Let’s clear out the ol’ inbox this week.
First up: a comment from Nikolai Tiovi Mather of Pittsboro on our story about Kasib Abdullah’s effort to revitalize Durham’s Hayti District [“Grease the Wheel,” Jan. 20]. “I think his efforts are incredible, and I think he should continue doing so much good for Hayti,” Mather writes. “But in order to accomplish such a task, one needs to uplift those who need it the mostand by calling street-based escorts ‘hoes [with] AIDS,’ he is accomplishing the exact opposite. … Instead of spewing misogynistic and whorephobic rhetoric to the general public, Mr. Abdullah should work towards giving the Hayti District’s sex workers opportunitieshigher education, careers, economic planning aid, narcotics rehabilitation if needed, and, if sex work is the path they choose, resources enabling them to work the street corners confidently and safely.”
Next, this missive from Raleigh resident David Simonton [“Cracks in the Sidewalk Plan,” Jan. 27]: The city’s response to the INDY‘s story on a plan to put sidewalks in a neighborhood where not everyone wants them, he writes, “typifies the misrepresentation employed throughout the petition process.” For example, to the city’s argument that “property owners are being assessed only for the street improvements, not the sidewalk improvements,” he counters, “That’s some ‘only’!” He notes that one resident will pay more than $10,000, while six neighbors won’t have to pay anything at all. “And yet their signatures counted as much as everyone else’s.”
On INDYweek.com, Neighbors Against Amberly Village inveighed against a proposed commercial development in Cary [“The Grocery Store Invasion,” Feb. 10]. “Here’s why this harmful, unprecedented development proposal is so important for everyone: it would obliterate Cary’s well-founded policy against allowing commercial development next to established single-family neighborhoods. Says who? The town planning staff. … Allowing that would set a terrible precedent for which the town council would be fully accountable.”
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