Saving millions … or none at all

In politics, there’s often quite a discrepancy between how much a legislator claims a bill will save taxpayers and what impact another group determines. Case in point is the bill sponsored by local Congresswoman Virginia Foxx that passed the U.S. House of Representatives this week.
By requiring that all federal employees be given the option to [...]

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Hydrant debate, part two

A couple months back I posted on the issue of the Pilot Mountain fire hydrants. Take a look at that post here, because I’m basically trying to bump it back up to the top of the blog.
Last night the chief of the Pilot Knob Volunteer Fire Deparment, James DeHart, came out strongly opposed to the [...]

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Campaign cash

For all the talk of public financing in the presidential election, its Congressional and Senate races where such a move would make a definitive impact. The mountain every challenger has to climb is the fundraising advantage of the incumbent, who has the name recognition and federal resources to communicate and assist their constituents. It’s no [...]

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Calling all photographers

One of the beautiful things about the internet in this day and age is the ability to easily share creative endeavors. Photography is an especially good medium for this, and one of our loyal readers, Susan Hiatt, has taken advantage using the site www.PBase.com. You can view her photo galleries, many of them of local [...]

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Where the sales tax increse is going

Last fall, Surry voters very narrowly approved a quarter-cent sales tax increase under the premise of generating money for school construction. Many other counties said no.
Now we’re seeing the first big dividends with plans to construct a $12 million elementary school that would get rid of the 20 mobile units at Dobson and Copeland elementary [...]

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The post Bagnal era

Technically Tom Bagnal won’t be retiring until the end of this month, but speculation is already taking place on who will be succeeding him as a North Ward representative on the council. This is for good reason. Take a look at the state statute for such appointments and the requirements are pretty vague. What’s more, [...]

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Tom Bagnal’s farewell

From a policy standpoint, Tom Bagnal’s real farewell from the Mount Airy City Council was his call for more detailed study on the project to move the N. Main Street Fire Station, a topic that will merit several other blog postings and plenty of newspaper ink of its own.
But the six-year veteran of the council, [...]

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Playing follow the leader on taxes

Now that the dust has settled on budgets for the 2008-2009 fiscal year, we can take a step back and see how our county compares to its neighbors in the piedmont or its counterparts across the state. The North Carolina Association of County Commissioners compiled the new property tax rates (along with any changes) and [...]

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Paying the price for field trips

It makes sense that in this day and age of gas prices that school field trips are up for more scrutiny. Sure enough, a quick google news search shows this to be an issue in Ohio, in Alabama, in South Carolina, and plenty of other states.
The issue recently came up with the Surry County School [...]

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Hitting the brakes on Renfro Street

My daily commute could soon get a bit slower. The Mount Airy City Council is voting Thursday about an ordinance change lowering the speed limit from 35 mph to 25 mph on a stretch of Renfro Street that runs parallel to downtown. To save time on explaining what stretch would slow down, I attached a [...]

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