Grassroots of Tarboro

“People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who VOTE - a very different thing.” - Walter H Judd

That's the problem. Same as it was in Virginia Beach. Plenty of people are fed up, but don't get off their duffs to vote and do something about it. We cannot just say CHANGE CHANGE CHANGE. We need to have valid ideas and people to support them & put them through. Talk is cheap...

In response to a blog comment by "K" on April 24, asking for some discussion of what role the town council should play in promoting "good things" happening in Tarboro:

I hate to criticize the town council, as I have no idea what their workload or responsibilities include, and because they're doing a job I have no desire to take on. I do believe that it is their role to be the "driver of change," though. If the perception is that they are not, then we (the civilians, the people) probably just need to be more specific and vocal about what we expect of our elected officials. And I think that's what we're doing here, through this website, and through going to G.O.T. meetings, etc.: we're developing some consensus on a new mission statement for our town.

And I'll make a general challenge while I have the pulpit, here: Attend Town Council Meetings! OK, I'll admit that I haven't been to one, either. I get by letting my mom be my surrogate, figuring she's active enough for the both of us. But just as the people who are working to put on 2nd Saturdays are energized and encouraged by positive support and feedback, I assume our elected officials feel the same way.

If we care, we have to be the biggest cheerleaders this town's got. The attitude should be, "Thanks in advance for all the help and support you're going to give us with this project! You rock!"

I agree more people should attend the council meetings, get involved and let the council members and staff know what we need/want. I think it is imperative that what actions and/or support we want is communicated in a clear detailed way. Vague and general comments like "we need more stores and restaurants" are probably not going to generate much specific action.
Attending the council meetings is good, but educating ourselves on the topics that the council are acting upon in the meetings are more important.
If a council member appears to not be aware or knowledgable about a topic being discussed during the council meeting, then that council member has done a poor job of fulfilling is role. The council gets a detailed package of info on all the agenda topics and has the opportunity to ask questions and discuss topics with town staff, the town manager, mayor and others in order to be prepared at the council meeting. The agenda and the supporting documents are available at the town hall to be reviewed by any citizen prior to the council meeting. If you happen to go looking one month, please be persistent and make sure the staff know what you are looking for. I've heard its a rare occurance for anyone to ask to see the info.
Years ago the Daily Southerner used to sometimes publish the town and council meeting dates and times prior to the monthly meetings. Especially since there is the "Around Town" section, it would seem an easy thing to do, but someone would need to prompt or stay behind the paper to enusre that it was consistently published. It would be nice for them to publish the topics as well.
With regard to Destin's opninon about the council having a responsiblity to be the "driver of change", I don't have a clear picture of something specific they would initiate on their own.
Any examples to offer that might illustrate specific actions the council and town can take?

So K, what I gather from your post is that you believe it is the responsibility of the people to be very clear in telling the town council exactly what we believe the town needs and how the town should go about accomplishing it? In other words, we, the people, need to clearly describe the problems that exist and then offer specific solutions as to how the town council can resolve the problems. If we tell them what is needed they will do their best to provide.
For example, just saying 'we need more stores and restaurants' is not enough; we need to say that 'in order to revitalize our downtown to be a thriving town center and an attraction to tourists, we need to consider offering assistance to new businesses during their "getting started" phase, to get all of the store fronts filled and keep them in business as new visitors to town discover that downtown Tarboro is indeed thriving and offers a great deal of variety in shopping, dining, art, culture. We understand that the current low number of visitors to downtown Tarboro make it very difficult for new businesses to succeed and that we must help the struggling business owners until the numbers of visitors increase in response to the number of new businesses.'. Is that what you mean? That if we explain our needs clearly, they will be taken care of by the town council?
But K? If we must determine where the problems are, determine how to solve the problems, and then share this information with the town officials, what exactly is their part of the process? Giving permission for the progress to occur?
Are you saying that perhaps we expect too much from the mayor and the town council; that we expect them to be like the officials in thriving NC towns? Officials with creative ideas for building the prosperity of their towns, officials that know how to attract new people to their towns, officials like Washington's Judy Jennette or Hillsborough's Tom Stevens.
Tarboro's officials have taken care of the basic needs of this town for a long time, they have their routine, their system, they are comfortable in how things have "always" been done. The dissent here in Tarboro seems to be coming from these "new people", the same ones that the town wants to attract. These people have been places and have seen other wonderful small historic towns, they are disappointed that Tarboro is not thriving, and they know we could have wonderful things here too but it is going to take some changes in how things have always been done.
One final comment, you said you don't have a clear picture of something specific the town council would initiate on their own and yet we just watched them go through the determination that the town needed an expensive marketing firm to upgrade our town website followed by the embarrassing charade of a selection process.

In some areas, you have read quite a bit more into my typed words than I actually typed. You got my meaning right in your first paragraph “If we tell them what is needed they will do their best to provide.” You missed it in your 4th paragraph. Of course not, a clear explanation of what we want does not means those wants will be taken care of by the town council. You are correct in your observation that “Tarboro's officials have taken care of the basic needs of this town for a long time, they have their routine, their system, they are comfortable in how things have "always" been done.” That is the case because they haven’t been pushed to do otherwise. Unfotunately many citizens have been content with the status quo or have waited for someone else or some newcomers to change things and thank God someone does have the interest to push and stir things up a little. No, I am not saying we expect too much from the mayor and the town council, I am saying we have to communicate our expectations, have them understand our expecations and hold them accountable for fulfilling our expectations.

The town council is not our parent that should have some innate understanding of how to take of their child citizen, but rather we are a team that can agree together on the direction Tarboro should be taking. To continue the “team” analogy, some of our citizens will never be players on the team and will just be content sitting in the bleachers watching. I believe that government representatives should, in general, pursue the desires of their constituents, but unfortunately often end up acting like a parent pursuing the agenda they think is in the best interest of the child. I do also believe there are times we are fortunate they act like a parent, because there are times the most vocal citizens are not pursuing what is the overall best interest of everyone. (and I am not referring to the any good things you are advocating for Tarboro)

I think we should push to town council to educate themselves and us by finding out from Washington, Hillsborough and others what they have done, their successes and failures, whether their success was short-lived or potentially long lasting, etc?
As far as the “expensive marketing firm to upgrade our town website followed by the embarrassing charade of a selection process”, it comes across to me that it is an example of the town council responding to the general need of “we have to do something to attract people to Tarboro”. Your problem with the “procees” also seems to me to be more about you not agreeing with it being the right thing to do at this point and that you would rather the money be spent to promote other courses of action. The time of the council meeting is not the time to be first learning about the agneda topics. Our local newspaper does not do a good job of helping get any info out in advance either, but... I never thought that the council was acting independantly without any prompting in this situation. I agree that it is somewhat premature and we are lacking things to promote, but we will need sometime in the future a better internet presence than exists now. I want us to build many things and build on recent things such as becoming part of the Civil War Trail, having a Tar River Paddle Trail, having events focusing on history and our historic houses, etc.

It would be good to ask the town council to help or be a part of organizing, maybe the Chamber (although probably ineffective until a new director is found) and GOT and other interested groups evaluate how small businesses can obtain financial incentives and be supported while starting out. We do have resources such as small business resources at Edgecombe Community College, Small Business Administration (SBA), minority business resources, etc that are probably underutilized and I imagine many people don’t even know about.

You made a lot of good points in your last post, and I apologize if I misunderstood some in your earlier post.
I would love to see the town officials, the Chamber, the Arts Council, the Parks and Rec dept, the GOT, and any other groups interested in promoting Tarboro putting our heads together and working together to give Tarboro a great future, but how do we do that?
I experience a level of frustration because I don't feel like the town wants to work with us. It may be my misconception but it is based on some things that have occurred.
Just in case they hadn't read about the first Tarboro's 2nd Saturday in The Daily Southerner, or were made aware of it when I enquired about necessary permits, I sent a letter inviting each councilman and the mayor to come downtown on Saturday and see the event that we created. Not one came. Melvin Muhammad was the only councilman who even contacted me. The GOT people and the downtown businesses put in their time, energy and money to create that first event and I think we all felt a little disappointed that the town officials showed no support or even interest in what we had accomplished.
Oh wait, I'm a little incorrect. There was another response to my letter. Councilman John Jenkins took his copy of the letter on Wednesday, April 9 to the town planner enquiring if we had all necessary permits for the April 12th event. Three weeks earlier, we got a list of rules and ordinances from Troy Lewis, then we talked with the police department, who in turn talked with someone at the town office and together they determined that we did not need any permits. On Wednesday the 9th, after Troy called me, I went back to the police dept just to be sure and filled out a form to get a permit. Chief Cherry called me later and said that I didn't need any permits but that it had been brought to his attention that there was a noise ordinance regarding speakers being used outside of downtown businesses. Our live music could not have their speakers outside on the sidewalk without first getting permission from the town council. To get permission, we must file a request 10 days before the next council meeting. It sure didn't feel like the town council was trying to work with us.
So, what can we do? How do we get everyone to work together?

First let me say I should use spell check more often, but…

I think you are more than justified in expressing a certain level of frustration. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I think the council may be more anxious, uncertain and hesitant than completely unwilling. As far as none of the council members attending the 2nd Saturday event, that would be nice, but I just don’t see them as big participators in that way. They have no history of being active and involved in that way and I just don’t see their personal level of involvement and participation in events changing. If you can rally support in a big enough way to change the council member using the election process, then good luck with that too. That group of support would have to out number the voting constituency that is not dissatisfied enough to vote in a change. More often than not council members run unopposed because others don’t want to be involved. I have been hopeful that new members such as Steve Hoard and others would help initiate a higher level of activity than we have seen in the recent past, although their plans may not necessarily parallel or compliment what you think is the best path for Tarboro to take.

Yeah I have heard John Jenkins Jenkins can kind of be a stickler for the rules, but they are the rules. Ignorance of the law or lack of awareness of the rules is really not a good excuse to complain that you think you got a hard time or were getting no support. The rules apply to everyone whether you are doing good things or not. Educate yourselves about the ordinances and rules and make plans in a way that will allow you to observe them. The ordinances are available on-line on the town website and also in printed form at the ECML. If there is a rule that should be changed in some way then gather support and use the process to pursue that change. The adult business ordinance that is being proposed is a good example of that.

If you pursued getting a permit after being told you didn’t need one, that just sounds a little like you were acting on your own paranoia. If you didn’t trust Chief Cherry to tell you the truth, you might consider asking him put it in writing in a brief letter, note or memo in the future what he has told you.

Ultimately the progress and success of Tarboro rests on the shoulders of the few citizens, both individually and in groups, who will bare this burden and solicit and demand the appropriate level of support from the town and county leadership that they have or will elect toward this end.

Just one little comment in response to K's:
"If you pursued getting a permit after being told you didn’t need one, that just sounds a little like you were acting on your own paranoia. If you didn’t trust Chief Cherry to tell you the truth, you might consider asking him put it in writing in a brief letter, note or memo in the future what he has told you."
I believe that cooperation was my intention when I went back and applied for the permit, not paranoia.
I also want to make it very clear that I trust Chief Cherry whole-heartedly. I never for one moment doubted his honesty and his sincere desire to help me discover what was necessary for every aspect of our event to comply with existing ordinances.

No offense meant. Its always much harder to interpret the full meaning behind typed words than spoken words.

It just seemed a little illogical to apply for an un-necessary permit.

I do think there have been times in the past, for situations the town may not frequently deal with, that some people have been inconvienced when someone has said at the last minute "oh, by the way, did not know you need to..." I don't think there is any intent on the town employee's part to impede things, but it places more of a burden on folks trying to do things to ask enough questions and to ask the right questions.