Monday, July 9, 2012

Monday's Odds and Ends

CP is on Vacation - Nah, "that dog won't hunt" - CP has been working the boat captain gig, which means little time to dig into news worthy events around Charlotte. On the plus side I get to take in some pretty awesome views while having my morning coffee.

Somewhere on the North Edisto River at daybreak.


CMPD Homicide Team - Wasn't sure if the body they found on Thursday morning was a murder victim or not.  But, now they say that Francisco Morales Sanchez was murdered.

His body was discovered behind a business on Eastway Drive near North Tryon Street. The 40-year-old was lying face down in a grassy area of the parking lot.

Police initially described the case as a “death investigation,” but on Friday, detectives had determined the case was a murder investigation. A search of State and Local records shows no prior arrest records for Sanchez.

The Charlotte Observer's Elizabeth Leland - Penned, another tale of the South,but the Sunday installment titled "Diversity on display: Charlotte’s salad bowl suburbs" was buried in both the Sunday print and on line editions.

Leland's story points out the troubling obvious.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/07/06/3366502/charlottes-salad-bowl-suburbs.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy

"Historically, immigrants settled in inner-city neighborhoods. But over the last 20 years, immigrants to many cities in America have settled in what historian Tom Hanchett of the Levine Museum of the New South calls “salad bowl suburbs.” In Charlotte, those neighborhoods are mostly on the east side and along South Boulevard. He describes them as older, post-World War II communities where rents are affordable.

“Charlotte is an immigrant magnet,” Hanchett said. “Different cultures exist side by side like veggies in a salad.”

In 1990, fewer than 4 percent of 396,003 residents were foreign born. Now, 15 percent of our residents were born out of the country, according to the American Community Survey.
No longer are we a black and white city of the old South."

Next Sunday's effort "Segregated past" should be a nauseating rehash on every negative thing concerning The South's "Jim Crow" past.

Rea Road Construction - The long over looked section of Rea Road that claimed the life of Coca Cola executive Edward Gillespie Miller back in May, is finally getting some attention. The project which has been nearly ten years in the planning stage, finally gets under way this week as crews stake out the grading project.

Warning signs popped up last week serve as a harbinger of delays to come.

According to the Charlotte DOT website the project will "include two travel lanes divided by a planted median with left turn lanes, bicycle lanes, curb and gutter and sidewalk on both sides of the road. This project will also include a right turn lane at Highway 51 (Pineville-Matthews Road). The Rea Road project will also improve the vertical alignment of the road eliminating sight distance problems when turning in and out of the subdivisions."

Cedar's Take: One of the reasons South Charlotte residents object to tax increases that only support capital projects in the less affluent areas of Charlotte are roads like this. You can add to the list, Sharon View, Old Providence, Kuykendall and Providence Road West, just to name a few. Years, decades and in some cases more than a quarter of a century after annexation, these areas as well as others are still without city provided curb, gutter and sidewalks as well as street lights. Services that were promised when Charlotte was in a growth, expand and annex mode.

We all understand it was just a grand ponzi scheme, as long as Charlotte grew the expanding revenue would cover the ever increasing needs of the city. But now we have reached the point where the house of cards is about to implode and with it Charlotte's most basic of services. The city qill soon reach the point where it can no longer pay for the basics of street repair and sidewalk maintenance. The cumulative effect of pet projects like, the Cable Box, DNC 2012, NASCAR Hall of Shame, that Banana Company and now United Technologies as well as others have taken their toll. Rather than thinking up new ways to tax and spent how about just getting back to basics?

How about using some Charlotte based contractors rather than those from Raleigh and Greensboro for airport projects? How about streamlining the bid process for "local" firms? How about taxing those who work in Charlotte but flee to South Carolina every afternoon at 5?

How about it Mayor Foxx? How about thinking outside the box, rather than acting like a petulant toddler?

ATM Gives Man 1.5 Millon - Ronald Page, a BofA customer whose checking account supposedly only had a few hundred dollars, didn't receive any insufficient funds notifications when he attempted to make cash withdrawals at the ATM. In fact, he didn't even receive the traditional alert that he had reached his daily withdrawal limit.

Instead, a rare ATM error allowed him to continually take out as much cash as he pleased at ATMs and casino cash windows.

Page who clearly doesn't have the IQ of a nat, says he gambled the money, and lost all of it.

Now, he's facing federal charges, and it looks like he'll wind up in jail.

Nevermind that it took BofA 15 days to catch on and close his account.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/07/06/3366502/charlottes-salad-bowl-suburbs.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/07/06/3366872/cmpd-man-found-dead-behind-business.html#storylink=cpy

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Homicide guys weren't sure, and thought he just fell.

Oh never mind that his skull was smashed in and his teeth littered the parking lot.

Dumbasses!

Anonymous said...

Exactly how many homicides is that now? Including the one last night?

You don't see ole rodney bragging about the homicide rate these days do you?

Pitiful.

More rumors about Medlock losing it and having nutties...people just take it in stride now, it's so commonplace. They hardly pay his tantrums any notice now.

Such losers.