Alderman Loses Bid, But Wins Bigger Debate

It's hard to imagine a proposal being so resoundingly defeated as Matthew Petty's push to cut a new section of Fayetteville's Rupple Road from four lanes to two. It's also hard to imagine a city council following up such a rejection with so much high praise for many of the reasons behind Petty's move.

Indeed, the vote to reaffirm Fayetteville the four-lane section of Rupple Road from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to Persimmon St. was a unanimous 8-0. Yes, Petty even voted against his plan. But when it was all over, he had perhaps won something he considered more valuable than the $1.7 million he attempted to shave from the road project.

WHAT'S THE POINT

Alderman Matthew Petty wanted to shrink what he considered overspending on a west Fayetteville Road project, but his plan was rejected. He did, however, score points in his push for city policies to drive a new kind of development on College Avenue.

For a few weeks, Ward 2's Petty had taken an aggressive stance of opposition to building that section of Rupple Road as it has been planned for years, calling the expenditure "overspending" for lanes that traffic will not demand for 10-20 years. The new section is a key part of Mayor Lioneld Jordan's "box" of four-lane streets around the city, designed to create new alternative routes east-west and north-south. Voters in 2006 approved a bond issue of nearly $66 million that included the Rupple project.

And that ultimately sealed the deal for keeping Rupple Road at four lanes. Aldermen past and present, including the mayor, said the people were promised the four-lane road. To do anything else would violate the public trust, several said.

Petty pushed for applying the saved money to other immediate needs. He proposed a program to fundamentally change the face of College Avenue through incentives to residential and commercial developers and some street/sidewalk changes. He's convinced College's old buildings with oversized parking lots are well below the quality of structures, housing and businesses College Avenue is capable of supporting. With the right support through city policies, College Avenue can become a destination rather than a highway peppered with a hodge-podge of disjointed commercial properties, he suggests.

Likewise, land around Rupple Road at four lanes should be rezoned by city officials to ensure it develops in a way that fits Fayetteville's goals rather than whatever market forces might drive, he suggested.

Petty's ideas for development/redevelopment of Rupple Road and College Avenue drew words of thanks from other aldermen, several of whom appeared convinced he had sounded a call for bigger thinking about what Fayetteville can become.

He may have lost the vote, but one gets the sense that he won the day.

One other note: Jordan and Petty went to great lengths at Tuesday's City Council meeting to say "folks" had tried pit the two men, who are fairly often aligned in their goals, against each other. Petty called Jordan a "mentor" and Jordan looked Petty in the eye and pledged he wouldn't do such a thing. We appreciate the respect they hold for each other, but let's not get too worked up about the personalities involved. These are two public officials elected to advocate and vote based on what they believe to be right for the city. The fact any two public officials might take opposing stands on an issue should be embraced as an important part of the democratic process. If they're big enough men to disagree without being disagreeable, perhaps those folks they view as pitting them against each other deserve the same kind of credit for engaging in an honest debate over important public policy matter.

Commentary on 03/25/2014

Upcoming Events