Taking Responsibility: Matt Drew for City Council

This is a letter to the editor I sent in response to Frank Hyman’s Saturday column in the Durham News:

In Frank Hyman’s “Growing the Grapes” column on Sept 12th, he puts forward two assertions: that broad support is necessary to win office in Durham, and that an apprenticeship on one of Durham’s many advisory boards and commissions is likely the best path to obtain that support.  He’s right about the need for broad support, but I must respectfully disagree with his second point.  As Mr.  Hyman noted, there are many ways to learn the various skills necessary to be effective on the city council.  I hope that the citizens of Durham will take note of what my opponent’s decades of “civic apprenticeships” and multiple endorsements have brought us: sluggish response to our critical water supply issues, high taxes, an enormous volume of city ordinances, the constant expenditure of taxpayer money on spurious projects like skate parks and various forms of corporate welfare, the Rolling Hills development debacle, and numerous commissions and boards that seem to recommend a rule for nearly every aspect of our lives.  “Deciding how high fences should be” is exactly the kind of micro-managing paternalistic petty bureaucracy that, as a Libertarian and a City Council member, I would be working to remove rather than participate in.