[Durham INC] Original intent and focus of the City Wide PAC

Fri Jun 25 17:19:05 EDT 2010

I totally agree with you here, Barry. Had INC supported Fairway and digital billboards, they would be touting the INC as a prominent group that speaks for the vast diversity of Durham neighborhoods and residents.

Just another case of the Fox and the Grapes.

The INC should definitely make a statement in response to Fairway's insulting and misleading assertion, a response which should be quoted in the press.

Melissa

________________________________
From: "bragin at nc.rr.com" <bragin at nc.rr.com>
To: list at durham-inc.org
Sent: Thu, June 24, 2010 3:26:15 PM
Subject: Re: [Durham INC] Original intent and focus of the City Wide PAC

Everyone's talking about the City-Wide PAC stuff, but here's another question.

How does the INC, including its past and current officers, feel about Fairway General Manager Hickman's assertion that "the council is not representative of the county as a whole"?

As i recall it, Fairway came to the INC first a year and a half or so ago, and the group voted pretty overwhelmingly to support Durham's existing billboard ordinance.

Seems to me that what Fairway has done here is attempt to find another organization that they could somehow promote as being "more representative" of Durham than the INC.

Am i misreading this, or does anybody else think this is what is going on?

Barry Ragin
---- "M. W. Shiflett - Hotmail" <mwshiflett at hotmail.com> wrote: 

=============
QUESTION:  I agree strongly that this vote by the City-wide PAC does not 
reflect in any way the strong sentiment in Durham against changing the ban 
against digital billboards. I also want to echo Rob Gillespie's thanks to 
Patty from PAC3 for voting against the policy change that allowed this 
completely unrepresentative organization for taking this stand. As Chuck 
Clifton asks in his post here, what is the function of the City-wide PAC 
anyway? Why does this group think it has some sort of authority to take such 
stands, and why should anyone listen to them? Chuck's question about its 
charter is right on target.  Andy Balber"

RESPONSE:  As a PAC facilitator for three years at the end of the nineties I 
was very fortunate to be part of the first 'gatherings' of each of the 
Partners Against Crime facilitators (now referred to as The City Wide PAC) 
from the districts of I,II,III and IV.   There was no PAC 5 or Durham 
Businesses Against Crime (DBAC) at that time.

It was a loose knit meeting in the beginning usually coordinated by the DPD 
and we eventually got better at talking with one another on what was 
important and/or an 'issue' in each of our respective districts.  Some of 
the meetings took place down in the community room at the DPD Headquarters 
while others were held at the Department of Housing and Community.

While I don't believe we had any formal by-laws, rules or procedural dictums 
that we had to abide by,  for the most part we just wanted to meet in a 
cordial atmosphere where we could share crime fighting stories, problems and 
solutions together along with getting regularly scheduled updates from the 
Durham Police Department on what they were doing to support Community 
Policing.

This enabled each facilitator to not only get to know the command staff at 
the DPD,  but also to get first hand information on new initiatives and 
results of what was/or wasn't successful since the previous 'gathering'.

Towards the end of my term (Grace Blackwell-Jones/Pam Spaulding/Brooke 
Whitefield/Richard Mullinex can verify this, I believe) in 1999 the city 
wide PAC was just an opportunity for each PAC facilitator to get together 
once every couple of months to update each other and share 'experiences'.

I seem to also recall that Frank Hyman was asked (and performed as) the 
facilitator for a number of these 'gatherings'.  Mr. Harold Chestnut was the 
PAC 4 facilitator back then too.

How it 'morphed' into what now is beyond my experience,  but it was never 
(again in my recollection) meant to be a voice of anything other than the 
leaders of each pac getting together to listen to each others concerns and 
then taking solutions that others had tried back to their own pacs to see if 
they would work.

It was always the intention of those meetings to be respectful of how each 
PAC wanted to conduct it's own affairs and not create a "one solution fits 
all cases" dictatorship.

I still feel that objective discussion of the facts in any issue ought to be 
discussed openly and without fear of retribution when it comes to community 
and neighborhood concerns.

Honoring this open process with everyone having an opportunity to be heard 
and to allow them to make up their own minds is one of the most important 
concepts of a representative democracy.

Mike Shiflett
PAC 2 Co-facilitator 1997,1998, 1999

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "andrewbalber" <andrew.balber at verizon.net>
To: <pac3 at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2010 2:12 PM
Subject: [pac3] City-wide PAC

>I agree strongly that this vote by the City-wide PAC does not reflect in 
>any way the strong sentiment in Durham against changing the ban against 
>digital billboards. I also want to echo Rob Gillespie's thanks to Patty 
>from PAC3 for voting aginst the policy change that allowed this completely 
>unrepresentative organization for taking this stand. As Chuck Clifton asks 
>in his post here, what is the function of the City-wide PAC anyway? Why 
>does this group think it has some sort of authority to take such stands, 
>and why should anyone listen to them? Chuck's question about its charter is 
>right on target.
>
> Andy Balber
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
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