The topics discussed at Monday's Durham City Council meeting ranged from the mayor's cowboy boots to a smoldering compost pile.
Council member Eugene Brown opened the meeting on a light-hearted note by mentioning a "very controversial" article in the Raleigh News & Observer that called Mayor Bill Bell the best-dressed man in Durham.
Bell won the award, Brown said, in part for his cowboy boots.
"I had nothing else to do today so I looked them up online," Brown admitted, joking that Council member Thomas Stith placed second in the contest.
Stith changed the tone of the meeting by criticizing the City's "lack of action" in light of high crime and chronic poverty.
"Maybe I'm a bit too conservative for the fashion folks, but a band-aid isn't going to fix [Durham]-we need major surgery," Stith said. "The citizens of Durham are fed up. I know I am."
Further debate arose when City Manager Patrick Baker addressed an Oct. 1 N&O article that said he did not tell the truth about permits involved in a recent landfill fire.
Baker defended himself from the criticism at length. Bell eventually extinguished the debate.
Following the landfill debate, the Council addressed the construction of the Durham Performing Arts Center. The project puts Durham on its way to becoming a "real renaissance city," said Bill Kalkhof of Downtown Durham, Inc.
But some citizens and Council members were concerned by the $34 million cost of the project, and others worried the construction would not benefit minority contractors and workers.
"We need to put pressure on these companies to hire our local citizens," Durham resident Victoria Peterson said to Bell.
"There are very few people working out there who look like you and I," she added.
Brown said Duke's financial support would be key to funding the project.
"This is not the final vote on the theater," he said. "We still need to hear from that 2,000-lb., blue gorilla that resides in Durham."
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