Street Jazz

affordable housing is something that is a problem everywhere. it is just as easy to build a 200,000 house and make more profit than a smaller house and make less profit. the price of houses is such that small houses are still expensive but the profit is less on "affordable housing" so builders don't want to worry about it. the pain of paperwork and development is about the same for 100,000 as a 200,000 except the profit is more on the larger. (the dollar amts are estimates, it actually costs more than 100,000 for the smallest houses these days) i am just saying that most builders opt to go to the higher profitability way if they can.

Though it was brief, my visit to Athens in no way brought forth thoughts of Fayetteville, AR. Aside from all the obvious points like history and the fact it borders the sea etc.. I would say what Fayetteville is drowning out is special yet isolated character..and so little of its expansive building obliterates the character of its short history, none of the new building will last a hundred years, imo.

Up until about 5 years back many Eurekans looked forward to that day (or evening) trip to Fayetteville. Not so much anymore, in fact if its a day trip just avoid the traffic and taxes and go to Harrison or for many Branson or Springfield.

I do wish minimum wages would rise like gasoline and groceries.. if so, starting about 1970 the minium wage would now be 17 to 19 per hour. Then folks could afford to stay in their home town or the town they want to call home. Even with a humane living minimum wage I can hear the conversation now.. Honey, should we renew blue cross this year or really go to Athens?

The bain of an artist life in this country seems to be, set up a neighborhood make it comfortable and home like community, then let the developers fu** it all up..remodel, resell and rotate again and again.

Give me Mt Sequoia, Dixon street, and the farmers mkt or get me the heck out of plastic fantastic "Athens".

Funny, the first place I thought of was Athens, Georgia, not Athens, Greece. The forme seems more plausible; the latter, as the author noted, seems too pretentious.

I only lived in Fayetteville for about 1.5 years, having just recently moved to Mountain View, a move which my friends thought was crazy. However, my reasoning for the move was pretty much summarized by the last line in Mr. Drake's piece.

The fresh air, clear skies and calming quite of my new home are quite nice. There's no Dickson Street, but I never had the money to go down there much anyhow. I'll just take it to the courtsquare.

I recall my first introduction to Fayetteville as "Athens of Ozarks" came by way of "Dr Tom", now deceased philosophy proff. He and students would don tunics and wear sandals on the appointed day to celebrate our LIttle Athens back in '69 and '70. I recall phys ed majors and bidness students ridiculing them. The phys ed majors and bidness students later ran the city council and County board which did its best to destroy our Little Athens.

We can sigh that Divinity on Dickson is dead. What's next?

It was accurate to call those of us who were in the opposition in Fayetteville 'aginners'--unfair, maybe, but we brought it on ourselves.

Hardly anyone ever articulated a positive vision for what we wanted to see in Fayetteville, largely because we didn't have one, at least not one we agreed on. I know I tried, but mostly by pointing at things in the recent past and suggesting we could do more things like those.

Let's review how it all started.

The first big fight against was in the late eighties, with the incinerator. The against forces were two separate groups. Fayetteville's left was against for environmental reasons. Fayetteville's right was against for economic reasons. It was an alliance of convenience.

There followed a variety of against campaigns, some successful (the Hobbs Mountain landfill) and some not (the Walm-Art center improvement district). The big one came in 1992, with the regional aiport and the city manager form of government--and that one was our death knell.

The right and the left got together again to change Fayetteville from a city manager government to a strong-mayor/weak council government.

I'd like to note that I opposed that, proposing instead the weak mayor/strong council form. Instead of a mayor and eight council members all elected city-wide, I advocated an elected mayor and ten wards electing ten council members. Small wards were more important that big mayors.

That turned out to be the decisive moment. Once the strong mayor form of government was established, the right and the left picked their own candidates. At that point, we got Fred Hanna stuck in our backs, along with seven of eight council seats won by the right wing.

Democratically, too. That was the worst of it. In the one straight-up two-person city-wide election, rightist Fred Vorsanger beat the moderate left former planning commission chair by a solid 55-45 percent margin. The unprincipled alliance against ended up putting the right in power.

It didn't end with that, either. By establishing a mayor with a veto and ward elections which are continually under attack by the moneyed, we eventually ended up with a kinder, gentler Fred Hanna. Dan Coody isn't the bigot Fred Hanna was, but he's shown the same willingness to steamroller anyone in the way of the wealthy or the privileged. Looking at his administration, it's hard to say things would've been much better had Coody defeated Hanna back in 1992.

We brought this on ourselves.

Our unwillingness to see that Fayetteville was changing and that some of the changes were not within our control led us to the proposition that we could elect the mayor we wanted. That was both a vain hope and a hope in vain, and it left us with a form of government which is designed to keep a bare majority able to stomp all over the opposition. We asked for that, and we got it.

There's much more to say about this. I think I'll blog about it myself soon.

John A. please tell me you were not part of the plot to "hum" Mayor Hanna out of office.

Knoc Knock,

I am not now, nor have I ever been, nor have I ever driven a hummer.

I take the Fifth Amendement on my alleged receipt thereof.

Yes, but have you ever received a 'hummer' ?

Kidding aside, there was a group of quasi newagers who held gatherings to hum things into existence or to rid them selves of some undesirable circumstance. Mayor Hanna fit the latter category in their humming schema.

Knoc Knock,

I've been wracking my brain trying to remember whether any of the hummers were involved in the anti-Hanna campaign I worked on in the late nineties. I don't think there were. To tell you the truth, I don't recall the hummer story from that time. I recall hearing about it later, but I don't remember it from then.