Disenfranchisement: a tale of two votes

 Opinion  Tagged with: , , , , ,
Apr 052013
 

By Danny Mayer

In early March, members of Lexington’s city council voted unanimously to pass a resolution in support of the restoration of voting rights to felons who had served their time in prison. The resolution was largely symbolic—the legal authority to re-enfranchise former felons lies in the hands of state lawmakers, not city council members.  The resolution’s main purpose was to offer a demonstration of unified local political support for HB 70, a state bill sponsored by Fayette County congressman Jesse Crenshaw. His bill would allow Kentucky citizens to vote on a constitutional amendment that will automatically restore voting rights to most Kentucky felons who have completed the terms of their sentence (as happens in most other states).

In addition to the show of support, the council’s vote also sent another message to Frankfort politicians: let democracy happen. For the past seven years, the Kentucky House of Representatives has voted on and overwhelmingly passed HB 70, only to see it killed by Republicans Damon Thayer (Georgetown) and Joe Bowen (Owensboro) in the Senate’s Committee on State and Local Government. Consequently, despite the bill garnering increasingly bipartisan support among both state politicians and the general public, HB 70 has yet to leave its assigned Senate subcommittee. Continue reading »

Common visions

 Features  Tagged with: , , ,
Apr 052013
 

On the Town Branch, part 2

By Danny Mayer

I first heard about the Town Branch in a geography class at the University of Kentucky, early in 2001. We didn’t talk much about the creek itself. It was the thing that oriented us differently on the maps: our skeletal framework, a northwesterly axis, something railroad ties covered.

It would be another six years before Town Branch appeared to me in all its cavernous damp wonder. While visiting a farm in Keene, Kentucky,  I happened upon an urban caver and all-around fire-master—a man who introduced himself as “Thom-with-an-H,” the last three syllables rolling away from the lazy ‘m’ like the sharp uncoiling of a lasso (tom,with-in-atche). Over a long fire that spanned several days, Thom-with-an-H recounted to me stories of cave trips taken beneath the greater Lexington substrata. Several of these stories began or ended nearby the Town Branch Creek; a few involved walking up-creek from the edge of the Rupp Arena parking lot, into the culvert, and underneath downtown.

During that summer of 2007, I sat for hours and listened to Thom-with-an-H  talk, marveling all the while at the holes his caves were poking into my Lexington maps. It was quite heady stuff to imagine one descending underground at Cardinal Valley and emerging in Southland, or disappearing into the west end of Rupp only to re-appear one block east of the East End. Continue reading »

The authentic Mayer’s challenge

 Neighborhood  Tagged with: , ,
Apr 052013
 

A call to commoners

Mayer's Town Branch Commons Design Challenge. Photo by Danny Mayer.

Mayer’s Town Branch Commons Design Challenge. Photo by Danny Mayer.

NoC editor Danny Mayer is sponsoring a Town Branch Commons design challenge. He’s calling on area commoners to come up with a functional design to redevelop a portion of  151 East Vine Street, a .62 acre publicly owned surface parking lot that runs downtown between Vine and Water Street. He will present the winning idea to a meeting of the city council, where he will formally request public funding for the project.

The idea for Mayer’s challenge began after the NoC editor read about the Lexington Fayette Urban County Government’s recent admission that closing down surface parking lots on Vine Street is “clearly implementable” and “within the realm of do-ability.” The observation came in response to the recent selection of Scape Landscape Architecture’s proposal for a linear downtown park named the Town Branch Commons.

“I think it’s great,” Mayer said, “that city leaders are finally acknowledging the benefits of transforming under-used government property into human-scaled places of interaction and mobility. I want to do my part to encourage more of that thinking.” Continue reading »

Let them eat art!

 Features  Tagged with: , ,
Dec 052012
 

Future home of 21c Museum Hotel Lexington, LLC. Photo by Kenn Minter.

The 21c public/private partnership

By Danny Mayer

In April, marital partners Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, founding owners of Louisville-based boutique hotel franchise 21c, held a press conference under the pavilion at Cheapside Park to announce their $36 million purchase and renovation plans for Lexington’s 15-story First National Building, the city’s first skyscraper. Along with a pair of smaller adjoining buildings, Wilson told a crowd of local leaders gathered for the occasion, the iconic downtown structure would become the fourth 21c Museum Hotels franchise location. “This is a combination hotel and a real art museum. It is not art for decoration,” Wilson said. “The 21c Museum is the only museum in the country dedicated to collecting and exhibiting contemporary art by living artists.”

Local talk of the renovation has tracked city leader and 21c talking points, which have focused on aesthetics and downtown revitalization. But whatever its aesthetic value or ability to inspire a new urban “confidence,” 21c’s economic foundation comes straight out of the past two decades: a public/private partnership in finance in which the public assumes collateral and risk and the private owners reap the returns. Of the $36.5 million needed to purchase, renovate and open 21c as a boutique hotel with an attached modern public art museum, over 60 percent of it ($22.5 million) will come from tapping public funds at the city, state and federal levels, much of it through programs geared toward low- and moderate-income citizens.

If you want to see the democratic/economic policies pillaging the nation and globe writ devastatingly small, look no further than 21c. Here’s three themes that should be familiar to you. Continue reading »

Mayer announces People’s Commission on the Rich

 Neighborhood  Tagged with: ,
Dec 052012
 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Fayette Urban County, Kentucky (December 4, 2012) – North of CenterEditor Danny Mayer today announced that he is soliciting nominations for a People’s Commission on the Rich. The commission will be tasked with examining the issues and concerns of the most fortunate of Fayette Urban County (FUC) residents and recommend needed changes to city council.

Mayer is forming the commission because of a number of recent reports related to the rich and wealthy, including concerns raised about greedy developers, the impact of rich people on public access to the commons, overbuilding at the Kentucky Horse Park, and the excessive commitments of public capital to expensive leisure pursuits.

“Our community has a long record of reaching out to help those who need lots of money. We can be proud of many of those efforts, including the Kentucky Horse Park and Rupp Arena,” Mayer said. “But we also have ongoing challenges. This is a complex issue. It’s clear we need to step back and take stock … to examine long-term challenges and outstanding needs.”

This year alone, the city will dedicate over 60% of its lending capacity in the federal low-income “Section 108” program in order to attract a downtown boutique hotel. Additionally, the city has contributed over $20 million to the purchase of rural property development rights, which often directly benefit Fayette Urban County’s higher income agricultural and horse farm owners. In the current Mayor’s budget, the county will pay $1.25 million to begin preparations on a Rupp Arena renovation (down payment on a $500 million-$1 billion redevelopment of the area into an “arts and entertainment zone”) that will primarily create amenities beneficial to the more- and most fortunate.

In addition to evaluating the economic stress the rich place on the county, the Commission will also examine the cronyism that plagues many rich FUCer communities. “Several issues have arisen lately that suggest we should get our best problem-solvers around the table and come up with new ideas to make sure we’re doing our best for all of our citizens,” Mayer said. “We must ask the question, Is that goal possible with the concentrated wealth and cronyism we have in this county?”

To that end, the commission will examine the long-term debts and infrastructure improvements necessary to house and entertain those who are rich, and it will analyze how these costs get passed onto the community at-large.

There is an urgency, Mayer declared, but also a need for broad perspectives.

“Horse FUCers, coal FUCers, the Religious Rich, the 4%ers, the creatively rich. These are just some of the many categories of rich that exist here in Fayette Urban County—and this doesn’t even touch the large body of social science the Commission might wish to consider: psychoses and traumas, business knowledge and habits, hierarchies, environmental and democratic impacts, drug use,” Mayer observed. “The avenues of inquiryare as limitless as their debt capacity. There is much serious work to be done.”

Mayer wants to hear from more than just the advocates for the very wealthy. “People with no homes, workers at non-profits and adjuncts teaching at schools who have seen their funding slashed,” he said in describing the demographics of potential commission-members. “Public sanitation and safety workers, veterans groups, disc golf players, concerned working class laborers, unemployed artists, tenured faculty members, immigrants of all documents—even the rich are encouraged to apply.”

Anyone interested in serving on Mayer’s People’s Commission on the Rich should contact Danny Mayer’s place by snail mail, c/o North of Center, 430 N. MLK, Lexington, KY, 40508, or by email, noceditors@yahoo.com. Enclose a 1-2 paragraph description of your interest, general availability and qualifications (if any).  Preference given to snail mail applications. Deadline to express interest is January 25.

###

Taking thanks

 Neighborhood  Tagged with: ,
Nov 072012
 

This was written about 12 years ago, but since it is late on deadline night and–hey, it is topical–here you dear readers go.

By Danny Mayer

I was twenty-three and living in Charleston, South Carolina, before I had the pleasure to make my own holiday.  It was Thanksgiving, still Hawaiian shirt weather for the coastal lowlands, and I was left, like many of my co-workers from the restaurant where I earned the money to pay for my Masters degree, with nobody to celebrate. Continue reading »

Mayer apologizes to Mayor!!!

 Opinion  Tagged with: , ,
Jul 042012
 

Requests better Cheapside representation for local print publications

Below is a public appeal revised from an initial June 25 private email sent to area papers, council reps and county Mayor. The author would like to apologize publicly for the part in the private email where he called the Mayor a pimp when “you marketed yourself well” could have sufficed. He promises to attempt to learn from the experience.

Dear Jim,

In the past two years since North of Center has had a presence at Cheapside Pavilion, the city has moved our distribution rack no less than four times. In each instance, these relocations have further removed NoC from the central “Pavilion” area that the city has spent money to redevelop. And my publication is not alone: Chevy Chaser, Ace and a number of other publications have also been relocated. Currently, we are so far removed from the Pavilion area—on the other side of the Courthouse on a portion of Upper that has little pedestrian traffic—that tourists and residents alike would have no idea from visiting the block that the city has a vibrant print culture. Even the bustling Saturday Farmer’s Market rarely extends out to where we’ve been put. And the results have been clear: since the latest move, our circulation in the area has dropped 50%. Continue reading »

In praise of Joel Pett

 Sports  Tagged with: , ,
Jun 062012
 

By Danny Mayer

True readers of the Lexington Herald-Leader know Joel Pett for what he is: a regional treasure. Pett, the paper’s Pulitzer-prize winning political cartoonist, mostly focuses on local and state politics. Though he’s often derided in the paper as an offensively appalling liberal, Pett is an equal opportunity observer. He has an admirable knack for creating things that piss off all sorts of people.

Pett’s most recent cartoon to rouse the ire of Herald-Leader readers poked fun at the more shady underside of UK Basketball Coach John Calipari’s NCAA career. In the May 8 comic, a giant NCAA Champs trophy looms between two taped shards of paper (“This space vacated,” “This one, too…”) and a runty, deflating basketball perched atop a trophy base reading, “Lose at IU, Take My Ball And Go home Award (One and Done).” Below the trophies, a plaque reads, “Coach Cal’s Trophy Shelf.” Continue reading »

Letter to Jim Gray about Rupp Task Force funding

 Neighborhood  Tagged with: , ,
Apr 092012
 

Dear Jim,

On February 7, your assistant Susan Straub responded to my email request for the list of financial contributors for the Rupp Arena Arts and Entertainment District Task Force study, along with amounts that each contributor donated. At the time, I was curious—and am still now—about who actually paid for the $350,000 study, and how much each contributor invested, so starting last January I began asking your office for that list of investors.

Mainly, my interest was rooted in good consumerism and rudimentary English 101 skills of authorship and credibility: I wanted to know who is funding the people who say that Rupp and its environs need large amounts of prioritized public capital. But with city and state budgets now in the news, this question has assumed an added journalistic urgency. It has re-entered the news cycle.

At the state level, the Rupp Task Force study was surely used by lawmakers last month in their deliberations over where to direct diminishing public funds. In an austere budget where most state run agencies can expect cuts of 8.4% for the upcoming fiscal calendar—a decision that the Governor himself has cautioned  will likely lead to delays in service, loss of federal funds, facility closures, unfilled positions, and possible layoffs—these leaders no doubt relied upon the Task Force’s privately funded work to determine that the Rupp project should receive $2.5 million in public state funds.

Here at the municipal level, the privately funded Rupp Report promises to play a large role in the city’s budget. The state funds now commit Lexington to $1.5 million in additional public money, which will come from the upcoming Fayette Urban County budget. As you formulate Lexington’s budget priorities and run up against a limited amount of city capital, the Task Force document helps prioritize Rupp’s needs over, for example, local agencies like the Explorium of Lexington, Big Brother Big Sister, Moveable Feast, Salvation Army, Baby Health and the Hope Center—which in your previous budget experienced cuts totaling $125,810 (or about 1/10 of the money destined for Rupp in this budget alone).

In her Feb 7 email to my query about the donor list, Straub responded, “You are correct about the list of people who contributed to the task force costs. It wasn’t quite ready for the final report, but we’re close. As discussed in an earlier e-mail, I will give you a list of the individuals, not of the amounts of their contributions. You will have it as soon as it’s complete and it should be soon.”

My apologies for the public format. I hate doing things this way. But after the third or fourth email, one gets tired of all the delays and begins to suspect that you really aren’t interested in circulating this information. When I received no response to my February 17 email follow-up, I resolved that the public might could compel a quicker response from you than Straub. After all, you do claim the mantel of progressive, constituent-friendly, mayor, right?

So I’ll ask again: can you send me the list of Rupp contributors and their specific monetary investments in the Rupp report? I—and who knows, maybe others, too—would like to know who paid for the study that, in this year’s budget cycle alone, has reaped $4 million of public monies–over a 10-1 return on private investment thus far for the under-writers of the Task Force report.

With March Madness over, it is time now to commence with the real world of budgets, and with the spring reality of what happens when some things get overwatered and others wither from want.  In this season of rebirth, it is high time to reveal the Rupp rain-makers.

Thanks for your prompt response to something promised over two two months ago,

Danny Mayer

Fayette Urban County citizen

River bones

 Features  Tagged with: , , , , , , ,
Apr 042012
 

Elkhorn to Lockport, part 2

By Danny Mayer

“Thank you for showing me Gest today, the two lock houses facing Cedar Creek those bureaucrats will soon raze.”

My breath flashes vapor at each line. Nearing late-afternoon on the Kentucky River, the sun has only recently asserted itself in the sky, somewhere near Stevens Branch on pool 3, four river miles past. This would have been before the portage at Gest, Lock 3 across from Monterey, and before the exploratory amble up the hill to see the two Gest lock houses in decay, the result of a strategic decision by the state and its people to abandon upkeep of grounds and water. Before the ham and cheese on bread, before the piss breaks, before reloading and shoving off, one-by-one from the remnant pad below the lower lock gates, to ferry back into the main-stream (eddying overnight at Severn Creek) on our way to Lockport.

Say, three hours ago. Continue reading »

 Older Entries