Titanic's cozy lifeboats; Rowdy Fort Sumter; President views 'Our American Cousin' and other bad headlines

GREENSBORO, NC -- Following a cryptic George Hartzman blog post on the subject from six days ago, the News & Record runs a story today on the condition of Greensboro's streets under the headline: "City plans repairs to 32 streets."

Well, yes, but talk about missing the importance of the story; talk about spinning. The real matter is that the City has 343 miles of streets in need of immediate repair and the 32 streets it will repair amount to a drop in the bucket—a mere 10.4 miles or 3% of the immediate need.

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.)

Didn't have to pay to get it in

A few Canadian Clubs and an email from the estimable Dr. Andrew Brod had me looking for a recording of the song Fish Heads, a favorite of my brothers and me when we'd listen to Dr. Demento over the airwaves.

I submit it for your enjoyment. (It's far from HD, more like noD, but I recommend full screen anyway.]

Monkeywhale Correction

On Friday, I wrote a post in which I said that minutes of a Greensboro city council meeting did not record the appearance of a particular speaker from the floor nor of the vote to edit that speaker's appearance on the official council video.

I was wrong. The minutes did record both the speaker's appearance and noted that Council voted to censor the video record of his appearance. Thanks to the City of Greensboro staff who brought it to my attention. Here is what the minutes have of the speaker:

"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.)"

Vaughan to run for mayor

GREENSBORO, NC -- City councilor Nancy Vaughan will run for mayor this fall. Incumbent Robbie Perkins has said he will run again and George Hartzman has said he'll run too.

DGI, the song remains the same

Eric Robert on the firing of Downtown Greensboro Incorporated's director and the ensuing search, by the same board of directors, for his replacement:

"So the greedy, retaliatory individuals who fucked it all up to begin with, are now going to stay on and do it all over again...Dang!"

N&R smears apparent murder victim

GREENSBORO, NC-- There is a disturbing slant to the News & Record's recent coverage of an alleged murder: besmirching the victim through innuendo. In reporting on the death by gunshot of landlord Marwan Mukhiber Mujali, the N&R has taken to publishing commentary about the victim that is needlessly callous and irrelevant.

Here:
"Some said he would go the extra mile to help residents. Others said he would turn a blind eye to problems and was bad-tempered."

Here:
"Tenants have mixed emotions about Mujali, who lived in High Point. "

Here:

"On Wednesday, some tenants described Mujali as 'an honest man' who did whatever needed to be done to keep the property safe, a man who will be missed. Others described him as someone with a bad temper who failed to make repairs in a timely fashion"

News & Record subscriptions to come with free decoder ring!

Front page online today:

"Parts of North Carolina including the Triad area was under a tornado watch Friday until 9 p.m., the weather service announced."
-- News & Record

"In recent months, Wolverton became the target of council members who consider the group’s lack of innovation and vision."
-- News & Record

"The investigation began after UNCG campus police were Wu had not been seen since Monday. Greensboro police were then told. Police went to the Coronado Drive home at 5 p.m. Thursday and noticed a car was missing in the driveway."
-- News & Record

"The autopsy found also recovered Styrofoam and a metal fragment in Peyton’s urethra, the tube which carries urine out of the body." 
-- News & Record

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.

Think

If you are going to tweet to promote your business, include your location. Remember, you aren't just tweeting to your followers who you may assume already know where you are. With retweets, keyword searches and aggregation, your tweets will be reaching beyond your followers. Make the most of it.

DEFICIENT (no location information):
Good morning #gso looking for a #deal $.99 #kids meals today. 2 for each adult meal #Triad #gsonc
-- Ham's Lakeside

HELPFUL (with a link to location information):
Amazing Affordable Tattoos By Joe Kidd: Mon, Apr 15 2013 12:00 AM Darkside Custom Tattoo in... http://t.co/2ZLrT6MkKN #Greensboro 
-- Thingstodoinyourcity

City makes a portion of Yes!Weekly emails available, for an instant

GREENSBORO, NC -- More than two months after they were first requested, the city of Greensboro finally made a portion of the much anticipated Yes!Weekly emails available to the public—for a matter of hours.

These were among the emails that were supposedly so dangerous they compelled the City of Greensboro to sue (unsuccessfully) to stop them from being published, a black-eye permanently attached to Greensboro's reputation.

The City placed the emails on their FTP server, a website from where they could be downloaded but, according to the city's  public affairs, the FTP site removes all files at midnight every night and so it was with the Yes!Weekly emails. They were available for a portion of a day and now are gone.

There are two areas of failure with the City's response to public records requests: process and culture. The broken culture manifests itself in the obstinance and arrogance of upper management as they flaunt the law and ridicule requesters; the broken process manifests itself in things like an FTP server that deletes all files at midnight.

More public records obfuscation

//////
UPDATE; RESPONSE FROM CITY ATTORNEY

Mayor and Council:

As Mr. Smith emailed all of you to discuss his concerns with the City’s response to a public records request, I wanted to make sure you’re hearing why we have not yet produced the contract.  Mr. Smith requested a copy of the contract between the City and the Omega Group.  The contract would normally be a public record – however the issue is with information in the contract that the Omega Group has designated as proprietary.  Under N.C.G.S. 132-1.2, the City is not required to release information that is a trade secret.  We are in touch with the Omega Group to work on whether or not any of the information is actually protected under North Carolina law.  If it is not, we will produce the full contract.  If it is, then we will make the appropriate redactions and produce the redacted contract.

If you have any questions about this issue, please contact me at your convenience.

Mujeeb

//////
UPDATE; MY REPLY (to the same list)

Folks,
 
Although I was the one who asked about this public records request, Mr. Shah-Kahn did not include me among those to whom he sent this response -- an innocent oversight, I'm sure.
 
I am respectfully requesting to immediately receive a copy of the documents I requested with the portion(s) the City Attorney asserts are questionably public redacted while he consults with the Omega Group on North Carolina law. 
 
If the City Attorney intends not to provide me with a redacted copy by tomorrow morning, I ask that he inform us of his refusal and to please include me on the recipient list this time. 
 
Sincerely,
Roch Smith, Jr.

//////

GREENSBORO, NC -- On April 2, 2013, I asked for a copy of the $88,000 contract between the City of Greensboro and the Omega Group for their crime mapping services. The contract was in the hands of the Greensboro Police Department who sent it to the City Legal department on the day of my request, where it has sat since. Why?

The City says they want to get the vendor's permission before releasing the contract. I have asked them by what state law a vendor contract may be denied to the public without the vendor's permission and copied the question to Mayor Robbie Perkins and all city council representatives.

I've heard back from councilor Nancy Vaughan who said she talked to an attorney who said the contract is public record and should be released. I've not heard from any other council people or from city staff with an answer to my question.

Can you imagine the implications for fiduciary oversight if the City of Greensboro now starts claiming vendor contracts are off limits to public scrutiny? Can you imagine the implications for a properly functioning government if city councilors continue to show such a lackadaisical attitude towards the morass that has become the city's handling of public records? Councils' unconcern is troubling, their inaction is bordering on irresponsible.

"Process will not become an excuse for delay. I cannot emphasize that enough."
-- Denise Turner Roth, City Manager, City of Greensboro

Big laughs at City's public records meetings

GREENSBORO, NC -- The City of Greensboro held a meeting yesterday to explain and solicit comments about their policies and procedures for responding to public records. City Council representatives who did NOT attend include:

• Mayor Robbie Perkins
• Yvonne Johnson
• Nancy Hoffman
• T. Dianne Bellamy Small
• Jim Kee
• Zack Matheny

Councilors Nancy Vaughan, Marikay Abuzuaiter and Tony Wilkins were in attendance.

One thing that is clear after the meeting is that City Manager Denise Turner Roth is not running the show. During a city council meeting last month, Turner Roth, in explaining the City's response to records requests said, "Process will not become an excuse for delay." For emphasis, she added, "I cannot emphasize that enough."

Yet, when this blogger asked at the meeting why a two-month old request by Amanda Lehmert of the News & Record for the emails provided to Yes!Weekly (those that prompted their reportage on police surveillance) had not yet resulted in the release of a single email to Amanda, the reply, courtesy of City Attorney Mujeeb Shah-Khan, was stupefyingly hilarious.

Understand; at this meeting where city staff were falling all over themselves to assure the public that they release records as fast as they can—that process is not a cause for delay—when it came to Amanda's request for what are reportedly around 11,000 emails, they were asked why the City's processes were incapable of clearing even a single email for release after two whole months. 11,000 emails, two months and a process that has not cleared one for release.

Rather than say, "Hmmm, maybe our processes are causing undue delay," we got the most eye-rolling gut busting "explainaaaaaaaaaaaaation" from the City Attorney about how there are multiple steps for review, involving different departments, and things go back and forth and get bundled together and carefully reviewed and there should be some records available on Wednesday and... yada yada yada...

This of course made Turner Roth appear a liar or irrelevant and Shah-Kahn incapable of attaching anything meaningful to the reality of the situation. Funny. In a very sad way. Too bad some City Councilors will remain in the dark. Who were they again?

• Mayor Robbie Perkins
• Yvonne Johnson
• Nancy Hoffman
• T. Dianne Bellamy Small
• Jim Kee
• Zack Matheny

City records policy presentation

GREENSBORO, NC -- This is the presentation I made at yesterday's meeting with the City regarding their public records policies and procedures. It includes areas where the City is failing, examples and recommendations for improvements.

Greensboro records requests policy recommendations

Billy's good question on Mayor's inconsistencies

GREENSBORO, NC -- Billy Jones asks a good question: Why did Mayor Robbie Perkins offer two different reasons for having resigned from the board of directors of Newbridge Bank?

According to the News & Record, in explaining the resignation during his divorce proceedings:

Robbie Perkins responded, saying he had to resign because he could not pay the home equity line owed to the bank for the couple’s house.

According to Newbridge Bank's 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission:

Mr. Perkins indicated that his decision to resign is due to increased family and business responsibilities, including his position as Mayor of the City of Greensboro, all of which have caused him to reduce his activities in other areas. Mr. Perkins’ decision to resign was not the result of any disagreement with the Company or its management.

Digtriad temporarily suspended from Greensboro 101

News feeds from WFMY's Digtriad.com have been temporarily suspended from Greensboro 101 because they are "future dating" their posts. That is to say, they put a publication date on them of some time in the future which causes them to remain at the top of feed readers and sites like Greensboro 101 beyond their actual publication date and time.

I have contacted WFMY and asked them to please rectify this problem. I will restore them to Greensboro 101 when I receive confirmation that they have fixed the problem. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Rest assured that all of your other sources with properly working feeds will continue to be available.

Hometown tweets, blunt edition

A tweet from Greensboro, as seen on Greensboro 101:

Are there any cute guys in #Greensboro ? #UNCG #NCAT don't tweet me knowing you ugly either!!

What's on?

On Greensboro 101 right now:

• Rumors Greensboro City Council person Nancy Hoffman is getting out of the way of a Mike Barber 4th district run, and she'll run at-large.
• "Inflamatory GDP Report"
• Woman shot in her car
• $81.7M investment for S. Elm in Greensboro