Killing Oriental's Golden Egg Goose

I've been listening to a recording of the Town's public hearing of July 3rd concerning closure of streets and the related contract between the Town and Chris Fulcher. Very confusing.

There were some interesting passages during the discussion. At one point, Commissioner Summers observed:

“Grace Evans brought up something that I think is really important here.  One of the reasons we have a problem now, with our anchorage, is because of the five acres that was sent out there with Oriental Harbor Marina… We have killed the goose that laid the golden egg for Oriental… That’s what we did and I absolutely believe that."

What I believe Commissioner Summers is talking about is the Town Board's decision, several years ago, to abandon the public's riparian interests in a very attractive anchorage area that enticed many boaters to visit the Town, and to cede the area to use by the private developers of Oriental Harbor Marina.

The Town let marina developers steal the public's riparian waters, which the Town is supposed to protect in trust for the public.

Under normal riparian rules, the boundary between the public waters extending from the terminus of the South Water Street public right-or-way (ROW) and those of the marina developers is a line running at right angles to the center-line of the channel.

The developers plat below, however, shows the southerly limit of the marina's riparian rights as running along a line extended from the northern edge of South Water Street out into the harbor.  On the plat this line it is labeled as "Riparian Line / Extension of Water Street Right of Way" - it is hard to read, so I have drawn a red dash-dot line over it, labelled "Extension of limit of Water St. ROW."

The Town Board either did not understand, or did not care, or (even worse) did care, that the Riparian border line platted by the developers was incorrect and bit heavily into the remaining riparian area extending from the public trust ROW.

About twenty of Oriental Harbor Marina's slips are actually within the public's riparian waters extending from the South Water Street terminus.  About five more slips are within the "15' buffer zone," from which the Town could have excluded marina construction had the Town been willing to assert the public's riparian rights.

This was outright theft by the developers, aided and abetted by the collusion or gross negligence of the Town Board.

It is what can happen if the Town's citizens don't pay careful attention to how the Town Board manages public trust assets.

Who is protecting the public?

(Click on Map for Larger View)

Here is the un-retouched detail (except for my pencil-marks) :

(Click on plat for larger view)

Do We Really Want Government Off Our Backs?

A good, though by no means complete, history of the positive influence of government programs on American economic life can be viewed at the Boston Fed's web site. By the way, the web itself is one of the positive results of a government program.

Take a look at http://www.bostonfed.org/education/ledger/ledger.htm Click on "complete issue" for summer 2012.  Younger readers may be surprised. Older ones should not be surprised, but maybe they just never paid attention.

London

The first time I saw London was 1955. The rubble of the blitz had been arranged in city blocks behind brick walls that stood waist high. The center of the city looked ok, but all around St. Paul's cathedral was a wasteland.

Rationing ended just the year before.

It was the second year of Queen Elizabeth's reign.

Ninety-Eight Years Ago: War Declared

July 28, 1914, the Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia.

It was an entirely just war under international law. A month earlier, Serbian operatives had assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne, and the archduke's wife Sophia. Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia to turn over the miscreants. When Serbia failed to comply, Franz Joseph declared war.

Three days later, Russia, an ally of Serbia, mobilized. The next day, Germany, allied to Austria-Hungary, mobilized and declared war on Russia. France, allied with Russia, mobilized. On August 3, Germany declared war on France. The following day, Germany declared war on neutral Belgium and invaded that country. England declared war on Germany.

It was all very correct.

The ensuing war destroyed the German, Austro-Hungarian and Tsarist empires and left France and England in a shambles.

But it was correctly done.

Economic Policy Debate - Entirely Political

Earlier this week an analysis in Bloomberg News assessed the current debate on economic policy as being entirely phony.  I recommend the article.

Real economists, Bloomberg reported, are in remarkable agreement about economic conditions and about what should be done. The debate, the article contends, is entirely political. That is to say, it is being undertaken on the part of Republicans for entirely partisan ends.

The same could be said, by the way, about the phony "debate" on global warming and sea level rise and many other "debate" topics.

The problem is, so far as Congress is concerned, the "debate" is accompanied by entirely cynical efforts to obstruct any measures to make the economy better.

Republican businessmen understand as well as anyone else that the main problem with the economy at present is lack of aggregate demand for goods and services. We know how to fix that. But Republican politicians believe any improvement in the economy would only benefit the president's party, so Republicans in Congress oppose anything that might improve the job situation.

Is this the face of patriotism?

On Economic Laws - Not Like The Law Of Gravity

"Our Republican leaders tell us economic laws--sacred, inviolable, unchangeable--cause panics which no one could prevent. But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Nomination Address, July 2nd, 1932, Chicago, IL)

Weekly Reader

Sad news last night on the network news. The Weekly Reader, source of national and world news for countless schoolchildren since its founding in 1928, is ceasing publication.

In 1946, 47 and 48 I learned from the Weekly Reader about DP's (displaced persons) in Europe, conflict between Iraq and Iran, Civil War in China, the occupation of Japan and Germany, and American elections.

Most memorable was Weekly Reader's coverage of the 1948 presidential election. A week before the election, Weekly Reader printed a two-page spread of all the political parties, their nominees, their official symbols, and a brief explanation of party goals. The list included the Democratic Party (symbol: rooster); the State's Rights Party (nominee Strom Thurmond); the Progressive Party (nominee: former Vice President Henry Wallace); Republican Party (Thomas E. Dewey); Socialist Party; American Communist Party; Democrat Farm-Labor Party; Prohibition Party and Vegetarian Party, among others.

My contemporary, Senator John McCain, resurrected the Vegetarian Party for one of his best lines in his stump speech of 2000, when he asserted that he sought support from all political beliefs, including the vegetarian party.

I would bet that, as a fifth grader reading his Weekly Reader, the young John McCain was struck with the apparent absurdity of a political party dedicated to vegetarianism. I certainly was.

But I paid attention to the 1948 election.

Weekly Reader: Requiat in pacem.

South Avenue Closing: Financial Folly?

It may be financial folly for the Town of Oriental to own waterfront property in fee simple instead of in trust for the public.

The Town should review North Carolina Administrative Code Title 15A, Chapter 7, Coastal Management. The Town should also review its own CAMA land use plan, adopted five years ago. Taken together, both the policy of the State of North Carolina and the plans and policy of the Town of Oriental support public access to public trust waters through dedicating access points to the public. State policy strongly and explicitly encourages use of street ends as water access points.

CAMA/SeaGrant funding to acquire water access points requires the points to be dedicated to the public in perpetuity.

CAMA grants for improvement of water access facilities that are not so dedicated must be repaid on a proportional basis if the property is ever sold. For property with a cost basis of zero, the repayment might be very high indeed.

The effect of the Town's stubborn insistence on fee simple ownership instead of public dedication may be that the Town won't be able to get CAMA/SeaGrant funds for improvements to or maintenance of Municipal-owned property that is not dedicated to public use, or that the Town may find conditions of such funds prohibit accepting them.

Has the Town Board looked into this possible consequence of actions they are about to take?