It's a maxim in the business world that corporations dress in their grandest finery to appear before stockholders and in rags when dealing with the tax man.

It strikes me that a similar thing is happening in Durham with the drought. Sometimes the city leaders want to focus on the positive, and sometimes on the hazards ahead. But when you try to say "You must conserve" and "We're going to be fine" in the very same breath, what comes across is a very mixed message.

As of Thursday, for example, the home page on city's Web site (www.durhamnc.gov/) was patting us all on the back, asserting that "customers have reduced their water usage by 40 percent!"

Oh? Forty percent compared to what? It turns out that the comparison is with last September -- back when it was 100 degrees and before mandatory restrictions were imposed.

Poke just a little deeper into the Web site and you'll learn that average daily consumption so far this month is 22.60 million gallons (as of Thursday), compared with 24.38 million last February.

That's a reduction of, uh, 7.3 percent.

Early this week, City Manager Patrick Baker told the City Council that the supply of so-called premium water in the two main reservoirs, Lake Michie and Little River, was at 33 percent of capacity, up from a low of 11 percent in December.

That's not much water. So let's ditch the rosy spin about how well we're doing and how we're all going to be fine. Rosy spin reduces the sense of urgency about the drought.

Give us the bad news straight. We can take it. Sound the alarms!