Category Archives: Forsyth County

West Forsyth High School Receives Accolades

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The high school that all three of my kids attended (youngest is about to graduate) is one of the best in NC and in the top 400 in the nation according to US News & World Report:

West Forsyth High School ranks #2 and Lucy Ragsdale High ranks #6 in North Carolina, according to the publication.

In the 2014 rankings, 34 North Carolina schools received silver medals and 61 received bronze medals. The only two schools that earned gold medals were Green Hope High in Cary and West Forsyth High in Clemmons.

According to the publication, at West Forsyth High School “students have the opportunity to take Advanced Placement® course work and exams. The AP participation rate at West Forsyth High is 61 percent. The student body makeup is 51 percent male and 49 percent female, and the total minority enrollment is 32 percent. West Forsyth High is 1 of 15 high schools in the Forsyth County Schools.”

Pedaling Winston-Salem

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Those of us who live in Lewisville, NC are very aware that the Winston-Salem area is a hotbed for road cyclists. Once the weather gets warm we start to see cyclists by the dozen park in downtown Lewisville so they can take off for what I hear are several very good routes for them to ride. So it's no surprise to us that Winston-Salem would be selected as the home for the US Olympic cycling training center. From the Triad Business Journal:

A vacant 42,000-square-foot building at 505 N. Liberty St. in downtown Winston-Salem will house the new U.S. Olympic cycling training center.

The city itself has been home for the last two years to the Winston-Salem Cycling Classic, a road cycling race that attracts national attention and draws racers and fans by the thousands.

“The Southeast has become the hottest, most rapid growth of cycling in the country, and the reason North Carolina leads all that is our geography,” said Dr. Rick Rauckof Carolinas Pain Institute in Winston-Salem and chairman of the Winston-Salem Cycling Classic committee. “Why Winston wins over Charlotte and Raleigh is we have Pilot Mountain, Hanging Rock, the mountains that these cyclists have to ride to compete are very close to us.”

I'd say this is one more step in what has become a nice renaissance for Winston-Salem and its surrounding communities. 

Lewisville’s Westbend Vineyards Closing to Public March 2, 2014

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This is big news for the Yadkin Valley wine community and for the town of Lewisville, NC:

Westbend Vineyards – one of North Carolina’s oldest and most pioneering wineries – stunned the Yadkin Valley wine industry with its announcement that it plans to close its winery, brewery and tasting room to the public March 2.

Winemaker Mark Terry offered this twist on the news: He and his daughter Nicole are opening a wine and beer retail store in downtown Winston-Salem. They hope to open Corks, Caps & Taps in early April. From that location, Terry will market Westbend’s extensive wine portfolio, in addition to other North Carolina wines…

Terry said Westbend will continue to maintain the vineyard, keep winemaking permits current and continue making wine until all inventory is sold through the new retail store. The future of the grapes – and the winemaking facility and equipment – is unsettled at this time, he said.

 

Traffic and the Proposed Country Club Walmart

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As reported in local news outlets a Walmart grocery store that is being proposed for a site near the intersection of Meadowlark Drive and Country Club Road is concerning to folks in that neck of the woods and understandably so. That area already experiences some significant traffic issues in the morning and afternoons due to the presence of Meadowlark Elementary and Middle schools and the fact that Meadowlark serves as a major conduit for people traveling to US-421 from Robinhood Road and points north. 

Yes the concerns about traffic from additional development are valid, but if you look at the city/county planning staff's report and recommendation to the planning board you'll see that the proposed development reduces the traffic impact versus what could happen with current zoning. From the staff report:

Existing Zoning: HB-S
71,650/1,000 x 42.94 (Shopping Center Trip Rate) = 3,077 Trips per day

Proposed Zoning: HB-S for Parcel C:
41,179/1,000 x 42.94 (Shopping Center Trip Rate) = 1,768 Trips per Day. Note: this trip estimate does not include the two out parcels D&E which would require Final Development Plan approval. 

As you can see the trip rate is substantially reduced over what a developer could do without a rezoning if they so desired, and even if the two outparcels are developed they will have to get approval and the additional traffic they might generate could be considered at that time.

If you look at the plan you'll also see that the developers are going to provide a connection to the adjacent Brookberry Park Apartments which should help reduce trips on Country Club made from the apartments to the store.

Finally, there are already plans for improving the roads near the intersection which should help alleviate some of the congestion at the intersection. While volume is certainly an issue the expanded turn lanes will help move traffic through the intersection more quickly and reduce the backups that occur during peak traffic.

Long story short, if this was a rezoning from residential to commercial and the lots along that stretch of road were primarily single family residential then the case would be much more problematic. As it is the land has been zoned for this type of use for a while – in other words the horse is already out of the barn so there's no reason to close the door – and the proposed development is actually an improvement over what could be done as-is.  In fact, if the city council goes against the planning board's recommendation the developer has said he might just reconfigure his plans to fit the current zoning:

A representative for engineering firm Genesis North Carolina and developer Columbia Development of Columbia, S.C., said the proposal is a modification of the plan approved for the site in 1998. He said that if “push came to shove” and the city council didn’t approve the proposal, the developer could move forward with the original plan, which calls for more parking spaces and square footage for the building than the new proposal.

But he said the old plan has some flaws, while the new proposal offers tree protection, stormwater provisions and connectivity.

If the city didn't want to see the area developing as it is then they never should have zoned it for this use. Given that the city did zone it this way then the next step is making sure that projects fit and don't have a negative net impact on the surrounding community. Given their choices here it's hard to see how they can be justified to turn it down wholesale. They can certainly negotiate for changes to the plan, much like it looks like the staff already negotiated to get the connections to the apartment community included, but in the end they will likely need to approve the project or risk a less attractive option being developed in the future.

Last thought: if you changed the name of the petitioner from Walmart to Trader Joe's do you think people would be this hot and bothered?

Forsyth County’s Most Unique Road

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A fascinating post over at the Forsyth County Public Library North Carolina Room's blog explains why Shattalon Drive is Forsyth County's most unique road name:

“Shattalon” is not a legitimate word, rather, “Shattalon” is a unique word, which means that somebody made it up and it is applicable in only one case, to the road in Forsyth County which bears its name. It appears nowhere else in the world…

At that time, the section of road between Robinhood Road and the Yadkinville highway was usually referred to as Flynt Road, because it led to the Flynt land along the Yadkinville road. But he noted the trend that most roads were being named for the activities that occurred along them. Since there were several dairy farms on his stretch of the road, he envisioned it becoming Jersey Road, or Guernsey Road or something like that. But he was a progressive thinker and wanted his neighborhood to project a more modern aura, with a unique road name that everyone would find pleasing to speak.

There were only  eight households on that three mile stretch of road…Sapp, Hines, Adams, Shields, Barnes, Petree, Cartner and Brown, the last three dairy farmers. So he wrote their names and began thinking. He experimented with combining the letters of their last names to find an appropriate name for the road and came up with a unique word, which was adopted…Shattalon…a unique word

His name was Carl Sapp, born in 1905 to Thomas Jackson and Minnie Norman Sapp in the Mount Tabor community of Forsyth County.

 
1927Forsythmap001

Map indicating the road. Source Forsyth County Public Library North Carolina Room blog.

A Revival of Compassion

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*Note* – The following is a personal opinion and has nothing to do with my employer or any other organization with which I'm involved.

The Rev. Mike Aiken, Executive Director of Greensboro Urban Ministry, wrote this letter to the Greensboro News & Record:

In my nearly 40 years of ministry with the poor, I’ve never seen a more desperate time for those in need! If the Great Recession of the past several years wasn’t enough, our government is retreating from a War on Poverty in the 1960s to a War on the Poor today.

Congress continues to debate proposed massive cuts to the food stamp program. As a result of a computer glitch at the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, the demand for emergency food bags more than doubled overnight. With the decision not to extend unemployment benefits, 12,000 Triad families are facing homelessness. In July, Urban Ministry assisted many of these families with more than $52,000 in direct assistance. The decision of our legislature not to accept federal Medicaid funding that would cover an additional 500,000 North Carolina medically indigent residents was a major factor in the decision to close the HealthServe Medical Clinic at the end of August.

Who will stand up for the hungry and poor? “Lord, when did we see you hungry or sick?” (Matthew 25). We need a Revival of Compassion in North Carolina!

In a conversation I was having with a friend the other day the topic of the food drive organized by the organization I work for came up. Working on that food drive for the last four years has given me a closer look than many folks get at how the system for feeding the hungry works. The sheer volume of food that flows through the network is mind boggling and when you see that scale of need it doesn't take long to realize that it's not something that can be handled solely by the nonprofits out there. This isn't a guess, it's an observation: with reduced government programs people will go hungry. Not "might", "will." 

That same conversation led me to admit that for the first time in a very long while I'm extremely worried about what's going to happen to our community. This isn't hyperbole or some partisan reaction to current affairs. The cumulative effect of all the factors that Rev. Aiken outlines in his letter are going to have an immediate impact on the lives of thousands of people in our community. The burden of providing a modicum of a safety net will now fall even more heavily on the shoulders of the nonprofit community and many members of that community are facing funding cuts of their own. Unfortunately I truly think you'll start to see a wave of closures of those nonprofits as they collapse from a combination of funding cuts and increased demand. If not outright failures, then a reduction in services in an effort to survive. Either way there will be people going without and that's a tragedy. 

When Glitches Are More Than Inconvenient

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Yes! Weekly is reporting on problems with a rollout of North Carolina Department of Health and Human Service's NC FAST program:

North Carolina Families Accessing Services Through Technology, which is being implemented across all 100 counties of North Carolina, is designed to integrate various social services, including food stamps, Medicaid and WorkFirst, creating a kind of "one-stop shop" for clients seeking assistance. The Forsyth County Department of Social Services calls it a "no wrong door" approach.

Beginning in early July complaints began to crop up in Forsyth County about food stamp benefits being held up for current clients applying for reactivation. A number of clients said their benefits had been delayed for months on end, and food pantries and agencies that provide free meals reported an increase in demand that was partially attributable to disruption in food stamp benefits. Those complaints were a reprise of similar concerns expressed in neighboring Guilford County where the program was piloted.

Many of us have lived through the inconvenience of a software upgrade that didn't go as smoothly as planned, or improved our lives as much as the upgrader promised, but I seriously doubt many of us have lived through such dire consequenses as the result of a systems upgrade. Combine this with the recently constrained unemployment benefits and it's apparent that we all need to be prepared to step up our game to help our local food pantries meet the spike in need in the immediate future. 

This is How You Do It

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First a disclaimer: the following is my personal opinion and in no way reflects an official stance of my employer.

Last week I was in Raleigh meeting with legislators about issues related to my day job. The North Carolina legislature is a pretty intense place right now and the legislators, who are always busy during the session, were busier than normal for a variety of reasons. As a result we were only able to meet in person with about half of the legislators from the Triad and luckily for me one of those people was Rep. Ed Hanes,  a freshman Democrat from Forsyth County. We talked about our issues and just before we said our goodbyes the subject of education came up. That's when it really got interesting.

One of the folks in my group has a child getting ready to enter the public school system. After listening to Rep. Hanes speak about public education she asked his advice about how to approach it. Rep. Hanes took a couple of minutes to talk to her about it, and then he started talking about co-sponsoring an education-related bill with a Republican. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather. A Democrat and Republican co-sponsoring a piece of substantive legislation in this day and age? Whoa!

Not surprisingly Rep. Hanes said he was catching some heat over the bill, and given that it's about allowing vouchers to be used with private schools you can bet he's getting heat for multiple reasons: crossing party lines and "sabotaging public education" being the two most obvious. Sure enough the bill was hot enough that it became the subject of a front page article in the 5/30/13 Winston-Salem Journal:

House Bill 944, known as the private school voucher bill, passed the House education committee Tuesday by a narrow, 27-21 margin. It moves next to the House appropriations committee — likely next week, said co-sponsor Rep. Ed Hanes, D-Forsyth.

Hanes went against party lines in endorsing the bill, which has received sharp criticism from Democrats and opponents who fear the bill could damage public education. Hanes said that while the plan is not perfect, the latest version of the bill that passed the education committee Tuesday is a marked improvement from the bill’s original iteration.

“When you’re 27 seats down, you have to use the tools you have,” Hanes said. “Vouchers are not the answer. Charter schools are not the answer. Even public schools as we have them currently constituted are not the answer to educating economic disadvantaged students.

You don't have to like the bill in order to like what Rep. Hanes is doing. It's old-school legislating in that he's showing the gumption to take a potentially unpopular stance to do what he thinks is best for his constituents. The man is showing some real backbone because in a very partisan world he's willing to cross party lines and at the same time he's taking on one of the most infuential bodies in NC politics-the public education industrial complex. 

Wouldn't it be refreshing to see more action like this in Raleigh and Washington?

Standing on Principle

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Winston-Salem city councilman Dan Besse is taking a bit of a political hit for his stance on an issue before the council. From Yes! Weekly's editorial about the matter:

The Winston-Salem city councilman took a stand last week against a proposed resolution by the city to oppose the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which equated money with free speech and enabled corporations and unions to make unlimited financial contributions to the political process…

But the time is being spent regardless of Besse’s opposition, largely at the behest of his political allies and constituents…

Surely there would be no harm to Dan Besse’s political future by backing down on his stance and throwing in with the opposition groups. It’s an election year, after all, and though Besse’s Southwest Ward seat seems safe, he will surely face a Republican opponent in the General Election.

The editors then provide two quotes from Besse that I think should be printed and hung on the walls in the chambers of every city/town/county council in the land:

“I strongly believe that as a good-government issue, that local governments should focus on the good things we can do — services and infrastructure that we are responsible for — instead of serving as an adjunct public debating society on issues over which we have no jurisdiction,” he said.

and

“If you can’t act on what you believe is the right thing to do, then you shouldn’t be in office,” he said.

Councilman Besse also pointed out that he is an activist on many issues like assault weapons bans, the Affordable Care Act and environmental quality, but he is active in other more appropriate venues. His point – that being a member of city council doesn't preclude him from advocating for any issue on his own time, but when he's wearing his councilmember hat he should be focused on the city's business – is spot on.