Well, duh!

GREENSBORO, NC -- At last night's city council meeting, during the public comment portion of the meeting, council took a little side trip prompted by a misunderstanding of their own rules. The rules currently state that each speaker from the floor will have up to 3 minutes to speak and that the total of all speakers will be 30 minutes. That's 30 minutes for the speakers from the floor -- not for speakers from the dais.

For Mayor Robbie Perkins, though, if one speaker speaks for 3 minutes and the council talks about the speaker's topic for 27 minutes, he counts that as having reached the 30 minutes total for speakers from the floor even though there has been only 3 minutes of speaking from the floor. That's not what the rules say.

Nonetheless, in discussing whether or not to continue beyond the 30 minutes for speakers—that they had not yet reached—the mayor complained last night that many of the same people keep coming back meeting after meeting to talk about the same issues.

Well, duh! That's because this council is really bad at fixing things. They sit on their hands or accept nonsensical dissembling answers from the city's top staff and fail to actually change anything.

The mayor should worry less about blaming passionate people for their tenacity and more about addressing the reasons they keep coming back: because we have a do-nothing council.

Duh!

Mayor Perkins declines to substantiate his remarks on downtown fights, leaves Drudge "brawl' report unchallenged

GREENSBORO, NC -- I received a reply from Mayor Robbie Perkins in response to my email where I asked whether he had any information to back up his statement that there were "fights breaking out among 300, 400 or 500 people breaking out in our downtown" [sic]. Here is his reply in its entirety:

"Plenty of press coverage on the Incident. Not going to engage in a back and forth on this issue."

What a stand up guy, huh?

Here's my next email:

Dear Mr. Mayor,

As you may be aware, national media has picked up the story reporting it as "400 teens in street brawl in Greensboro." I'm not one to tell you how to do your job, but it seems to me, especially in light of your claims to be a booster of downtown, that you would not want to let something like that stand if it is untrue as the resulting negative publicity could be very harmful to years of efforts to boost the center city.

So I am compelled to ask one more time, were there fights downtown among 300, 400 or 500 people last Saturday? Does the Drudge report have that right or do you, as mayor, need to correct the record in support of our city?

Yours,
Roch

A question for Mayor Robbie Perkins

Emailed to Greensboro Mayor Robbie Perkins:

UPDATE: The mayor answers here.

Dear Mayor Perkins,

WFMY reported the following:

"'We can't have fights breaking out among 300, 400 or 500 people breaking out in our downtown. That's not acceptable. We're going to do what we have to do to keep that from occurring'" Perkins said."

Do you have information that there were 300, 400 or 500 people fighting downtown on Saturday or was that a hypothetical statement?

Yours,
Roch

Mayor: “The root problem is, why are these large groups of young people congregating downtown?”

GREENSBORO, NC -- From the News & Record:

“'The root problem is, why are these large groups of young people congregating downtown?’ [Mayor Robbie] Perkins said."

From WGHP MyFox8:

"Greensboro Police are still trying to figure out why the teens were downtown."

Wasn't it because of the City-sponsored movie night downtown that night for youths 13 - 18?

"The Summer Night Lights (SNL) program for youth, ages 13-18, continues this week with Movie Night on Saturday, June 29 from 7-11 pm at Festival Park, 200 N. Davie St., in Downtown Greensboro. Admission is free of charge!"

Don't worry though:

"Perkins said the city has its best talent working on a resolution to the downtown problem."

Yes, the best talent—who will no doubt regrettably recommend a curfew.

(Hat tip Billy Jones.)

"Why, I never." N&R editor dissembles his way to fake indignation

[CORRECTION: Allen Johnson did not write the editorial in question. It was written by John Newsome. The original below remains intact.]

GREENSBORO, NC -- Allen Johnson, opinion editor of the News & Record, is at it again: wagging his scolding finger at the bad manners of a citizen speaker at city council meetings while giving cover to a council unable to tackle hard problems. It's so typical and so tired: this practice so well honed here in Greensboro—and the N&R is a master at it—back of a hand to the head, swooning with the vapors, incensed at some perceived violation of polite manners as an excuse to avoid the inconvenient hard truths about the status quo.

Former Greensboro Police Captain Charles Cherry has been a regular speaker from the floor at Greensboro council meetings for about a year. A few weeks ago he insulted Mayor Robbie Perkins by saying that Perkins' daughter deserved a better father. Instead of taking a real look at the issues Cherry has been hammering on for months, Johnson uses the occasion of Cherry's frustration boiling over to jump on Cherry for not remaining polite in the face of months of council's inaction. Johnson even goes so far as to equate ignoring perturbed speakers with "doing a good job."

Johnson runs interference for an inept council by taking aim at Cherry's coarseness by concealing and ignoring some important facts:

• Charles Cherry had been asking for months what is the procedure for investigating allegations of misconduct by the city manager. There wasn't one. Finally, the city manager came up with one: compaints would go to council. Cherry did just that: filed a complaint with council. To date, council has not given any public indication of whether or not it undertook an investigation of Cherry's complaints against the city manager, much less any finding of the validity of Cherry's accusations. But, for the N&R's Johnson, that is not important, the manifestations of Cherry's frustration are what he'd rather us focus on.

• Johnson's description of Cherry talking "repeatedly about oral sex," is intentionally deceptive. The important detail Johnson keeps from his sheep, I mean, readers, is that Cherry was describing the on-duty misconduct of police personnel. That is a huge difference. Is the speaker just "talking about oral sex," as the dissembling Johnson would have you believe or is he talking about police engaging in oral sex while on duty? Again, Johnson would rather ignore the trouble and focus on the messenger. A writer who creates such a gross distortion is not to be trusted.

• Cherry's attack on the mayor, by referencing the mayor's child, was mean... and not unprecedented. The mayor himself, at a council meeting in April of last year, attempted to shame a civic activist by saying, from the dais, "Please don't do this to your children" (Here, at the 1:01:00 mark)  There was one huge difference between Cherry's comments and Perkins', however: Perkins made his comments in the presence of the speaker's children. The mayor's comments even made the speaker's daughter cry, as can be seen on the video at the 1:02:40 mark as a friend escorts the children from the chambers.
  
  From Johnson's perspective, a citizen long-ignored and outside the bounds of power goes "too far" when he says the mayor is a bad parent but, even though Johnson wrote about the other meeting where the mayor's conduct deserved the same condemnation,* Johnson had nothing to say about the mayor, during a live meeting, with microphone on and cameras rolling, attempting to embarrass a citizen in front of, and by referencing, his children.
  
  Hypocrite, I believe, applies; both to Johnson's selective outrage and to the Mayor who found Cherry's conduct "disgusting" but never apologized or expressed regret for his similar, if not worse, conduct.

• The mayor was not, as Johnson writes, "defending his children." Cherry did not attack the mayor's child. Cherry insinuated that Perkins was a bad father. He said Perkins daughter (he named her) "deserves a better father." This in the context of the mayor having been recently sued for back child support. Johnson deflects that criticism though and recast it as a contemptible, but untrue, attack on the mayor's child.

• What Johnson describes as Cherry "getting into it" with Mayor Pro Tem Yvonne Johnson also looks a lot different when the facts are applied. Cherry has taken to asking Yvonne Johnson if all of the police officers, all black, in the infamous "black book" were on duty at the time of the alleged offense for which the black book was created—a fact crucial to the legitimacy of the line-up book as a proper investigative tool. Yvonne Johnson was mayor then. She saw the black book in a closed council session. It's a good question. she should answer it.
  
  This is precisely the kind of clear and concise question Allen Johnson says speakers should ask.Yet, he ignores months upon months of council inaction on Cherry's issues and only pipes up when things get testy—and then only to misassign blame to a possible victim of city employee misconduct.
  
  [That Johnson would steer clear of the black book question is unsurprising. He has buried his head in the sand on the issue. Although he once insisted in a published editorial that we must get to the bottom of the black book,* when the facts surrounding the black book started to reveal themselves to be in contradiction to the false narrative constructed by his paper, Johnson's oh so sincere concern for the truth disappeared and he never wrote another word about it.]

As his screed on Cherry demonstrates, when it suits him Johnson is perfectly willing to intentionally deceive his readers. He got the central facts wrong on the matter of prayer before Rockingham County School Board meetings, then quietly changed his writings with no acknowledgement or apology. He also, laughably, blamed would-be performing arts center supporters for misleading the public about their fundraising while completely ignoring his own complicity* in spreading the lies. Sometimes, he just makes things up out of thin air.

So when Johnson posits that an "obvious solution" to the Charles Cherry problem is "to ban him from the Melvin Municipal Office Building during City Council meetings," that's the conclusion of a mind avoiding the facts. It not only lets council off the hook for their inability to handle tough questions, it is a dangerous proposition from a newspaper in a democracy.

"Well, I declare, I never..." is the Southerner's way of avoiding a question and the N&R deploys it with mastery: Take offense at the tone of the question as an excuse to avoid answering the question. This city is never going to be better than the backwater of mediocrity it is as long as those with influence over public opinion deploy their mock indignation to marginalize those who dare speak truth to power.

There is a lot that is wrong with Greensboro. It is not a place where the genuine thrives. It is a place where the protection of power cliques is more important than excellence and truth; where fakery and misdirection rule; where incompetents and cheats have each others' backs; where "bad manners" are an excuse to avoid hard questions—and the News & Record, news and editorial, are instrumental in protecting and fertilizing this insidious way of life.

Charles Cherry was rude and shocking. He has become impatient. He is a symptom, though—a symptom of city leadership that is too timid, too insecure, too incompetent or just too unconcerned to take on troublesome complaints. That's the real lesson of Charles Cherry, his bad manners are a but a sideshow.

* Not available online since the N&R has three times obliterated their archives in the past five years.

POST SCRIPT:

Another thing an inquisitive writer might question, if he was not just carrying water for the status quo, is why was Cherry steered by a police officer through the council chambers as he tried to leave the speakers podium? Cherry, like at least one other speaker that night, had made his way to the speaker's podium by crossing the chambers in front of the council dais. When he was finished, he attempted to leave the way he came. He was met midway by a Greensboro police officer. The reason for that is not clear. What followed is even less understandable. Instead of escorting Cherry back to his seat or to the exit, the officer steered Cherry up the central isle of the chambers, through the seats and towards the back of the room where there is no exit.

"Where am I going?" Cherry asked repeatedly. At one point, the officer backed Cherry into an umbrella on the floor, causing Cherry to trip and stumble. From there, the officer continued to escort Cherry on the now circuitous route to the exit, with Cherry loudly asking, "What have I done?"

Why was Cherry intercepted by a police officer when leaving the podium? Why was he steered closer to the city manager he had just criticized, into the heart of the assembled crowd and away from his seat and the exits? Was the officer trying to provoke Cherry into an altercation?

These are the questions the News & Record should be asking instead of the tsk, tsk tsk it aims at Cherry.

Mayor to start wearing flame retardant pants

GREENSBORO, NC -- Although it was captured on video, nobody seemed to notice that Mayor Robbie Perkins' pants were on fire when he told citizens of east Greensboro last October that $20 million in private contributions had been raised for a downtown performing arts center.

In the mayor's own words (24:43)

"We have a task force of 83 members of our community that have been working since February on that project and they successfully raised twenty million dollars in private sector community, uh, private sector dollars for a sixty million dollar project."

Not only were people who were paying attention aware then that the $20 million claim, although repeated by other community leaders, was incredulous, it has now been revealed that there were only $15 million dollars in "soft" pledges.

From Amanda Lehmert at the News & Record:

"Kathy Manning, who helped led [sic] the performing arts center task force fundraising effort, said earlier this week that she has been careful to call the commitments 'tentative' or 'soft.'"

The task force never had $20 million in private contributions or even $15 million in contributions. Contrary to the mayor's assertions, they had zero contributions. What they had was $15 million in soft prospects — possible contributions. That's it. The Mayor was wrong to tell the people of east Greensboro that $20 million dollars had been raised. That was not true and the mayor mislead his audience.

(Hat tip to Billy Jones who brought the mayor's statement to my attention.)

KKK joins Greensboro mayor in wishing good riddance to Rhino Times

GREENSBORO, NC -- On the heels of Greensboro mayor Robbie Perkins cheering the demise of the weekly Rhino Times newspaper is a comment at the News & Record website purportedly from Thomas Robb, "national director" of the KKK, also expressing his pleasure with the closing of the Rhino Times.

Robb writes:

"Rest is piece [sic] Rhino - you never were the voice of the people anyway."

Deep thoughts from Mayor Jackass

GREENSBORO, NC -- What a self-absorbed jackass we have for a mayor here in Greensboro. Anybody who has paid attention for a few years would have no doubt that the Rhino Times newspaper was an invaluable asset to our community, reporting with a degree of insight and depth rarely matched by other local media. Were it not for the Rhino Times, Greensboro would have proceeded in stupor to believe all sorts of wrong things the News & Record, WFMY and Yes!Weekly attempted to put over on the public.

Who would cheer the loss of such an important watchdog? Who would possibly think that the loss of such a vital journalistic enterprise would be good for a place? Jackasses who don't want to be accountable for anything, that's who.

I give you Mayor Robbie Perkins on the subject of The Rhino ceasing publication:

“I think it’s good news for the city.” 

It's good news for political hucksters and malfeasent elected officials bothered by transparency and accountability. It's very bad news for Greensboro, but megalomaniac Perkins would drive the rest of us over a cliff if it meant not having to considering anything beyond his sociopathic ego.

Self-contradictory double speak

GREENSBORO, NC -- It really needs no commentary, this announcement from the Mayor of Greensboro Robbie Perkins speaks for itself.

“Speakers from the floor are an integral part of our City Council meetings.  We currently allow two 30 minute periods per month for speakers to address Council on non-agenda items. Greensboro’s time allotment is double what the State of North Carolina requires of its municipal bodies. I want to reiterate that I believe in the RIGHT of Greensboro’s residents to speak freely to Council. That’s why one of the first changes I made as Mayor was to bring the speakers portion back to the beginning of Council meetings – and it will remain that way.

"However, the acrimony and repetitiveness displayed by some speakers has been a growing concern of mine. Moving forward, any proposed changes will be fully discussed and voted on by the entire City Council in an effort to hear the concerns of residents that need our assistance.”

Oh. Just, oh.

Have a nice weekend.

Mayor's lawyer/campaign contributor supports mayor's efforts to squelch speakers

GREENSBORO, NC -- Billy Jones takes issue with a letter to the editor in the News & Record in which the writer, Reid Phillips, launches a mean spirited personal attack against people who speak at city council meetings whom he deems to be "cranks." Phillips does so in support of Mayor Robbie Perkins' proposal to place additional restrictions on citizens speaking during the public comment period of city council meetings.

Billy's beef with the writer is Phillips' claim that the "cranks" are crowding out other speakers. Not true says Billy, and I have to say I think Billy is right. In recent memory, I've not noticed anybody being denied the opportunity to speak because there were too many speakers. In fact, at the last city council meeting, there were only three such speakers.

I have another beef though, with the N&R: It should do a better job of identifying letter writers' relationships to the subject or parties about which they write. In this case, Phillips is not just some unconnected mean old fart*. No. Phillips' law firm is employed by the mayor and Phillips was a campaign contributor to the mayor's campaign.

Readers might decide that those relationships don't shade their consideration of Mr. Phillips' opinion—or they might—but the N&R should have made those relationships known.

(*This is strictly a rhetorical flourish for effect, I have no evidence that Phillips is not nice, youthful and sweet smelling. I mean, I doubt it, but you know... lawyers -- especially those hostile to the First Amendment -- you have to be careful.)

Memory lane: Robbie Perkins censorship edition

GREENSBORO, NC -- Prompted by his recent proposal to further limit speakers from the floor at city council meetings after being called a deadbeat this week, let us take a trip down memory lane and remember the last time Mayor Robbie Perkins squelched public commentary, shall we?

It was April 1, 2008 (hellooooo) and a group of creative artsy types came up with a brilliant way to promote an upcoming local arts festival. One of their group spoke during the speakers from the floor portion of that night's council meeting to express his concerns about threats to the "monkeywhale." It was a sincere presentation chock full of serious and concerning "facts."

The speaker asked supporters of his efforts in the audience to stand, which they did to play a kazoo accompaniment (hellooooo).  The speaker ended by directing people to "save the monkey whale dot com," a website that had nothing to do with saving the "monkeywhale" but that promoted the upcoming arts festival.

Perkins, then a council member, reportedly checked out the site on his phone and somehow (some of us speculated he hit his back button) determined that savethemonkeywhale.com was a porn site. When he reported this to his colleagues, it led them to vote to strike mention of the site from the record, which it was, [See correction below] both in the minutes of the meeting (probably illegal) and from the video of the meeting. Both are still censored to this day even though the harmless truth subsequently became known.

[See correction below] Even the record of the council voting to censor the record is itself censored. The official minutes of the meeting not only lack any record of the monkeywhale speaker, but the council vote to censor the record is itself missing from the official minutes of the meeting (also probably illegal), although one can hear the vote through the music at the 2:20 mark of the city's edited "official" video.

Good times.

Here is what inspired the censorship—in its entirety:






UPDATE/CORRECTION: The city of Greensboro brings to my attention the following paragraph from that night's minutes. I apologize for the oversight:

Christopher Spence, residing at 1003 Surry Drive, spoke to the extinction of an unknown aquatic mammal.
(Note: After Council’s first recess, the Mayor and Council voted that due to what appeared to be the inappropriate content of the website referred to by Mr. Spence, that this portion of the meeting should be deleted from the official meeting tape made available to the public.)

"Deadbeat" accusation leads mayor to call for limits on speakers

GREENSBORO, NC -- George Hartzman could be an effective change agent in this city, if he'd ever take an interest in clarity. He has a real knack for obscuring the simplest of thoughts even when—especially when—they most deserve directness.

Hidden behind his aversion to declarative sentences, however, George makes a good point today:

What the News & Record's Amanda Lehmert failed to report in her article about Mayor Robbie Perkins wanting to cut back on speakers from the floor at council meetings was not that the impetus was, as Amanda reported, that frequent speaker and former police Captain Charles Cherry gets heated with council members on matters involving the police department and city management, but that Cherry used a portion of his time at this week's council meeting to call the mayor a deadbeat for his personal financial mismanagement. It was after that dressing down that the mayor decided he wants to limit speakers. Watch the video.

Ye shall know them by their fruits

GREENSBORO, NC -- I'm inclined to agree with Rhino Times editor John Hammer when he writes: "Council seems fine with building a huge wall between government and the people."

Why? Because of council's actions—or rather, their inaction. They are taking no action to participate in or make the public partners in the changes underway to the City's public records procedures. It's just not that important to this Council.

Trees are important. Council formed a subcommittee to examine the tree cutting ordinance.

Substandard housing is important. There is a subcommittee for housing. 

There is a subcommittee for economic development and one for downtown entertainment facilities.

Mayor Robbie Perkins now wants to form a subcommittee to accommodate the interest of "young professionals" in influencing downtown. 

When an important issue needs a sustained effort with everybody at the table, council forms a subcommittee.

They will not do so for public records. Transparency and openness—and the accountability they bring—are bedrocks, fundamentals without which everything else is in jeopardy, yet City staff have been behind closed doors for seven weeks crafting new policies that clamp down on access to public records that they only now want to "explain" to the public with a day of meetings. These meetings are not to collaborate, but to give the imprimatur of legitimacy to a one-way, top down, exclusive process.

By their inaction, Council approves.

As the Bible says, "Ye shall know them by their fruits," and lip service on transparency and openness are not going to cut it in the next election.

My city just tried to censor a newspaper

The City of Greensboro attempted — and failed — to obtain a temporary restraining order against YES! Weekly on Tuesday evening to stop the distribution of information it says was accidentally given to the paper in public-information requests.  -- Yes!Weekly

GREENSBORO, NC -- Every election season, candidates for Greensboro city council talk about the importance of open and transparent government then, once elected, ignore affronts to openness and transparency.

State public records law defines some types of records as neither public nor confidential, it allows the custodian of those records discretion about whether or not to provide them to the public. When the city defines records as "police intelligence" or as "details of public security plans" in order to claim such discretion which it then exercises to keep records secret, that's not open and transparent.

The City of Greensboro reached new extremes this week though when, through the actions of City Attorney Mujeeb Shah-Khan in consultation with police Chief Ken Miller and Police Attorney Jim Clark, it attempted to exercise that discretion in a failed attempt to convince a judge to censor local newspaper Yes!Weekly.

Attempts at that kind of censorship are suitable for totalitarian dictatorships and we, as citizens of Greensboro, must firmly say, "no, you will not do that on our behalf."

It is time for Greensboro city council to intervene. It is well within the power of City Council to direct city staff to reorient their approach to government information, insisting that discretion fall to the side of openness and transparency. This latest stunt and the subsequent slap down by the judge are warning flags that the city's hunger for secrecy is a danger. It demands action.

Will city council take control or will they twiddle their thumbs? Since Mayor Robbie Perkins reportedly pushed for Shah-Khan's hire, he should take the lead, unless he likes where things are going, of course.

Wrong foot

GREENSBORO, NC -- Acknowledged: With three newspapers well attuned to local government and a determined corp of citizen journalists, Greensboro is the kind of town where politicians put themselves in peril when they argue a position founded on misrepresentations.

Thus Mayor Elect Robbie Perkins is starting off on the wrong foot when he premises his approach to the landfill on what Triadwatch says is a dead wrong assertion. There may be good reasons for Perkin's preference for a regional solution for trash disposal, but Triadwatch says one of those reasons is not, as Perkins asserted, that neighboring High Point will exhaust their landfill in five years. A High Point official says it's 25 years.

Please, Mr. Mayor Elect, keep your facts straight and don't blow smoke. It won't work here.