The Pinehurst Hot Mess: Parachute Pat’s War on Trucks

Here’s a special piece of information for all of you downtown Pinehurst merchants who fell all over yourselves in 2021 to raise money and get-out-the-vote for political influence peddler “Parachute Pat” Pizzella’s inaugural run for Pinehurst Village Council.

Ol’ “Parachute” has spent the last two years aiding and abetting the John Strickland-led war on vacation rental property owners, private property rights, and the installation of draconian new zoning regulations.  He’s also enabled our current village-manager-gone-wild.  Now, he wants to make it harder to run a business in historic downtown Pinehurst.  

Apparently, that cozy cocktail coterie of rude, foul-tempered Yankee transplants-with-trust-funds calling themselves The Friday Group has decided that delivery trucks are trampling the “ambience,” the “integrity”, and the whole ‘joie de vivre” of downtown Pinehurst. (Don’t know The Friday Group?  Think “Judge Smales” (Ted Knight) and his friends from Caddyshack.)

Pizzella has heard them loud and clear, and is already pitching the idea of cracking down on trucks in downtown like he did on vacation rental property.

I’ve got a simple solution for these entitled busybodies waging war on the rest of us from their downtown McMansions: If you don’t like trucks, don’t move so close to the business district. 

Apparently, it’s not just 18-wheelers earning the wrath of the Parachute Man and his cocktail crowd.  FedEx and UPS trucks are also in the bullseye. Apparently, the same liars who pitched all of those fabricated horror stories about vacation rentals are now trying the same tricks on delivery trucks downtown. 

We’ve got restaurants and bars downtown.  Those folks need regular deliveries of supplies.  The law offices and real estate offices in that part of town get stuff from FedEx and UPS all the time.

I’ve popped downtown at random times of day on random days of the week.  I’ve yet to see ANY traffic problems caused by delivery trucks down there.

These delivery trucks aren’t just stopping in downtown Pinehurst.  Some are doing deliveries across our state and other states each day.  Some are all over the county.  They get to a destination when they get there.  If Pizzella and his goons try to hit them with a bunch of restrictions, the truckers will likely laugh at them.  (Or perhaps start calling downtown businesses and having them drive to remote locations to pick up their materials.)

Part of this might be a shot at Kevin Drum, one of Pizzella’s opponents in the upcoming mayoral race.  Drum owns one of the more popular restaurants / watering holes in the downtown area.

If you’re serious about improving downtown and helping it prosper, try implementing policies that make the area more business-friendly and consumer-friendly. Stop listening to pull-up-the-drawbridge know-nothings whose comprehension of real life and the real world stops short of the front door of the downtown McMansion hosting that afternoon’s cocktail bash.