BULLET DODGED

Last Thursday the Boone Town Council voted 4-1 to pull the plug on a misguided attempt to accommodate Appalachian State University, a measure that would have allowed this Town Council, or any subsequent council, to micromanage all sorts of development projects, not just University ones, and to give themselves the power to grant approval to any project they deemed worthy, despite existing ordinances prohibiting said development.

This initiative grew out of ASU’s attempt to wedge an out-size new College of Education into space between First Baptist Church and the Presbyterian Church, in violation of several existing town ordinances regulating buffers, set-backs, height, etc.

In a letter to the editor (scroll down) published in Friday’s Watauga Democrat, the day after the Town Council squelched the idea, county resident Margaret Eggers criticized the initiative as a power-grab: "...it is not logical for the Boone Town Council to grant itself the 'super powers' to decide whether it can override the very ordinances which it itself passed in the first place!"

We agree.

Currently, town ordinances grant the Town Council the power to permit a proposed development according to a site-specific development plan. But a developer must meet all the requirements of the zoning district where s/he wishes to build.

For instance, if a developer wants to build a small grocery store to serve a specific neighborhood's needs, and wants to build that grocery in an area zoned only for residential use, s/he could approach the Council and ask for special permission to do so. If the Council, after considering the neighborhood's concerns, decides it is a good idea and a proper use in the district, it can allow the permit, but the development would still have to meet all regulations for setbacks, buffers, height regulations, etc. that are required in that residential zone.

The proposal that was voted down last Thursday night would have given the Council the power to allow the same neighborhood grocery even if it didn't meet all the regulations of the zoning district.

We agree with Margaret Eggers that such a change would have been disastrous for the Town of Boone. Should that "text amendment" be enacted, all zoning in the town would be effectively rendered meaningless, since the Town Council could have permitted whatever it pleased, wherever it pleased, regardless of existing zoning. An Auto Zone in University Village, for example, or a strip mall on Stadium Drive, maybe. Bad examples, perhaps, but that was certainly the implication of what was proposed. Any bully developer could conceivably in the future ramrod just about anything through, given the right set of Town Council members.

Margaret Eggers was wrong about one thing, however. She predicted that the ordinance "will surely pass the March 19 hearing and vote." In its 4-1 vote, the Town Council canceled the special March 19th hearing and killed the initiative stone cold dead.

Only one council member argued for and then voted to keep the power grab on the table: Dempsey Wilcox.

U.S. ATTORNEY FOR WESTERN DIST. OF NC WAS ON WHITE HOUSE HIT LIST ... BUT SURVIVED PURGE

U.S. Attorney Gretchen C.F. Shappert of Charlotte was on the original list of U.S. attorneys deemed ripe for firing. Her name showed up in a list titled "USAs [U.S. attorneys] We Now Should Consider Pushing Out."

Speculation (scroll down to "The One That Got Away") is pretty strong that she was fingered because she prosecuted a big-time state Republican, Sam Currin, a former U.S. attorney himself who was also a former Superior Court judge and former chairman of the state Republican Party. Shappert brought seven felony charges against Currin, including tax fraud conspiracy, perjury, obstruction of justice, and witness tampering in a fraud case involving offshore investments. He's awaiting sentencing.

The politicizing of our justice system can perilously close to smacking hard in North Carolina. With the scandal now in full cry over the seven dismissed U.S. attorneys, probably Ms. Shappert's job is safe for now. Mebbe.

REMEMBER THIS NAME

Rev. Rich Cizik ... the National Association of Evangelicals' (NAE) vice president for governmental affairs.

He's appeared in this space before, not long ago, for his leadership in the dawning of environmental stewardship among evangelicals, "creation care," as he calls it.

And for that stand, this very conservative Christian (he voted for Ronald Reagan twice, for George W. Bush twice) has come under attack from the mullahs of the Christian Right, James Dobson, Richard Land, Jerry Falwell, Tony Perkins, etc.

Why? Explains E.J. Dionne Jr. in the WashPost, because the primary goal of the mullahs is not religious salvation for the masses but saving the political fortunes of a very narrow class of Republican politicians.

Cizik has recently been ratified in his environmentalism by the NAE. And it will be not only interesting to watch this struggle go forward but also vital to the future of what American religion can and should be.

WAL-MART WON'T BE YOUR BANKER ... JUST YET

Having cornered the market on everything else in rural America, Wal-Mart (somewhat unbelieveably) gave up on trying to corner all your bankable money too. The mega-corp has withdrawn its application to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. for a bank charter.

MIND VIRUS

Stuff like this YouTube hit on Sen. John Edwards is far more powerful than thousands of dollars worth of negative advertising.

Hint to politicians: never primp if there's a camera turned on in your general vicinity.

WAR PROTEST ON MONDAY

We got the e-mail last night. People are planning to gather at Congresswoman Virginia Foxx's office (240 Hwy 105 Ext.) at 11 a.m. Monday morning .... for the fourth anniversary of the start of America's first pre-emptive and trumped up invasion, the conflict The Madam continues to flog as the greatest thing since sliced bread.

FILM NOIR

We've been delving for several months into the black & white movies made after World War II and up into the early 1950s, the movies our parents went to see but wouldn't let us attend, stories about strong women and weak men where everyone was smoking all the time (in more ways than one), and the narratives -- often difficult to follow in their twists and turns -- hinged on murder and betrayal and defeat. These movies were NOT known at the time as "film noir." They were more often called "crime thrillers" or "suspense." Film noir (literally, dark film) is the term given them a decade or more later by certain French critics who fell in love with their look, their mood, their aroma of desperation.

Get yourself on down to Fat Cats and look for these titles:

Night and the City 1950 (memorable in every way, from Richard Widmark as a pathetic loser, to the circumstances of its making ... filmed in London because its director, Jules Dassin, had been fingered by the black list as a dangerous subversive)

Gun Crazy 1949 (it's a woman, first, who matches the description of that title)

Out of the Past 1947 (Robert Mitchum, caught in a web, with Kirk Douglas as the head spider and Jane Greer as a great assistant spider)

Detour 1945 (the appropriately named actress Ann Savage plays about the nastiest femme in film noir)

Thieves Highway 1949 (getting golden delicious apples to the San Francisco vegetable & fruit market was never more difficult, with Richand Conte, who went on to be a two-bit hood in The Godfather)

He Walked By Night 1948 (in fact, anything with Richard Basehart, including especially the incredible man-on-a-ledge 14 Hours. Whoa!)

No Way Out 1950 (Richard Widmark playing a rabid bigot in Sidney Poitier's first movie)

The Lady from Shanghai 1948 (Orson Welles, with his recently divorced ex-wife Rita Hayworth, as a blond)

The Postman Always Rings Twice 1946 (not the Jessica Lange/Jack Nicholson so-so remake but the Lana Turner/John Garfield original. Lana's entrance in white-white shorts is not to be missed, nor is John Garfield's personal life story ... another actor fingered as a subversive and ruined by the Commie scare of the early 1950s)

The good news is that all of these old movies -- and a whole bunch more! -- are out on DVD. If you used to like movies but find less and less at the modern, over-priced box office to tickle your intellect, these old titles will reinvigorate your love of film.

JIM BLACK'S REPLACEMENT CHOSEN

The replacement member of the NC House for Jim Black's vacated seat has been chosen by the Mecklenburg County Democratic Party executive committee ... 28-year-old Tricia Cotham, who comes from a family with a long pedigree in Democratic Party activism.

She's recommended to Gov. Easley who will actually appoint her. She'll be the youngest member of the NC House.

She was running for the post against three men, and she pretty much skunked them in the vote, winning 23 out of 32 of the voting members.

Cotham overcame complaints that she didn't live in the district. She put her home in Mint Hill up for sale and moved into a townhouse in the district's Sardis Forest neighborhood this month.

And she's already received some potshots from the progressive community, i.e., BlueNC. But the vast majority of the MeckCo executive committee seemed to think she was IT, and frankly she sounds like she's tough enough to play.

GIGGLE OF THE WEEK

The High Country Press was the only local paper to give in-depth coverage of last Saturday's Republican County Convention, but we can't find Ron Fitzwater's article on-line. In it, Congresswoman Virginia Foxx's keynote address is given extensive space, including her hilarious whining about the nasty ole Democrats who are keeping her in Washington five days a week, when she'd rather be home LISTENING to her constituents.

[Democrats] don't want to hear what you have to say. They want to deal with the lobbyists and special interest groups. Well, Republicans take the opposite point of view. We think the wisdom of the world is out in our districts, and we want to be out here.

Cracked us up. When's the last time you heard about The Madam actually listening to anyone who doesn't already agree with her? And far be it from her to pay attention to lobbyists and special interest groups. The PACs that give her the big bucks are surely not treated as coldly as she treats Watauga County.

In the Alterno World of Foxx, she apparently WON her home county by over a thousand votes, rather than the other way around.