Some members of the Huntersville Town Board, eager to appear thoroughly engaged, adequately informed and sufficiently authoritative with election day just three months away, know the feeling.
Board meetings usually provide each commissioner plenty of opportunities to wax hilosophical about accomplishments, or rant about controversies and, almost without exception, each takes one route or the other on every topic — even when the best advice might be to simply stay quiet.
But when the issue at hand involves relatively minor aspects of developments that absolutely, conclusively and incontrovertibly must be supported for the betterment of the entire community, grabbing the spotlight just for show can be perceived as desperate.
The recent battle in Washington over the debt ceiling is a prime example. From a legislative standpoint, what was the option? Let the nation’s economy drop off the edge and watch constituents suffer just to prove a point? But nevertheless, representatives from each side of the issue pointed fingers, called names and stood firm until there was no time left for either side to blink.
Locally, the threat of putting the screws to an industrial giant several months into a jobscreating, $90-million plus investment in your back yard — in today’s economy — doesn’t make much sense, either. Swiss mega-corporation ABB, with a 430-foot tower at Commerce Station, needs big, bright, exterior lights to illuminate its product warehousing and transportation operations. These guys are in the cable manufacturing business, and this is not their first plant. They know what they need and that’s what they want.
Town commissioners, armed with a light-regulating ordinance designed primarily to cope with car dealers who, left on their own, might turn local lots into shuttle launch-like light shows, were given the opportunity to review ABB’s request and, out of respect, courtesy and protocol, offered the chance to make a few suggestions.
After all, the planning staff had done the ground work and presented a reasonable explanation for bumping up the town standards for specific uses to meet ABB’s expectations — and, after all, the town had partnered with Davidson and Cornelius to create the industrial park in the first place with the exact hopes of landing a quality tenant like ABB — so what’s the beef?
It turns out Commissioner Charles Jeter, who to his credit believes every point deserves a counterpoint, is in the warehousing and logistics business. But when he made comments about the lighting requirements, the switch was thrown. Other commissioners with much less light to shine on the subject nevertheless felt obliged to speak up and, as often happens when each new comment reminds someone else of something they wish they would have said, the issue dragged on.
To his credit, ABB’s David Jenkins, the construction manager for the project, didn’t jump in and suggest Gov. Bev Perdue helicopter back into town to settle the matter. Perdue was here, side-by-side with giddy town and county representatives, when ABB broke ground, and if the company did hit some snags because Huntersville considered its lights were too bright, she would probably schedule another visit.
At that time, Perdue, no stranger to politics, might offer some advice to “speaking for the sake of speaking” commissioners: Sometimes, even in elected office, silence is golden.
