The Virginian-Pilot
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The year is winding down, procrastinators are just beginning their Christmas shopping and the Chesley Trio has returned from college for the holidays - dirty laundry in tow.
That means it's time to list the best local quotes of 2011. Or the ones that stood out to yours truly, anyway.
Remember these words?
"That won't no suicide." - Keith Mundie, about the 1984 shooting death of Portsmouth police Officer Garland Joyner Jr., 39. What happened in Gates County, N.C., has finally been reopened as a homicide investigation, after initially being ruled a suicide. At least one witness had heard several shots the morning Joyner's body was found.
"That's what we keep hearing - 'wow.' " - Deborah DiCroce, president of Tidewater Community College, on the opening of the new $17.6 million student center on Granby Street at TCC's Norfolk campus. It's a snazzy building with eateries, study rooms, a fitness area and other amenities.
"Lying is unforgivable." - Former Gov. Tim Kaine, on the actions and comments of Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., as the scandal unfolded involving his lewd photos and sexually explicit Internet messages. The congressman resigned shortly afterward.
"One of the things I will bring is hope." - New Norfolk State University President Tony Atwater, who took the helm in July after the ouster of the former president in 2010.
"It's not a matter of race. It's a matter of criminal activity and public safety." - Chesapeake police Chief Kelvin Wright, about the scrutiny that authorities gave Blakely's Nightclub. The club had mostly black customers on weekends. A judge later ordered Blakely's to stop selling alcohol.
"This is a big one by any measure of an eastern earthquake." - David Spears, Virginia's state geologist, on the Aug. 23 earthquake that was centered near Mineral. The magnitude 5.8 quake jolted Virginians, who are more accustomed to hurricanes.
"... I find it hard to believe there was no fraud involved, that there was no criminal wrongdoing." - Norfolk City Councilman Tommy Smigiel. Many other residents felt the same way, following the decision by the city's top prosecutor not to charge anyone in the scandal involving $320,000 in payments to a no-show worker at the Norfolk Community Services Board.
"Everywhere they built one of these, people hated it, but now they love it." - Rider taking The Tide on its opening day, in which huge crowds swamped the light-rail system in Norfolk.
"My drug bill to me personally is $2,000 or $3,000 a year. I don't know why I have to pay all this out when I've got insurance." - Jackie Stalls, a retired health care consultant from Virginia Beach, about high costs despite the new federal health law.
"This is going to give an opportunity for people from all across the country to travel to Fort Monroe and trace the history that has been so important to making America what it is." - President Barack Obama, in signing an executive order granting national monument status to the Hampton fort.
And finally, from Portsmouth Mayor Kenny Wright, expressing fears in his city because of the upcoming toll rates on the Downtown and Midtown tunnels and extended Martin Luther King Freeway - "We're going to be an island here."
Roger Chesley, (757) 446-2329, roger.chesley@pilotonline.com, pilotonline.com/chesley
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Engagement Quotes
Another Missing You Quotes great appearance is to start the disposition interjection with a quote roughly love and marriage. You should choose wording that reflects the newly engaged couple's relationship. It may reflect on how they met and became close friends.
Costs
So this won't make money or pay for itself? Last I checked neither do roads, stop signs, or sidewalks.
Real costs.
$317.6 million, final cost of the Norfolk section of light rail.
242,803 Norfolk population in 2010.
$1308.06 Cost for contruction per man, woman, and child in the city of Norfolk.
$17 Million, annual operating cost for above train.
$70.02 cents per man, woman, and child.
All of this for a 7.5 mile train.
By the way, $42,346,666.67 a mile. (That's a lot of roads, stop signs, and sidewalks.)
Gas taxes pay for roads - HRT fares? Pay for little.
Great facts.
Here is another.
HRT isn't charging the people using the train anywhere near what people who drive are charged when we compare the taxes and feees collected to pay for roads.
At best HRT is recovering 20% of the operating costs of their tiny financial train wreck. Yet, many riders pay NOTHING; someone else pays every cent of the inadequate fare charged. Take the example of Norfolk City Employees having "free" rides.
Where does "Norfolk" city government get the money they hand over to HRT?
From taxpayers. So the "fare" paid to HRT is a shell game, a transfer of tax money that HRT counts as a "fare" they collected.
How many of HRT's riders "pay" for their rides using taxpayer funds they receive from other welfare?
People "love" free pony rides
HRT's fare structure for paying the $17M annual operating costs for a tiny, 15 MPH light rail boondoggle is an outragious abuse of taxpayers and a stunning example of social injustice - yet we have THIS quote included as a "best"? Really???
"Everywhere they built one of these, people hated it, but now they love it." - Rider taking The Tide on its opening day, in which huge crowds swamped the light-rail system in Norfolk."
Of course had that person been charged the full $13.50 that "free" ride cost taxpayers, their reaction would have been far different.
HRT is doing everything they can to stick people NOT RIDING the 7.4 train with the bill. Talk about injustice!
People lined up for the novelty of a "FREE" new amusement ride.
time to get over it!
It's been built,it's running, it will never make money (just like the bus service), the cost over-run is what it is, it's old news, it will get extended and no longer be a "starter line",redundant comments will not change anything. Time to market it and support it. Looking forward in the future 20 to 30 years it will be a key componet to improving quality of life all over Hampton Roads and attracting new businesses. Too bad a lot of critics will not be here to see the successful end result.
time to get over it!???????
NO...it's past time to close it, lick the wounds and absorb the loss before it gets worse.....and it will
Closing it would be
a REAL waste of money. $1 billion for nothing...not what I would call fiscal responsibility. Let's give the train a few years and maybe even some time to expand, and then make our judgement. The only problem with that solution is that it does not involve as much screaming! Maybe the posters here should join a football league or try mixed martial arts, that would be a better way to channel their aggression at life. It would be a lot more productive than screaming at progress.
Fiscal responsibility?
To have been fiscally responsible, would have been not to begin this boon doggle to start with.
Define "successful end result".
Please define that phrase. Is success to be measured in reduced carbon emissions? What about stopping and rerouting traffic to accommodate it.
Is it a success to restructure the rest of a poorly designed public transportation system to feed passengers into the train?
I could go on but the fact is that this is a "me too" train for a metropolitan area that desperately tries to compete with larger cities to show what it has but can't get past the infighting that has produced two reduced size outdoor amphitheaters, several undersized arenas, and numerous off league defunct sports teams.