Sometimes
government works for us and sometimes it works against us.
A meeting
of the Chatham County Board of Commissioners last week provided
examples of both.
First the
"for us" part.
Users of
the county library’s bookmobile, which commissioners had decided
during the recent budget-making process to discontinue at the July
1 start of the current fiscal year, asked for the service to be
reinstated.
They
explained how they and other residents depend on the bookmobile
for access to books. They said that to suddenly have the service
taken away was an unexpected and unwelcome hardship and they asked
the board to reconsider.
Responsive
to these comments, county commissioners agreed to reinstate the
bookmobile service while they continue to investigate alternatives
to the service, which had been eliminated as a cost savings
measure.
Bookmobile
proponents understandably welcomed the board’s reversal.
"You
can fight city hall," said one of the bookmobile users,
clearly pleased with the board’s decision.
I can
appreciate the elation. It feels good to get positive results.
Negative
results aren’t so pleasing when we’re on the receiving end of
them, which brings us to the "against us" part.
Also
seated in the audience that afternoon was Monnda Welch, a Chatham
County artist who was attending the meeting for an entirely
different purpose.
From her
home studio near Pittsboro, Welch has been teaching the art of
making jewelry to small groups of students.
She had
apparently been doing this for a while with no problems and,
certainly, without government interference until she posted an
advertisement for her classes on the Chatham Chatlist.
Welch said
that after the posting, a Chatham County employee who’d read it
showed up at her home to check out the operation and found that
the studio from which she teaches isn’t in compliance with the
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the 1990 civil rights
law that prohibits discrimination based on disabilities.
A
representative from the Chatham County’s Planning and Zoning
Department speaking at the board meeting last week said Welch’s
set-up for teaching from her home meets the county’s zoning
regulations for home occupations but apparently doesn’t meet ADA
building code requirements for a bathroom, though currently
Welch’s studio has no bathroom at all.
Welch
seemed perfectly willing to do what she needs to do to continue
her business. But clear answers to what she needs to do – and why
she needs to do them when other, similar home businesses don’t —
weren’t forthcoming, and that’s what makes the case so troubling.
Commissioners aren’t to blame for this and, indeed, seemed as
bewildered by the situation as Welch and eager to resolve it.
What is
the difference, commissioners asked the county building official,
between Welch’s business and, for instance, someone who teaches
piano lessons from their home?
The
official, asked the question several times, never provided a clear
or definitive answer, leaving the impression – on me, at least –
that these rules are administered arbitrarily and, in Welch’s
case, overzealously.
It’s an enormously
important issue, given the potentially large number of home
occupations that exist in this large, rural county and all those
county residents working hard to make a living working from home
deserve clear answers.
Movin' Around
by Bob
Wachs
|
I took a
ride with Grandpa the other day.
At least
it seemed like I did.
He wasn’t
really there that day but I thought about him a lot . . . and
about my Daddy.
The
occasion was a train ride . . . a short one from Greensboro to
Charlotte and back. Shirley and the older of the two thirty-somethings
who use to be teenagers who lived at my house and Little Guy and I
made the ride. In theory the day was supposed to be about taking
Little Guy on the trip and taking him to Discovery Place, the
hands-on science place for children in the Queen City.
And while
all that happened, I spent a lot of time looking out the window
with a cup of coffee in my hand wondering where the years went and
why Daddy went away and why I don’t ride the train more often.
I think
it’s in my blood.
Grandpa
was a railroad man through and through. He was a part of the old
Atlantic Coast Line and spent years living and working in
Burlington and Jacksonville (Florida) and Savannah and finally
Montgomery, from whence he made his last ride in 1972 at the ripe
old age of 90.
I have his
old 21-jewel Hamilton Railroad Special pocket watch, which he
pulled from his pocket countless times to check the schedule of
the trains hauling freight and people in and out of the station on
their way to somewhere else. For a long time, years ago after he
finished using it, it lay in a drawer in Daddy’s desk. One day
when he wasn’t looking I slipped it out, took it Dave Roberts
watch repair, got it cleaned and running again, and casually
handed it to Daddy one day.
He stood
there looking at it for the longest time before he handed it to me
and said he wanted me to have it.
My dad
followed in his dad’s footsteps for awhile, moving around on the
rails a bit before the pull of Chatham County and Bynum, where he
had spent his growing up years, pulled him back to my mama, who at
the time wasn’t my mama but would later take on that work and do a
right fair job at it in the years to come.
I remember
making the ride from our house in Pittsboro to the Fayetteville
train station when Grandpa would come to visit. He had a lifetime
pass. I thought that was something. I still can hear the engines
hissing and steaming and screaming as they pulled into the depot,
bells clanging and whistles blowing a mile away before they got
there. Then he’d come down the steps and hug Daddy and then me and
off we’d go before coming back too soon to put him on the
southbound ride.
On the
ride the other day I could hear the horns blowing on the Amtrak
engine as we came in and out of High Point and Thomasville and
Kannapolis and Salisbury and Charlotte and moved through
crossroads in between and I thought, "Why don’t I have a cassette
of this to listen to throughout the day when I need to reconnect
with my ancestors?"
When we
got home I did the next best thing – or maybe the best, except for
being on the train. I applied my ever-growing computer and
technological skills and found Arlo Guthrie singing "City of New
Orleans" on YouTube.
I don’t think I’ll ever
get tired of hearing it . . .
