CRAVER'S COMMENTS

September 2002

IN THIS ISSUE

·         VOTE

·         DON’T VOTE

·         STATISTICS

·         UPDATE

 

FUTURE ISSUES

        EVERY COUPLE OF MONTHS OR SO.

 

THINGS TO BE PROUD OF

 You have the right, privilege and duty to vote!

DID YOU KNOW?

      We are No. 2 again.  If you remember a few issues back we told you how Esquire Magazine had ranked Durham the second best restaurant town in the South to frontrunner Charleston, SC. Not to be outdone, Bon Appetit has conducted a survey of their own. In their rankings Atlanta is the winner and the Triangle comes in second ahead of New Orleans and Charleston.  They used the Triangle as the reference point, but all of the restaurants they ranked were either in Chapel Hill or Durham. They also said the best dessert chef in the country is Karen Baker at Durham’s famous Magnolia Grill.

 

VOTE

         The most misused phrase in the American vocabulary must be “it’s my right.”  The only “rights” I know of are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Oh yes, and the right to vote.  I heard a baseball player say just before the strike was averted that he had the “right” to earn more than his two million dollar a year salary because baseball players had a short career, and he needed to be set for life when that career  was over. He obviously didn’t understand the “rights” which our forefathers set up and our soldiers have defended. If you don’t think a lot of us could use a civics lesson just look at how few of us voted in the last local elections. Every vote DOES count and I urge each of you to vote in the primary on September 10th.

      The Durham Association of Realtors (DAR) has been working very hard on your behalf. For the first time DAR is doing more than making a token effort to influence the upcoming Durham County Commissioners race.  Not only are two local Realtors, Arnold Spell and Preston Edwards, running for seats on the Commission, but DAR  has applied for, and received, a $20,000 grant from the North Carolina Association of Realtors to be used to get out the vote. Realtors are interested in protecting your homes and your neighborhoods from higher taxes, impact fees, and policies that will hurt the investment you have made in your home.

 

DON’T VOTE

    If this was a news broadcast, or if I were a journalist, I would feel obliged to present both sides of the issue. I do not claim to be either, but here goes anyway.

·         If you are satisfied with the way North Carolina has become billions of dollars in debt, don’t vote.

·         If you are happy when a judge takes “under God” out of the Pledge of Allegiance, don’t vote.

·         If you want higher property taxes and foolish spending by our leaders, don’t vote.

·         If you don’t want leaders who will handle our growth problems with wisdom, don’t vote.

·         If you think sitting still on I-40 twice a day is fun, don’t vote.

·         If you are satisfied with the manner in which Durham has searched for a new police chief, don’t vote.

 

STATISTICS

      I took Statistics in college. It was confusing! I also took Logic in college and it was even more confusing. Now I am going to try to make some logical sense out of some interesting statistics about school rankings and SAT scores,  and volume of home sales.

     We all read with great interest last week when the NC Dept. of Education released the SAT scores for the various high schools and school districts. If  you think this is just window dressing and does not effect anything, think again. You will pay ten to twenty per cent more for a house in Chapel Hill mainly for one reason….SAT scores.  Now I realize all of you UNC fans think it’s because Carolina is located there, but trust me, it is the SAT scores. Whereas the two Chapel Hill high schools posted their usual high scores (Chapel Hill scored 1182 and East Chapel Hill 1172),  the winner in the Triangle was Woods Charter School in Chatham County with a score of 1192. We are not considering the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics located in Durham because it has a statewide student body that was hand picked because they are smarter than the rest of us. They scored 1330.

      With the state average being 994 it is safe to say that  schools scoring over 1,000 did well.  Thirteen of Wake County’s fifteen high schools achieved this goal. Four of Durham’s six high schools made the list, as did Orange High. The point is that most of the schools in the Triangle are doing a good job or at least achieving good results.   It would be interesting to see if there were any changes in the rankings if you factored in what percentage of the student body took the SATs. What if you ranked the schools by only counting the scores of the kids ranked in the top half of the class academically?  The point is that the SAT results show that all of the communities in the Triangle have good schools. That fact gives our people an abundance of choices in places to live, work, and play—and send their children to school.

     Another interesting area of statistics involves the current real estate market. Overall sales in the Triangle are down eight per cent. Listings are up and inventory is growing. The deceptive part of these statistics is that they are based on a comparison to last year. Last year set records in every phase of Triangle real estate. Compared to a ten year trend the market is actually pretty good. Our office, Fonville Morisey on Highway 54 in southwest Durham is up 15% year to date. I would like to say it is because we are just good, but I think it has more to do with where we are located. The southwest Durham/ Chapel Hill corridor has seen, and is still seeing, unprecented growth.

 

UPDATE

 

    Let me catch you up on the progress of a few area projects. The city and county governments in Durham gave final approval to the American Tobacco Project so construction can begin in October. This will be the largest urban revitalization project in the history of North Carolina. Durham will build three parking garages to help the citizens visit the project,  the ballpark, and the future concert arena. The whole thing was almost doomed until a last minute e-mail and phone call campaign to city and county officials made them realize how much the people want this project to happen.

     Remember, don’t forget to vote.