One of the bigger stories this week is the opening of the new and improved Southwest Regional Library this Monday. The new facility opens after a long wait — the old Southwest closed almost 18 months ago. It was worth the wait, however, as the new building has 25,000 square feet of space holding  just over 100,000 books. In addition, there are 30 computer stations allowing patrons to access the Internet. Like most of its neighbors, I’m looking forward to spending a good part of this summer at the new Southwest.

While we’re talking about libraries, this is a good time to start reminding BCRE readers that the Parkwood Branch Library will be closing for good on June 27. This will give the staff a month to move everything over to the new South Branch Library, which will open on July 28.

If you are a reader this summer, Durham is a good place to be!

Our Fair City got some nice press in the Food section of yesterday’s New York Times. While I could sniff at the “so-called Research Triangle — Chapel Hill, Raleigh and Durham” — which is like referring to the 5 boroughs as the “so-called New York City” — the article was a pretty fair discussion about the revival of downtown Durham and the overall trend towards local produce. Read it for yourself — here is the main article and here is the accompanying slideshow

For those readers who can never have enough books, the Friends of the Durham Library Spring book sale is this weekend. The book sale is a great way to find gently used books to add to your collection. You can find this treasure trove at the Main Library [300 N Roxboro Street] during the following times;

• • • Saturday, April 10, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Everyone welcome.
    • Sunday, April 11, 2 – 5 p.m. Everyone welcome. $7 Bag Sale.

Come find some great books and help your local library all at the same time.

The Jordan High School PTSA is having their annual Yard Sale fundraiser this Saturday, March 27 from 8AM to noon. The Jordan Yard Sale is usually pretty big with most of the parking lot filled with vendors selling just about anything you can imagine. I spend far too much there every year.

Jordan High School is on Garrett Road just off the intersection of Garrett and Hope Valley Road [NC-751]

[picture cred.: Creative Commons and Redlands CoC]

From the City’s press release

The Durham Police Department is pleased to announce a cooperative arrangement with Bair Software Inc. to provide cutting-edge crime mapping to the public. The new web site, www.raidsonline.com is designed to be a Regional Analysis & Information Data Sharing solution. In addition to the City of Durham, which will provide daily updates for the site, Raleigh and Cary are expected to start sharing data soon, allowing the public to have a regional perspective of crime for the first time. Although the Durham Crime Mapper (www.durhampolice.com/crimemapper.cfm) will continue to be the official crime mapping web site for the department, data will also be shared for publication on the RAIDS web site. CrimeMapper will still be the preferred source for users wanting to view crime for years prior to 2009. However, the RAIDS web site will provide the following additional benefits:

• Ability to view all UCR Part 2 crimes
• Google Maps interface, including satellite views
• Analytics for selected crime search results
• Frequency distribution
• Crime by day of week
• Crime type timelines
• Temporal topology
• One-click density maps (aka hot spots)
• Citizens-On-Patrol notification feature

The public is reminded that crime mapping web sites like RAIDS are designed to better inform the public concerning crime in their neighborhood, and should not be used for statistical analysis or comparison with other cities. This is a pilot project with the site developer, and no warranties are offered regarding the accuracy or completeness of the data, including the continued availability of the service. The complete terms of use and blog regarding features can be found at http://raidsblog.com/.

I’ve had a chance to play with the software a bit, and it seems to be pretty robust. If you are interested in the crime rates around a particular property, this seems like an effective tool to get the information you want.

Yesterday’s Herald Sun had an article discussing ways to balance the upcoming year’s City budget — Council Open to Raising Taxes. The article discussed the projected gap in next year’s budget, estimated by some to be about $13Million, and the need to deal with some deferred road maintenance to the tune of at least $1.5Million [dealing with all the deferred maintenance would be $19Million] . The Council is apparently looking to cover the shortfall with a combination of spending cuts and a property tax increase of as much as 5.8 cents per $100 — an 11% increase over current rates. The Council is also considering a bond issue to deal with the backlog of maintenance projects.

Some semi-random thoughts;

1. There will be a property tax increase this year. The Council wouldn’t be talking about it in February unless they were laying the groundwork for passing an increase later this year.
2. While they say they will use a mix of spending cuts and a tax increase, expect much fewer spending cuts and a larger tax increase. After all, when has any government really been successful at cutting spending? I’d be surprised if the rate increase wasn’t at least 4 cents per $100.
3. As a citizen, I’d be really concerned with the level of deferred road maintenance, and even moreso with the idea of taking on additional debt to take care of it. It’s just like your personal budget — if you have to add debt to cover your regular monthly expenses, you are living beyond your means.

It will be interesting to see how this develops over the next couple of months, There are two ideas here. First of all, we all know that raising taxes in a recession is bad. We also know, however, that the City must keep a certain level of funding to keep it’s AAA bond rating. When idea wins out will be come clearer when the official budget is unveiled later this year.

One of the things common to almost every American household is that we need to get rid of a Christmas tree right about now. If you live in Durham, here are the instructions for tree pickup straight from the city.

“The Department of Solid Waste Management will collect Christmas trees from all Solid Waste customers from January 4-29, 2010.  Trees should be placed at the curb by 7 a.m. on residents’ normal household garbage collection day.  Residents are asked to leave the tree at the curb for one week before contacting Durham One Call at (919) 560-1200 to report a missed tree collection.

Trees taller than six feet should be cut in half.  Residents should also remove all decorations, including tinsel, lights, garland, and ornaments, as well as stands, nails, and other hardware.  Residents are also asked to not place trees in bags.

Christmas trees may also be dropped off at the City’s Waste Disposal & Recycling Center at 2115 E. Club Blvd., Monday through Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Saturday, 7:30 a.m. to 12 p.m., at no charge until January 29.  Trees delivered after that date will be subject to the usual disposal fees.”

[photo credit zin1223 and Creative Commons]

That is a debate which will probably go on forever — right alongside Duke vs UNC vs State and Ginger vs Mary Ann.

Last week, the Milken Institute added another data point when they released their list of Best Performing Cities for 2009. tucked in comfortably at #6 is our fair city. Durham did well in job growth and in high-tech GDP in 2008. According to Milken, we’ve even handled the storms of the past year relatively well, with only a modest job contraction — ranking Durham at 54th out of a group of 200.

Where was Raleigh? Four spots down in 10th place. Raleigh also did well in most categories, but the job contraction of the past year [where it ranked 124th out of 200] really dropped the overall score. That ranking is certainly nothing to sneeze at and it is very possible the roles will be reversed in 2010, but for now, we’ll enjoy our place in the sun.

The Herald Sun reported today that a proposed high school will not be built on the Erwin-Cornwallis site the DPS has been investigating. apparently the grading requirements and the required creek buffers made the site unsuitable for the amount of development required for a high school. The DPS staff says they are still looking at three other sites for the new high school, but would not give any information about their location.

Today’s Herald-Sun had the results of last years Performance composite scores. congratualtions to the following schools, which were cited as “Schools of Distinction”

• Little River Elementary
• Mangum Elementary
• Pearsontown Elementary
• Middle College High School at Durham Tech

This award is a reflection of a lot of hard work by both students and faculty. Congratulations!

For more details about the results for all Durham schools, click here.