Charlotte Just as Corrupt As Detroit Chicago or Baltimore?

Charlotte may not be the pit of despair that Detroit has become, perhaps not the corrupt city hall of Chicago or the out of control police department of Baltimore but we sure have our share of stupid:

Charlotte City Council - is full of potted plants, they take their place on the dais every Monday, allegedly as representatives of the taxpayers, yet seldom bear fruit and do little but just sit there.

Case in point Ed Driggs: 

Ed lives in South Charlotte, in the upscale Piper Glen neighborhood, his home backing up onto the16th fairway of the Tournament Players Club golf course. The neighborhood is part of Charlotte's "wedge of prosperity" that extends southward from Myers Park and is bounded by Park Road on the west and Randolph Road on the east running all the way to the Mecklenburg County line.

Ed doesn't say a lot during Charlotte City Council meetings, he rarely takes a stand where he doesn't latter fold like a lawn chair, seldom returns phone calls or bothers to reply to email. 

But when it comes to his own property, he is all about calling in the "chits" from the CMPD white shirts. 

This morning CMPD citizens on patrol, delivered one of the department's speed calming radar units to Old Course Drive. Often this is a precursor to actual enforcement using a couple of Officers with a radar gun tagging and releasing those unfortunate not to connect the sign and radar trailer in use the week before. 

Except, that Ed Driggs doesn't live on high traffic speed crazy Highway 51, Monroe or Providence Roads.

He doesn't live on nearby cut-through nightmare Endhaven Lane or the Carmel - Colony connector known as Hillingdon Road. No Charlotte City Councilman Driggs lives on Old Course Drive which has a daily traffic count of about 50 cars. But he's seemingly hell bent on enforcement of the 25 mph limit in front of his home.

Never mind that 1000 feet away, on Rea Road cars transition from the 80-90 mile an hour speeds of 485, to just under 65 on Rea Road. At any given hour you'll see cars traveling from 485 to Pineville-Matthews Road doing far above the 40 mile per hour speed limit. Two or Three times a month a late night crash will rattle windows of Piper Glen homes as another DUI/Speed related accident takes place in the curves just past the stop light at Rea and Piper Glen Drive. But none of this matters to our trusted representative because marauding scofflaws are racing the 1/2 mile between two stop signs and flying over the three road humps installed in front of his house. I seriously doubt anyone travels this street faster than 30 mph.

Charlotte Douglas Cell Phone Lot - Its a sort of urban purgatory where wives wait for husbands and husbands wait for wives. 

A don't be late but don't be early holding pattern where one or the other waits and waits and waits. Only to find out the his/her flight has been delayed an hour, which is just long enough to drive though the arrival or departure gauntlet get some gas and park in the cell phone lot again. 

So with all this time on your hands you're bound to notice things, like the trash that is over flowing. Except the trash at the airport for this world class city's cell phone lot is always over flowing.

 
Cedar's Take: There are only four trash receptacles at the cellphone lot. Which is nuts since what do people do who have nothing but time to kill before they pick up someone from the arrival curb? That's right dump their trash.

CDIA Airport Security - It is dark, and for two hours now a U-Haul box truck has sat unattended at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport cell phone lot. The truck has Arizona tags and has obviously not moved in 24 hours. It smells noticeably of fertilizer and no one seems to care.

A CDIA employee rolls up in a pickup truck, flashing green lights atop the truck contrast with the night that is filled with red rotating beacons of departing and arriving aircraft.

Are you here about the truck? "No someone tweeted about the trash, what's wrong with the truck?"

I guess unless you were born before 1980 and alive in 1995 the thought of fertilizer in a box truck is meaningless. To me it is chilling that such simple ingredients, can be used to bring down an eight story building and kill 168 innocent people. 

Then there's the tag from Arizona, that gives way to the thoughts of human trafficking, coyotes who have abandoned a truck full of now dead Mexicans, yet no one is questioning the truck's presence.  

My tweets from last night:

Cedar Update: CDIA replied via DM on twitter this afternoon:

"Thank you for your concerns, as we take See Something, Say Something seriously. We were aware of the U-Haul in the Cell phone lot.  

In this case, we took the road of education (what cell phone lot is for and what it is not) rather than enforcement.  

As for the garbage, we discovered that one person came to the lot with all of their garbage from home and deposited it there while they waited to pick up a passenger. 

The trash cans are cleaned regularly. Again, thank you for your vigilance."