Give Jim Ward credit for asking the best question of the night.

Davenport & Co. representatives made a surprise appearance at last night’s Town Council meeting to educate council members and the rest of us on the pros and cons of traditional tax-exempt municipal bonds compared to the Build America Bonds, a federal program that came out of the American Recovery and Relief Act that subsidizes 35 percent of the debt service the bond issuer has to pay the bond investor. As the discussion wore on, with each question posed by council members delving into yet another subtlety, Ward cut to the chase:

If you were investing your mother’s money, your inheritance, in municipal bonds, would you invest in BABs?

As the Davenport presenter hemmed and hawed a flurry of on-the-one-hands and on-the-other-hands, Ward jumped in, “So, that’s a no.”

Not exactly, said the Davenport rep before launching into an “it depends” series.

Ward pressed him again for an answer, and the Davenport rep fell back on the “I can’t really give a recommendation, it depends on what you want” response used by waiters when asked to recommend a fish.

At that point, sensing that the council was leaning toward the tax-exempt option that would give the town $2 million in cash upfront, above and beyond the $20.4 million authorized in the sale, town manager Roger Stancil interrupted.

But we have a recommendation, Stancil blurted out, including town business management director Ken Pennoyer on his side, and that is for the BABs option.

The town council had the option of voting to include BABs with the tax-exempt bonds, the option Stancil wanted because it could potentially save about $40,000 a year in debt service expense over 20 years. But it carried the risk that should an anti-Obama faction take control of Congress, something that some analysts believe could happen in the next election, the federal subsidy could be repealed. Then BABs would have to be reissued at perhaps a higher interest rate, and end up costing the town more than the tax-exempt option. The tax-exempt option would give the town an additional $2 million upfront, but could cost as much as $2 million more in additional debt service, Pennoyer said, though he didn’t explain how the extra $1.2 million materialized that had not been mentioned until it seemed the council was favoring the $2 million upfront bonus.

A third option emerged during the discussion: Go with the tax-exempt bonds and apply the $2 million toward the $20.4 million limit and sell only $18.4 million. Stancil pointed out that if any of the projects go over budget, the town might not have enough money to foot the overrun.

In the end, council members voted unanimously for BABs.

The most important question that nobody asked? Does Davenport profit more from the BABs or the tax-exempt option?
– Nancy Oates

You don’t have to make money to run a business – just ask AIG and some of the banks and investment houses that our tax dollars have bailed out in the past couple of years.

One local business I don’t begrudge supporting with my tax dollars is the town’s recycling center on Eubanks Road across from the landfill. The “business” part of it comes in the form of the recycling shed where people bring still-usable stuff that has enough life in it to go another round in someone else’s home. Everything in the shed is free for the taking. That it serves as a toy exchange is one of the town’s best-kept secrets that should be made more public.

We have a “thrift-shop closet” in our home, started when the kids were little and outgrowing their clothes and toys every other week. They rarely had time to sully their outfits with leaky juice boxes before they’d moved on to the next size. And with a few gift-receiving occasions every year, there was always a fresh stash of toys. So, when a toy or piece of clothing no longer fit, we would relegate it to the thrift-shop closet and periodically take everything in the closet over to the PTA Thrift Shop.

But because of the threat of toxic toys from China, the Thrift Shop made a blanket rule last year that it no longer accepts any toys. Fortunately, the recycling shed operates on a buyer-beware policy and accepts anything that donors think someone might want.

Last week, I took a load of stuff to the recycling center. First, I dropped off the games, stuffed animals, girly tchotchkes and dress-up clothes at the recycling shed. By the time I’d distributed the cardboard boxes and electronics and dead batteries to their respective receptacles and gone back to my car, everything I’d put in the recycling shed had found a new home.

If you cried during Toy Story 3, the recycling shed is your antidote. Take all those toys you have bagged in the attic and garage and give them a new life, starting at the recycling shed.
– Nancy Oates

Goodness knows I’ve devoted enough of my life to grocery stores to weigh in on the Costco debate. State Sen. Ellie Kinnaird is leaning hard on town leaders in Chapel Hill and Carrboro to reach out to the members-only warehouse store that sells groceries and pretty much everything else you’d need for daily living. Durham has a Costco, and many other big-box stores that draw shoppers and their tax dollars out of Orange County. Kinnaird wants such a sales-tax revenue generator for Orange County, not to mention the additional jobs for her constituents, jobs that pay more than double what Costco’s competitors pay, if Kinnaird’s information is correct.

And who could argue with that? The problem is where would you put a Costco? Chapel Hill and Carrboro are fairly saturated with grocery stores. The only spot that will need a grocery store in the near future is Franklin Street, what with the boomlet of condos opening up. But Franklin Street wouldn’t fit Costco’s criterion of being close to an interstate. And besides, where would customers park?

Chapel Hill’s economic development officer, Dwight Bassett, said Costco has two options that he can see: 30 acres near the intersection of Eubanks Road and I-40, not far from the Harris Teeter at Chapel Hill North, and a spot in Ram’s Plaza, where it would replace or compete with Food Lion. Siting a Costco where it could put another established store out of business seems somewhat counterproductive from a tax revenue-generating standpoint.

I’d like to see Costco put its store in Village Plaza on Elliott Road in the desolate gap where the Village Plaza Theaters used to be. Zoning and parking in place; plenty of homes nearby to form a customer base; different enough from Whole Foods so as not to compete.

And if the increased tax revenue eases the pressure on property-tax payers, what’s not to like?
– Nancy Oates

Just as I’m trying to figure out how to set up an online tip jar so that Don and I can spend more time on the blog and less time on work that pays money, I read that the Philadelphia city government requires blogs to be licensed. The City of Philadelphia expects bloggers to pay $300 for a business privilege license and, of course, pay taxes on any and all revenue that comes in from the blog.

The law amounts to a tax on free speech.

The city requires that anyone engaged in any activity for profit be licensed, whether or not the business actually turned a profit. Bloggers, and editorial writers across the country, argue that bloggers don’t intend to make a profit. We provide a digital microphone so that voices from the community can be heard. The type of change we seek does not jingle in pockets; ideally, it resonates among voters, who on the appointed day, will go to the polls and make change happen.

Pundits call Philadelphia’s law “management” as opposed to “leadership” and point out that the licensing requirement shows a lack of wisdom among those who make up Philadelphia’s governing body. Many municipalities are scrambling to find the money to meet their budgets. Still, the move seems akin to feeling around under the sofa cushions in hopes of finding enough quarters to go to the Laundromat.

We hope that Chapel Hill’s town council doesn’t latch onto this idea of licensing blogs. But once council meetings resume Sept. 15, we’ll be reading the consent agenda carefully, just in case.
– Nancy Oates

“Technologically impaired” ought to be an official category of disability. With all the world wired for instant access, those of us who are completely flummoxed when we click an icon or a hyperlink and nothing happens are at a true disadvantage.

Last night I wanted to listen to what other people thought about the county’s proposal to raise the sales tax a quarter of a cent per dollar. Behind in my work, I didn’t want to take an hour to drive to Hillsborough and back and sit through the parts of the county Board of Commissioners meeting I wasn’t keenly interested in. I planned to keep the live streaming of the meeting on my computer while I worked and tune in only to the good parts.

So I went to the county website, clicked on the video linked, downloaded the special software required for live streaming and rebooted. I went back to the website, clicked on the meeting link and on the “view event” link, and was met only with silence and a black screen.

I clicked on and read through a few of the documents under the “help” section, but nothing worked. I tried starting from scratch again, rebooting, reloading and rebooting, with no success.

My husband stifled a sigh and tried accessing the meeting on his computer. He got a blue screen with an icon on it, but no audio.

We checked the public access channels on TV to see whether the meeting was being broadcast live. It was not, at least not on the cable channels we get.

I’m not ruling out operator error, that there was some setting I needed to change to be able to watch the meeting on my computer. But the county offered no clues on its website or in its troubleshooting documents.

Not everyone interested in what our county commissioners are up to has the time or child-care arrangements to attend county Board of Commissioners meetings in person. And residents shouldn’t need a technology geek to access what goes on at meetings.

Score one for the commissioners, working harder to keep voters in the dark.
– Nancy Oates

About a dozen years ago, while playing in our front yard, my kids and I watched some contractors pour wet cement around a manhole in the middle of the intersection at our corner. After they’d smoothed the cement, the workers barricaded the spot with sawhorses and left. Though they probably worked for the DOT, they did not re-hang the street-name sign that had fallen off its pole and was propped against a low stone wall at the corner.

I went inside to put some water on to boil to start dinner. As I waited at the sink for the pot to fill, I glanced outside and saw my son inside the barricade, digging in the wet cement with the fallen street sign. I flew outside and hauled him back to the house, then climbed inside the barricade in the middle of the intersection and tried to smooth over the cement with the street sign, the only tool I had to work with.

Talk about mortification.

I’m kind of feeling that way now. Don leaves me in charge of the blog for a few weeks; somebody does something unexpected, and I’m left to clean up the mess as best I can.

But the only tool I can fall back on is my seemingly bottomless supply of good advice (just ask Don and the kids). For what it’s worth, here’s what I’ve got for blog readers:

1. Don’t automatically ascribe the worst motives to others. If something can be interpreted two ways, give the commenter the benefit of the doubt.

2. Disagree without destroying.

3. Learn what all fish know: hooks only hurt if you take the bait.

The next Town Council meeting is almost two months away, leaving us little to write about during the recess. And the heat does make everyone testy. Stay cool; we’ll have plenty to argue about come September.
– Nancy Oates

For the past five weeks I’ve felt a bit like the fellows in the kgb commercial. You know, the one in which two men frantically search on their cell phones for a Japanese translation of “I surrender” before the sumo wrestler attacks.

So I have an unbounded sympathy for the poor fellow who is so slow that he can’t access the information he needs to keep from getting squashed. I’ve been taking a course in Chaucer at UNC, an endeavor that comes with plenty of challenges, not the least of which is trying to keep up with the youngsters in the class. I feel like some Medieval scribe scrambling to scratch out answers on parchment as the class accelerates around me.

On any question the professor throws out, I’m always several seconds behind the students at coming up with an answer. By the time I can access the information in my turtle brain and formulate an answer, the others are on to the next challenge like a herd of jackrabbits. They are sharp and quick and eager to learn. More important, they have grown up with instantaneous access to information, and that shows in their classroom accomplishments.

As someone who has not set foot in a classroom since 1979, it is disconcerting to be back rubbing elbows with folks who think nothing of putting together a Power Point presentation or having continuous access to answers via the Internet while sitting at a classroom desk. The professor asks a question and the brisk clicking of keyboards yields the answer almost instantaneously. I feel like a spectator in some fascinating TV quiz.

We will take the final exam for the class on Friday. I fully expect to be the last student to turn in the exam. And while it humbles me to be the last one out the door, it also is reassuring that each of these students will tackle many of life’s problems with a quicker brain than I had at that age.
– Don Evans