Thumbs! (6/20/16)

Thumbs! are better than Big Toes! because you really can’t tell when somebody puts Big Toes! UP or DOWN. Let’s see what we like and what we don’t like this time.

UP! = Good. DOWN! = Bad. Let’s make it happen.

• Thumbs UP! to Buddy Rawley. Tuesday is Buddy’s last Danville City Council meeting and I’m going to miss that SOB nice guy. Heh. I have always appreciated Buddy’s willingness to say exactly what’s on his mind and piss off some people along the way. Buddy gave some business suggestions to me and I implemented them. They worked perfectly. Buddy’s played the “Watchdog of the Treasury” role very well in the past 8 years. I’ve looked back at a lot of articles and I can’t find one where I’ve totally disagreed with anything Buddy has said or done. SouthsideCentral (and Danville) will miss Buddy Rawley when he’s not on Danville City Council.
• Thumbs DOWN! to Ronald Williams. I’ve been holding back writing this for a long time, but here we go. It pains me to say this because Williams was a good Danville city councilman and mayor back in the old days. Williams just sent in another letter to the editor to the Danville Register & Bee where he confuses facts and tries to make conspiracy theories out of nothing at all. The city staff has made a personal visit to Williams and answered all of his questions, but that’s not stopped him from asking them again. Times have changed from the 70’s. Danville’s Industrial Development Authority is buying up old buildings because the original owners have let them go to hell. The IDA is doing well as a leasing agent and has a rather good cash flow coming in from that aspect. There are no real incentives for getting tenants to move into those old buildings. Again, Williams has been most of these things. If he wants more answers, all he’s got to do is make a call to the right people in the city and his questions will be answered straight-up. But that’s not his style, and it’s sad to see a good man like this go down to the level of creating ridiculous reasons why things happen in a different way than when he “ran” things. And that leads to another…
• Thumbs DOWN! to the weak-minded people who immediately fall in love and believe ridiculous conspiracy theories like the ones Williams seems to just throw out every few months. Williams claimed that Danville’s Industrial Development Authority hadn’t been audited in years. That was false, and the city has all the records of the yearly audits. That didn’t stop people from jumping on Williams’ broken-down bandwagon and thinking that the IDA was up to no good. Williams didn’t help matters by saying “Oops. I was wrong.” either, but that’s another topic. Just because Ronald Williams says that incentives are being given to tenants to occupy old buildings doesn’t mean it’s true. But that’s not going to stop the Usual Suspects from lining up behind him with torches and pitchforks because They know that the city is corrupt, crime-ridden and the worst place in the world to live. Yeah, those Usual Suspects are full of horsecrap because they don’t take the time to find out facts for themselves. The facts are out there, people. Find them out. Ask questions to the people who know the facts. This city does have problems and issues, but there’s no need for uninformed people to follow along with crazy ideas based on false information.

This has been a much different type of Thumbs! article than I usually write, but it needed to be said. And that’s what SouthsideCentral is famous for… saying what needs to be said.