YOUR SPACE
THIS IS YOUR PAGE. THIS IS WHERE WE CAN TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT NORTH CAROLINA…mail your letters to lexingtonnc@yahoo.com and I’ll put them here….Thanks
BOYCOTT LEXINGTON NOW! IT WOULD TAKE ONLY A FEW MONTHS TO He heard the near CHANGE THE MINDS OF THE TRYANTS WHEN THEY LOSE ALL OF OUR TAX SPENDING DOLLARS, AND WE DO NOT WANT TO SUPPORT THE THIEVES WHO STEAL FROM OUR FAMILIES. START TODAY. SHOPPING ELSWHERE WILL MAKE EVERYTHING A BETTER DEAL…..
He sat on his back deck looking over the green slime that was once a pond. Beyond, the litter along the edge of the parking lot behind McDonalds lay scattered along the fence he had put up last year to keep the derelicts and roving gangs from using his back yard as a pathway. Why do they have to toss their garbage over the fence into my yard? he asked himself for the thousandth time, knowing the answer. Because they are not the kind of people who used to live here, the kind who care.
He remembered how it used to look - the golf course, the pond that had geese and ducks and fish. The quiet and friendly trust among neighbors. The cleanliness. How could it have changed so much so fast?
It had all began with the forced annexation. First the taxes doubled, and then people began moving away, selling at a loss. Eventually, no one could afford the dues for the golf course, and the city had taken it over and sold it to a developer who had given tons of money to the Mayor’s campaign. Now the golf course was a series of strip malls, most of which sat empty with gang graffiti painted on their walls. He shook his head, remembering. I suppose I’m lucky, he thought. The City is building low-income apartments where the clubhouse used to be. Those neighbors have it worse than I do.
As always, he felt the pain of regret and guilt when he remembered. It was only eight years ago. Should he have done more? He had only gotten into the fight late, when the city declared imminent domain and offered him a barely minimum price to buy his tire store, which was already in the city limits. He had not wanted to sell, instead intending to leave the business to his son as his father had left the business to him. The meetings, the letters, the visits to Raleigh, the shock of discovering how the law works in North Carolina….and then the taking of his property by the city. They had declared his business unsafe and condemned it, then sold it to the developer who tore it down and built new condominiums on the entire block. How had it happened? Had he not stayed out of the Forced Annexation fight the year before that so many of his neighbors had joined? Did that not entitle him to some protection, some consideration from the city council? He never wrote letters to the editor, he never protested, why had they done this to him? He had even voted Democrat despite everything.
He sighed deeply. What could I have done, he wondered for the thousandth time. Half of the City Council is developers or real estate agents themselves. There was nothing I could do, was there? Were we all not supposed to obey the law? We never even got to vote for the City Council, or if we wanted to join the city. Now the City had not delivered on a single promise.
His thoughts were interrupted by his wife, who came out of the house with a paper in her hand. Her face was drawn and angry. Here we go again, he thought, wondering what it was this time. He knew that she had just returned form the mailbox.
“Look!” she said, “the city has sent us a note that says we have to replace our fence!”
His raised his eyebrows in a question. “Because they say it does not meet their standards!” she shouted, “do they not know we just put the thing up and that it is to keep the gangs out of the yard, and that we only did it because the cops can’t keep them out?”
He sighed. “I’ve already told the city council” he replied quietly, “they know it meets their codes, and I had permission for the Community Director. I filled out a request and had it inspected. Must be a mistake”
She shoved the letter to him angrily. “No” she fumed, “they changed the code. Now our fence is too high”
He studied the letter, unbelieving. “This” he said, “says that a fence in this neighborhood can only be four feet high. How can a weak fence keep anyone out?”
“You need to tell the City Council!” she demanded.
“But it won’t do any good, you know that.”
“It’s a big fine if we don’t replace it!”
“Can’t” he said, “that fence cost eight thousand dollars!”
“We will have to take it down,” she replied, “we can’t afford another fine. Remember when you burned that pile of leaves?”
Here it is again, he thought. She will never let me forget that. “Only because the city wouldn’t pick it up. What was I supposed to do, let the leaves stay piled up at the road and keep blowing back into the yard? I was getting tired of raking them over and over!”
She put her hands on her hips. He saw her eyes, always tense and fearful now when they were once so full of calm and light, wander over the buildings and litter beyond their backyard.
“I have had enough!” she fumed, “let’s sell this house and move!”
“We can’t, and you know it.”
“Even if we have to sell at a loss.” she offered.
“No one will buy a house in the city. Everyone knows that.” he replied, thinking of the Mayor recently selling several of his rental houses to the Town of Lexington which bought them using tax dollars, “maybe we can move and rent this place, but where to? Every town around is annexing like crazy. It would only be a matter of years before we had the same thing.”
“Well,” she flared, “we have to do something! Last night I heard shots down the street, and the city is cutting back on police and ambulance services, so what are we supposed to do? Have you called the Mayor?”
“Yes, dear, and the Mayor does nothing. You know that.”
“What about that sewer line leak?” she asked, “It stinks up the entire neighborhood, and it’s been like that for a month. When are they going to fix it?”
“The Mayor says that they will get to it as soon as the City has funds,” he replied, “he told me that the next annexation – when they get the rest of Tyro and Churchland – will provide enough funds to fix the sewer lines.” He felt sick inside even as he said it, remembering that the city council had told people the same thing when the city had annexed his neighborhood. Those people were still waiting for services and repairs.
His wife tapped her foot on the deck. This deck needs replacing, he thought, but we simply can’t afford it. Not with double taxes.
“Remember Mrs. Jones down the street?” She asked, “last week they took her house. She was put in a State Home. She had saved and worked her whole life. She always paid her taxes! Want to know what her daughter found inside her house when she went in? Dog food. Mrs. Jones never had a dog. She was eating it. Eating dog food so that she could afford to buy her medicine!”
“I remember her” he mused, “she testified at the city hearings back when some of them were fighting the forced annexation. It was in the paper. She told them then that she couldn’t afford the double taxes, but the annexed her anyway.”
He didn’t tell her the worst part, hoping she would never find out because it would be another thing they agreed on but argued about because there was no one else who would listen. The Mayor was renting out Mrs. Jones’ house now.
“I hate the city council” is wife repeated like some litany, “they live on that city – funded golf course over there and the city keeps their neighborhood clean and maintained, even though that golf course looses over 200,000 tax dollars a year! Why don’t they help our neighborhood?” He didn’t answer. It was a rhetorical question, asked a thousand times and the answers always depressed them more. The last annexation – the one that had captured his neighborhood – had put the City so far in debt that they could not afford the things that they had promised. “The city doesn’t care” he said simply.
“We have to sell!” she said after a long pause, “Even if we sell to the Government for low- income housing. I hate to do that to the neighbors who are still here, but we don’t have a choice.”
He heard the near tears in her voice, then the closing door as she went back into the house. His house, he thought. The house he thought was his before the annexation. He thought of all the hard work, all the years he had struggled, the two jobs he had worked to have something only to have the Government take it away. The worst part was knowing his daughter would no longer be able to go to college because the tax increase was more than he had been able to save each year for her college fund, and last week the City had announced another tax hike to pay for the last annexation. He felt worthless, the way a man learns to feel when he realizes he has no right to his own achievements.
He sighed and felt the familiar shiver of fear he always felt when he considered the future now. The Mayor had recently cancelled the contract with the nearby
He stood and went across the deck that needed replacing into the house that he couldn’t sell to write another check for double taxes, wondering if he should have fought. At least, he told himself, I might feel better now if I had.
This story is a combination of facts of things that have all happened in this State and will happen – eventually – to our neighborhood. I can show anyone who cares to go several (formally “nice”) neighborhoods in Kannapolis and
>> Dear Editor,
>>
>> I have thought about this idea of forced annexation for 2 weeks, and I
>> have
>> decided I do not want public sympathy. Do not feel sorry for me.
>> I want to live in a free society and I want justice not pity!!..
>>
>> I will not live in fear of my own government, I will not crawl like a
>> defeated dog, and i will no longer beg for any consideration from the
>> Hitlerest.. I do not agree with injustice, nor will I condone it. . In
>> the
>> middle east woman cannot drive a car or uncover their heads in public. I
>> cannot accept that law either, if I was a woman there I would be dead
>> now.
>>
>> Perhaps I will be demonized and called a nut but who ever stood against
>> the
>> evil majority and not be called names, tyranny of any form makes me
>> insolent to my core… The people in my community who get on their knees
>> to the city council are cowardly dogs and spineless fools.
>>
>> I had rather die standing for my rights than live without them crying on
>> my
>> knees.
>>
>> Call me names, but I am not going to accept this unfair annexation law,
>> not
>> today and not in 09, not ever. I will not bow to these demagogues nor
>> will
>> I not pretend to be told how to live in my own home by man, Gods, or
>> beast.
>> I do not want to own any thing that requires I become it’s slave and lose
>> what pride and dignity I have left as an American that has become
>> foreign
>> to me.
>>
>> I am a man and I will live free or die, I think unfair laws need to be
>> challenged and changed. Take my home take my life but leave my few
>> remaining human rights alone…..
>> If I cannot sell my house and move far away, I cannot and will not bow
>> down to the city of Lexington and I will accept my plight and suffer
>> under
>> the sword of Lexington’s Orwellian ruling class.
>>
>>
>>
>> The book 1984 by George Orwell, The adjective Orwellian describes the
>> situation, idea, or societal condition as being non-favourable to the
>> welfare of a free-society. It connotes an attitude and a policy of
>> control
>> by propaganda, misinformation, denial of truth, and manipulation of the
>> past, including the “unperson” resulting in repressive governments.
>> Orwell’s ideas about personal freedom and state authority developed when
>> he
>> was a British colonial administrator in Burma. He was fascinated by the
>> effect of colonialism on the individual person, requiring acceptance of
>> the
>> idea that the colonialist oppressor exists only for the good of the
>> oppressed person and people.{ wikipedia}
>>
>>
>> Benjamin Franklin (1706-90)
>> QUOTATION: Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a
>> little
>> temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
>>
>> John Evers
>> 793-2923