Letters to the Editor 

Kudos on an excellent issue on Sept. 27. The first two columns I read--Bob Geary's "Some Raleigh trash talk" and Kirk Ross' "Shortchanged"--were both right on the money.

Bob Geary's column hit home with me after I watched another Philadelphia Phillies season slip away last weekend. In 1980, after the Phils won their first and only World Series, the Daily News proudly read "We Won!" as the full-page headline the next morning. Twenty-six ultimately disappointing seasons have since passed. I feel similarly disappointed with our current Raleigh City Council. The election of a progressive majority was apparently illusory; the council lacks true vision and the leadership to transfer ideas into action. As a city, we are coming up short and Bob hits the nail on the head--we have the people and the expertise (in spades), but integration into the "process" is nigh impossible.

Kirk Ross' article--to keep the baseball analogy--also hits a home run. Lack of leadership on water sustainability is a shortcoming of not only the state, but also the city. We continue to build over urban streams as other more "mature" cities are daylighting streams. Redevelopment/infill is apparently done with little consideration of stormwater impacts on water quality, not to mention flooding. Water conservation is a non-issue (now that we are temporarily not in a severe drought). Ross is right to rail against deferred maintenance. Either much greater infrastructure investments are needed for effective decentralized approaches to water management (which are inherently pay-as-you-go) should be aggressively pursued.

Victor d'Amato
Raleigh