Bull City Rising

Did we suddenly turn the real estate clock back to, like, 2005?

There are certain advantages to living in a popular in-town neighborhood like Trinity Park or Watts-Hillandale (or sought-after areas like Woodcroft, for that matter), in that there's usually a steady stream of buyers looking for houses when they go on the market -- or, in some cases, before they do.

Watching the local real estate market over the past few months, it's been gratifying to see houses in our corner of northern Trinity Park generally moving well, though there's always those properties -- usually the under-renovated, over-priced ones -- that sit around for a bit.

Still, this week's eyebrow-raiser from the real estate section has to be 1411 N. Gregson, a home that just got listed for a cool million bucks -- $998,000, to be exact.

Which is all the more surprising in that, according to the (sometimes unreliable) folks over at Zillow, this house last sold around Thanksgiving '07 for a mere $400,000.

We knew Durham was a "blue city," but this is ridiculous...

File this one under, "Unfortunate Google Moments." It's no surprise to anyone who has spent any time in Durham that Democratic candidates tend to do rather well in the Bull City, but I certainly wasn't expecting a Google search for "Durham Board of Elections" to return exactly this top result:

Yep, 706 W. Corporation St. is where the Board of Elections office is located. That's the right point on the map.

But somehow, just somehow, I doubt that durhamdemocrats.org is the official Web site of the BOE -- though some of the intrepid, some might say endangered species known as the "Durham County Republican" might wonder at times.

Ix-nay on the acrosse-lay, eh?

So earlier this week, in talking about the Bonfield hire as Durham's new City Manager, we made the following quip:

Ever wonder what life would be like if a City Councilperson here in Derm kept a blog? And posted everything from constituent complaints to griping over district funding there? Scary thought, huh.

Well, none of ours do, that I know of -- though, do we really know who Blazer Manpurse is, eh, Mr. Clement? But the broader point, of the ease, in this day and age, of just saying whatever you want, without thinking about the consequences, holds.

Eugene Brown doesn't have a blog. But Matt Dees of the N&O does:

Councilman Eugene Brown told Lt. J.C. Shelton, the Durham police officer who first encountered Duke lacrosse accuser Crystal Mangum and was skeptical of her rape claims, that "I wish the hell we'd have listened to you."

...

There was some shifting among council members, and Councilwoman Diane Catotti mumbled something about that being inappropriate while the city is facing litigation.

Minutes later, Brown asked the clerk to strike his statement from the record.

Er, yeah. Maybe not so much on the whole hockey-played-on-grass thing, OK, gentle Councilpeople? Our legal team thanks you, and somewhere out there, our taxpayers thank you.

City managers: It's a hard luck life

The waiting game continues for the city manager deliberations, with Council wrapping up its umpteenth discussion of the issue. Like we suspect a lot of newsers sniffing around City Hall, there's nothing fully-baked to a stage where it can be printed, meaning everybody's pretty much waiting for hizoner and the Council to announce what the next steps are.

So what do we do while we wait? We dig up old news stories, that's what!

If there's anything you learn from doing so, it's that the tenure of a city manager well resembles the philosopher Thomas Hobbes' description of life without society: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Take this spine-tingling situation that ex-Peoria manager Randy Oliver found himself in way back in ought-five:

Security measures were beefed up around Augusta's former administrator Randy Oliver recently while police in Peoria, Ill., where he's city manager, investigated whether two e-mails sent to him by a disbarred attorney were threatening.

One e-mail reads, in part (all original spelling preserved): "My warning: not everybody is as balance as I, and possessing the belief that bad things happen to bad bureaucrats who make people feel like they have no rights and that they lost everything. It is ironic that we have such a recent example of what some people will do to actors in the judicial system, when they feel that they have nothing left to lose."

In an obvious reference to Mr. Oliver, another reads: "Think about it, someone seeing red could step off the elevator on the second floor, right past the non-existent metal detectors, take a right instead of a left and figure the guy in the nice suit, in the big toward the north, must be at least somewhat responsible for the Housing Court treachery.

"Sure, they'll get prosecuted, but that and the consolation boquet of flowers ... would be small consolation to Mrs. Oliver and the Oliver children as they take the U-Haul back to Georigia."

Lopez to City Council: "Say hello to my little friend!"

You know, I blame myself for this one. I made a wisecrack on Monday's BCR about City Council meetings being the best free entertainment in town. Karma is, well, you know.

I didn't exactly have this in mind. Just when I thought I'd seen everything at a City Council meeting:

Yes, that's right. We now have a miniature D.P.D. police car able to be driven around via remote control, flashing lights and everything -- down to blinking eyes on the windshield. Even the Durham Police Department logo is easily visible on the side of the car.

Only in Durham

I don't have a category/tag on the blog titled "idiots" the way that Barry does at his place, so this one's lumped in under "humor" -- though it's a story more befitting the former appellation than the latter.

So I walked downtown for lunch on Friday, enjoying the nice day and fresh air. I walked down to Toast to pick up the panini I'd called ahead to order. (Note to unwitting Bull City lunchers everywhere: yes, you can call ahead to Toast, something that helps given their lunchtime popularity.)

I walked in, paid the owner at the front, and carried my sandwich outside. Looking back at the restaurant, the popularity of the new sandwich shop is clear: the line extended all the way out the door.

Outside Toast, a number of customers were eating their paninis, also enjoying the fresh air, the hustle and bustle of downtown, the occasional songbird, and the hellfire-preaching kids across the street.

The what?

Yes, on the streetcorner opposite Toast stood a passel of a dozen kids or so -- none of them over second graders from the looks of it -- taking turns with a bullhorn, yelling out phrases like "Repent! Repent! Jesus is coming!" and "Accepting Jesus as your savior is the only way to avoid eternal damnation!" Each was wearing the dark blue uniform of what looked to be a school, church or youth group; I'm not sure whose, though.

Mind you, the idiots I'm talking about aren't these kids, but the adults. I respect the right of anyone to stand up and shout out their beliefs. But, c'mon man, don't put kids up to this kind of stuff.

Still, it was a very singlular Durham and southern moment. Hip eatery to the south, Bible Belt prechin' and streetcorner savin' to the north.

Perhaps they picked Five Points for this thinking it represented a pentagram? Is Five Points the entry to the Hellmouth? Is the SouthBank's ugly facade really hiding something far more sinister? They do have "limited" underground parking; I wonder what else occupies the lower level, hmmmm?

In any case, they weren't there long, as Claire describes over at the Crone Report; after a few minutes of fun, Durham's finest came along to validate the fact that, yes, you do need a permit before you take to the streets with your bullhorn.

A river (again) flows through it

Now, as we all know, the drought isn't over -- the reservoirs are full and it's been raining, yes, but we don't yet know what the next few months will hold. (Well, most of us know -- the Lockies are already calling this "an exercise in climate alarmism;" I suspect most of them have been too busy counting their mail-order gold and restocking ammo in their survivalist bunkers to go to any of the drought discussions recently, but I digress.)

Still, the moderated rain supports a moderation in drought behavior, and to that end, it's good to get the report from a BCR reader that the faux-river in American Tobacco is, again and happily, churning recycled water up and down the courtyard of the office complex.

It's made for a feel-good story for all parties. The City gave away the 450,000 gallons of water needed to get the river moving. Now we must note that this is recycled water, courtesy of the North Durham treatment plant, which is making such treated water available for landscaping, irrigation and other aesthetic uses.

This service is strictly B-Y-O-tanker, though, and Ambacco is spending $20,000 of hard-earned Capitol Broadcasting revenue to haul the free water to the ATC.

Now, I'd recommend that folks not exactly go for a swim in the treated wastewater -- I always wondered what would happen to you in at area between the north and south end of the courtyard -- but it should be fine for the occasional rubber-ducky race.

Not to mention Bulls fans, who'll be showing up in droves starting on Friday as our hometown team kicks off their '08 season at the DBAP.

For all the water worries we've deservely had over the past couple of months, it's really good to see a sign that some things are finally returning to normal. Well, a new normal with greater levels of recycling, naturally.

Bondsmen to Durham: Life's so hard!

Today's Herald-Sun has an interesting front-page story by John "Gangland Mayhem" Stevenson, quoting local bondsmen who are outraged by Durham's new, higher bail guidelines.

The bondsmen complain that these new levels of bond make it much harder for individuals arrested and charged with crimes to make the bail needed to get out of jail pending trial. 15% of the bond must be posted with the bondsman in order to get your pre-trial freedom from Durham's largest downtown hotel, so naturally, higher bonds close the revolving jail door for at least some members of the Durham community.

I pass along these two separate quotations, whose juxtaposition speaks volumes about the impact this change could have in Durham:

"It's a myth to think this is good for us," said Tony Woods, president of the Durham Bail Bond Alliance and the state Bail Agents Association.

"The bondsmen were not behind raising these guidelines so much," Woods added. "We're seeing no benefit whatsoever from these higher bonds. It's causing more people to sit in jail, and the jail will be overcrowded soon. Several of these bonds are excessive."

...

Regardless of recommended bail amounts, [Danny] Mason is protecting himself from potential losses by being choosy about his clients and posting fewer bonds.

"I used to get anybody out [of jail]," he said. "I mean anybody. But not anymore. We're in a risky business. It's like playing poker. You win some hands. You lose some hands. The more you play, the more you might lose."

Let me see if I have this one straight. Mr. Woods points out that the bondsmen opposed the changes, and are "seeing no benefit" whatsoever from the bonds. On the flip side, Mr. Mason notes that, gosh, the higher bond levels means he has to be more selective in just who he does and does not take on as a client.

Given the ridiculous amount of crime committed by individuals who are out on bond awaiting trial -- including a number of murders in the past year -- is it such a bad thing for bondsmen to be "choosy" about whom they bail out of the detention center?

Woods is correct that this isn't exactly a change that helps bondsmen. And it may not be fair to expect that a heightened level of risk for bondsmen should be a planned part of our strategy against recidivism.

Given Durham's intense problems with repeat criminal offenders, though, I'm not exactly putting this one at the top of my worry-list for the week.

Tagged: 10 random facts...

OK, so the "tell 10 random things about you" bug circulating around the Durham blogger circle has come around and bit me (thanks, Barry.) The gory details are buried below the jump cut. Those visiting for strictly Durham perspectives will do well to bypass.

Greenfire plan: "It's a Wonderful Vote"

The discussion of the Greenfire incentives plan at Monday night's City Council meeting was one of the, well, more unusual such sessions I've ever attended. The mood was something more akin to a Frank Capra film, with a parade of well-wishers from within and outside Greenfire's direct sphere of influence.

Sure, you expect to see Bill Kalkhof from Downtown Durham Inc. and Ted Conner from the Durham Chamber of Commerce to step forward and support the plan. And, similarly, for some of what we termed here the "loyal opposition" to raise points they'd like to see considered as the deal moves forward.

But you really didn't expect to see Kevin MacDonald, the founder and president of TROSA, to come into the meeting with one-hundred-plus TROSA staff and program participants -- themselves drawing a well-earned round of applause for their dedication to self-transformation -- and to talk in support of the program, based on their experience with downtown and Greenfire (which is the landlord for the frame/furniture shop they lease on Foster St.)

Nor to see Steve Channing, filmmaker of "Durham: A Self-Portrait," praising Michael Lemanski and Carl Webb for supporting the documentary film in a way second only to the legendary K. v. Dey. Or the head of Big Brothers/Big Sisters, testifying to Lemanski's work first as a volunteer, then a board member. Or the artist-in-residence in Baldwin Lofts, praising Greenfire for offering rent-free arts space. Or restauranteurs Charlie Deal and Jim Anile, expressing their enthusiasm for Greenfire's vision and their hopes for their own new projects.

Ah, here comes Ms. Victoria Peterson. Here must stand the opposition to the plan. Right, Victoria?