, 2010.
Tara,
This is the second time you’ve accused the city of failing to perform ridership analysis for the streetcar project (see “Implications of the streetcar to nowhere”, from CL 8/03/2010). You were wrong the first time, and you’re wrong again.
I would have thought you’d have done the research at least once for either of your two stories, but apparently not. Thus, for all those interested, I present the research that you were unable to attain:
The main page: http://charmeck.org/city/charlotte/growthstrategy/Pages/CharlotteStreetcar.aspx
The document containing ridership estimates (the key section is “5.2.1 Ridership”): http://charmeck.org/city/charlotte/growthstrategy/Documents/StreetcarEA2007pages200-400.pdf
In fact, the analysis and planning for this project has been so impressive that out of 65 similar projects in the country, only Charlotte’s and 5 others were selected by the federal Urban Circulator Grant program to receive grant monies.
I’m not sure how you conduct your research, but clearly it is not very effective. Before you accuse Charlotte of “spend-first-ask-questions-later” spending, perhaps you should try “ask-questions-first-write-story-later” journalism?
It really wasn’t hard to find the data. Those that work on the project at CATS are more than able to find the relevant documents for you. You just have to ask.
–Chris.
Furthermore, Tara,
In the event you decide to write about city transit projects again in the future, here is a link the the CATS “News Room” page that lists all the relevant information sources for news media representatives researching their articles:
http://charmeck.org/city/charlotte/cats/news/Pages/default.aspx
May this be of great use to you in future endeavors,
–Chris.
As someone who is quite familiar with our local criminal justice system, I have often read Tara Servatius’ columns criticizing our district attorney’s office and judges, and have frequently found them to be fraught with inaccuracies. I once again found such inaccuracies in her October 12, 2010 column in which she criticized our district attorney’s office for the plea deal it struck in the Maurice Weaver case. She was partially correct that Mr. Weaver received a sentence of two years and eleven months. That is the minimum term he was sentenced to serve. He could serve a term of up to four years and four months. Her assertion that his sentence for the assault will run concurrently with his sentence for the robbery is completely false, however, as his sentences for the two charges will run consecutively to one another.
While Ms. Servatius complained about the length of these sentences, she neglected to mention or seemingly consider that the district attorney’s office and the judge are bound by North Carolina Structured Sentencing. While Mr. Weaver’s sentence could have been slightly longer, there would have been no legal means to sentence him to fifteen, twenty or thirty years as Ms. Servatius suggested. The offense of assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury, to which Mr. Weaver pled, is a Class E felony. With Mr. Weaver’s prior record level, he faced a presumptive sentencing range of 23-44 months. The offense of common law robbery, to which Mr. Weaver also pled, is a Class G felony and carries with it a presumptive sentencing range of 12-17 months for someone with Mr. Weaver’s prior record level. As one can see, Mr. Weaver received two consecutive sentences at the bottom of the presumptive range, receiving a sentence of 23-37 months for the assault and 12-15 months for the robbery. It is true that the state could have offered a plea consisting of slightly longer sentences (several months longer, as opposed to several years longer), but then Mr. Weaver would have had no incentive to enter into a plea. He may have then gone to trial, which would have further tied up the courts and cost us taxpayer money, and could have potentially been found not guilty, which would put him back on the streets without any punishment.
And that leads to my final point. While I do not know the details with regard to the evidence in Mr. Weaver’s case, I doubt that Ms. Servatius knows all the details either. It is quite possible that the state had relatively weak evidence, which would not surprise me based on what I do know about this case. As such, it is possible that the state was concerned that a jury would not reach a guilty verdict if the matter were tried. Therefore, to ensure a conviction and some type of punishment, the state had to make a plea offer that may not be palatable to those without firsthand knowledge of the case, but one that would make sense to those who were aware of Mr. Weaver’s likelihood of obtaining a not guilty verdict at trial.
While criticizing the system is important and can lead to positive change, criticizing without understanding, and without having the facts straight, can be very dangerous.