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Sylva leaders rock the boat
Last week’s decision by Sylva’s town board to cut funding for the Downtown Sylva Association from $20,000 to $2,000 has sparked much disagreement from members of the group formerly known as Sylva Partners in Renewal.
We find ourselves in agreement with the position taken by commissioners Harold Hensley, Danny Allen and Ray Lewis, who formed the 3-2 majority that reduced the group’s funding. If memory serves, the funding cut is some five years overdue; our recollection is that town board members initially agreed to fund the group only for five or six years. However, SPIR (now DSA) has received annual town contributions of at least $20,000 since the organization was formed in the mid-1990s.
Most members of DSA’s board of directors neither live in or pay property taxes in Sylva. It’s easy to say the town should spend money when you’re not footing the bill. We bet if the decision was up to Sylva taxpayers, funding would have been cut long ago – or might not have been given in the first place.
Based on their Monday statement, DSA members seem to be engaged in revisionist history. They describe a bleak (before SPIR) time when downtown storefront vacancies were common. Only thing is, we’ve been daily Main Street observers for close to a quarter-century, and we don’t recall those days. Sure, there were times (and still are) when a vacancy existed here and there, but widespread empty storefronts were never a problem in Sylva’s downtown.
Successful restaurants have played – and continue to play – a big part in keeping the business district vibrant by providing the foot traffic that helps other enterprises. What DSA members fail to acknowledge is that restaurants like Meatball’s, Lulu’s and Meriweather’s were around years before there was a SPIR.
As to downtown events, we again yield to Hensley: “I’m 69 years old, and those (Christmas) parades have been around as long as I can remember,” he said. We haven’t been around as long as he has, but we can remember lots of good Christmas parades before SPIR began sponsoring them several years ago. And we recall filled-up downtowns for Fourth of July fireworks, too, in the years when only the Recreation Department was involved.
SPIR pushed for 1998’s Streetscape project, which was funded by $350,000 from Sylva coffers. We don’t disagree that the town looks nicer now, but shouldn’t it, considering how much money was spent on the project?
We appreciate all the work and dedication shown by SPIR and DSA members, but we don’t support re-writing history to make it fit their current sense of loss. Hensley, Allen and Lewis were elected because people trust them to make good decisions. They’ve lived in Sylva all their lives, they pay town taxes and they voted their consciences with regard to a budget decision.
They didn’t turn their back on Sylva or anything of the kind; they simply made what they felt was the right decision with regard to allocating the town’s limited financial resources.
DSA members and their backers are painting a gloomy picture of Sylva as a soon-to-be ghost town. But we don’t share that view.
We see downtown, driven by its interesting restaurants, continuing to thrive. Meanwhile, Sylva residents may get more bang for their buck from town board members who are not afraid to think independently and stand behind their decisions.
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