Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2011 07:42:39 -0400
From: Stevie Schlessman
Subject: that sounds iffy
Hey there mysterious poster. I think your right, our society values people with money over others. However, I also think part of what you said is racist. Why point out that the Hispanic sounding man and business as some sort of racial privilege? Why is anything you were talking about about race?
Also, why is his race assumed to be the culprit, but in your example of Piedmont Biofuels Lyle’s whiteness is not addressed?
No hard feelings, really! But things like this are important to pay attention to.
Stevie
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:25:15 -0400
From: CrYpTiK
Subject: Re: Temporary Sign Ordinance exception
Piedmont Biofuels has had an “illegal” sign up for over a year? Well, it’s obviously your own fault that your signs are being enforced while Piedmont Biofuels aren’t. After all, it’s a “pay to play” system! If small business owners want to have unfair and illegal advantages, they should possess large sums of cash! You can’t complain just because you’re not wealthy enough to buy off the town politicians and get some good old fashioned American favoritism! (end sarcasm)
Siler City isn’t that much better than Pittsboro, you know; an enforcement officer named Sergio Borrayo (I think) ran around enforcing the ordinance against “blinking” and “flashing” signs against a lot of businesses. Oddly enough, the Fast Pass near downtown Siler City has a blinking open sign identical to a couple of businesses that had their blinkers “shut down” and that sign has been blinking OPEN daily without interruption. My conspiracy theory is that since he’s got a Hispanic-sounding name, he allowed that seemingly Hispanic-operated business to have an “illegal” sign flashing against the stupid, myopic laws set forth in the town’s Uniform Commercial Code. Never mind that some businesses operated these
blinking/flashing/word-changing signs for many years before they arbitrarily decided to enforce the ordinance, nor that McDonald’s has always such a sign that they were never allowed to use fully because Siler City says signs with changing text or graphics can’t change more than once per hour. And how about the fact that Siler City plugged in this amazingly stupid “gross receipts tax” on businesses, then when Walmart said “you put this tax on us, we leave Siler City, end of discussion” somehow Walmart got exempted. If I’m not mistaken, the sign laws are also excessive in that they don’t even allow for changing the sign out of an existing fixture, but rather the sign-changer has to purchase a replacement fixture that meets their moronic rule, a cost that is in the thousands of dollars per sign, JUST TO CHANGE WHAT IS ON AN EXISTING FIXTURE. My recollection is that the fellow who owns most of the gas stations here in
town told the town that he’d shut a ll of his stations down and leave if they enforced it against him, and they left him alone after that. Why does it ever have to come to this?
Hey idiots, this isn’t Chapel Hill or Cary, and it isn’t going to become either of those anytime soon! Stop hurting businesses out of a completely baseless fear that Chatham County will end up looking like howntown Las Vegas!
Yup, it all smacks of pay-to-play. I say, vote the bums out. ALL of them. No incumbents left standing. The residents of Chatham County that aren’t being flushed out due to these boneheads’ horrible government decisions need to show the next group of politicians that WE MEAN BUSINESS. That’s a
nice tagline, in fact: WE MEAN BUSINESS.
With BUSINESS in a different color. Thank me for this later. *wink*
Unless you want Chatham to be nothing but trees and deer and empty buildings, that is, in which case you’re well on the way to your blissfully ignorant “purty trees” bedroom community goal. Just don’t complain when you need a plumber and they have to charge you a massive trip fee to drive into
No Man’s Land from Chapel Hill, mmmkay?
Tina, I’d recommend finding as many sympathetic business owners as you can, in both cities, and form some kind of business union that can collectively retaliate against the cities as a large group when things go sour for one of the members. Politicians work best when they’re pressured, so put some pressure on them until they do what you want!