City panel on cameras informative, but ignores citizen questions

Frayda S. Bluestein

GREENSBORO, NC -- The City of Greensboro sponsored a panel discussion today regarding public access to video recorded by police body-worn cameras, which the City maintains are not public records. It was an informative discussion, but it fell short of its full potential. Despite having previously announced that it would include "time allotted during the panel discussion for questions from the in-person and online audience," according to the City's publicity, the forum was brought to a close without a single citizen's question asked. The City got to ask its questions, but citizen questions were not addressed.

Jan Pritchett

That was a big disappointment, especially since the last half hour or more of the discussion was given over to panelists largely repeating points they'd already made. Nonetheless, there was some very interesting and thought provoking discussion and the video is worth watching if you weren't in attendance and have an interest in these matters. View it here.

Here are the questions submitted by citizens, as provided by the City. Some are just statements and some are off topic, but there are some good questions that, had they been asked, would have made the panel discussion more beneficial.
-------------------------------------

Online questions/comments submitted via e-mail regarding panel discussion on video footage:

Why not put the cameras up and make them public access except in emergencies. The resolution could be easily degraded for public access and enhanced for official business. This could be a draw for downtown.

I believe this is a case of BIG BROTHER watching over us and can easily be miss-used for political control. This threatens to be a gross invasion of personal privacy.

Worst idea I ever heard of. "The Road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions".
We don't need someone making everyone a suspect in a surveillance state

1) Does an actual written policy exist within the GPD and/or City of Greensboro, re: release of body cam video? If there is, what is it? If there is not one, why not?

2) The lack of a concrete written policy and/or guidelines seems to create the impression that any release of video to the public is arbitrary, depending on whether or not the GPD wishes to raise the issue of personnel laws or not. The presumption should be to always release absent a specifically cited exception, not never release unless no loopholes are found.

What is the purpose for this open forum? Are decisions being made or simply discussed? Lastly, what is the potential impact on me as a civilian? Thank you.

Why in the world would you do this? Thank you Mayor Vaughn. If these cameras go up it will be the LAST time I go down town. You will NEVER create a perfectly safe environment. Downtown Greensboro can forget my business coming there if this goes through.period. More reason for malls and outlets to move their business out of the cities.

Please cite for me EXACTLY WHERE in the enumerated powers of the U.S. Constitution, you are given the authority to spy on citizens. We are CITIZENS, not subjects, and the government rules with the CONSENT of the governed. We do not consent to this. If you don't believe it, give us a chance to vote on it!

You would better serve the citizens by providing this panel at a time when most people could attend. That the panelists could not attend at another time tells me you didn't try hard enough to find panelists who could. As for me, I won't be going downtown if the cameras are installed. I view it as a gross invasion of privacy and agree with Mayor Vaughan, I don't want to live in a police state. Thank you, Nancy

Questions/Comments collected during the discussion to be answered by the panelists:

The City records calls to its help line, creating a record that, like body cameras, records interactions between city personnel and the public. The City advises callers that these recordings are public records and has, in fact, released them in response to records requests. How is it that the personnel records exception is applied to body camera recordings, but not help line recordings? Isn’t it just a policy position? (This one was submitted by this blog's author.)

Question for the City Attorney: Has the officer involved in the March shooting of the knife wielding woman, the video of which is being withheld under the guise of personnel records, been asked if he would consent to release of the video?  (This one was submitted by this blog's author.)

If all video is released, how do you prevent a rush to judgment and lynch mob mentality before a full investigation can be completed?

Why should we have to pay or help pay for something we don’t have access to?

Why has the City Council been hesitant on voting for authority over cameras and subsequent footage?

If GPD is adamant about cameras being personnel property, then we must have a citizen review panel.

The personnel argument is weak – just because a record is created with a secondary possible use (officer evaluation) it does not make it a personnel record. How do those advocating this position reconcile that with attempts to apply the exemption in this way completely undermine the transparency objective of wearing cameras?

What is the truth about who funded the camera imitative and whose idea was it to begin with?

The police officers file may not be public information, why not?

GPD wants city-wide surveillance cameras

UPDATE: At the city council meeting, district 3 representative Zack Matheny said, "This is something we should support whole heartedly." District 2 representative Jamal Fox said his only concern was that the program would not be "city-wide" to begin with. Mayor Nancy Vaughan and at-large representative Mike Barber offered the most resistance with other representatives being variably inbetween.

GREENSBORO, NC -- The Greensboro City Council will be asked at its work session today to consider establishing a "city-wide wireless video surveillance camera network" for the Greensboro Police Department. The cameras, described as "patrolling cameras" would have pan, tilt and zoom capabilities and the first proposed locations would include views of single and multi-family residences. Read the proposal.

A proposed location for a GPD "patrolling camera" with pan, tilt and zoom capabilities.

Another proposed location.

Not for the police to decide; city council needs to act

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record is right about video footage captured by the cameras now worn by all Greensboro police officers and for which police policy dictates that every interaction with a citizen is to be recorded: They are the people's property, not the police's.

First, to state the obvious: Based on what police are willing to tell us so far (which isn’t much), the Aug. 4 arrests of two Greensboro men seems petty and excessive.

Less than a block from his home, Rufus Scales, 27, was pinned to the ground and handcuffed for resisting arrest, walking in the middle of a street and “impeding traffic” where there seemed to be none.

Scales’ brother Devin, 22, captured a portion of the incident on camcorder footage that has been posted on the Internet. He pans the camera to show streets with no sidewalks or traffic, then two more police cars arriving.

The camera shakes as a hand suddenly appears in front of the lens and the filming suddenly stops. The officer, T.B. Cole, appears to confirm while on camera why he is arresting Scales: “You cannot just sit there and run your mouth and start cursing in the middle of the street.”

The incident has been seized by police critics as evidence of the mistreatment of some citizens, especially African Americans. It also adds another arrow to the quiver of the mounting argument against the Greensboro Police Department’s insistence on keeping footage shot by officers’ cameras shielded from public view as “a personnel record.”

In a meeting last week with News & Record editors and reporters, Police Chief Ken Miller, interim Chief Anita Holder and the interim city attorney, Tom Carruthers, stood by that interpretation, arguing that to do otherwise would be to break state law. But the footage’s value as a public record should hold greater weight. After all, these are taxpayer-funded recordings of officers’ interaction with the public in public places. Also, we’re talking about a tool that was advertised as a chance to build community trust in police and improve accountability. The city accomplishes neither by keeping such a stubborn grip on the footage, and may, in fact, erode trust in the process.

During the Scales arrests, Cole, a training officer, was not wearing a body camera that is now standard issue for patrol officers. The officers who later arrived on the scene were, but their footage won’t be released to the public or media, either.

State law does allow the city to release such video if city leaders believe doing so is essential to maintaining public confidence in local government. Certainly, in the wake of national tensions following the fatal shooting of a black 18-year-old, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Mo., this seems like such an instance.

Miller did say last week that Rufus and Devin Scales may see the available footage, but no one else. Meanwhile, to her credit, Mayor Nancy Vaughan has expressed concern that the city invokes the personnel-records defense too often. As for the rest of the council, it remains conspicuously silent.

It had nothing to say when an officer fatally shot a knife-wielding woman in March and refused to release that video. And it has said not one syllable so far in the case of the Scales brothers.

Miller insists, “We have nothing to hide in the Scales case.”

Then, by all means, let’s go to the tape.

So sad

GREENSBORO, NC -- Ed Cone on the News & Record::

The news hole is up for sale, and the opinion section is on autopilot. It is what it is. Move on.

He's right.

Thanks Greensborosports.com

Thanks to the guys at Greensborosports.com for the free tickets to an upcoming Grasshoppers baseball game. I won them by entering one of their ticket giveaways. Here's the entry form for today. Check their site for later days.

Now THIS is journalism! Kudos News & Record

GREENSBORO, NC -- From the News & Record today:

He came back to life, according to a story Bonnke tells, when his wife took the body to one of the crusades.

Some critics are skeptical of that account.

See? Very balanced. A dead man may have come back to life but, maybe not. You decide, it's not a reporter's place to say.

Top notch!

I'm looking forward to these upcoming reports:

Sasquatch may be headed to the N.B.A., critics skeptical.

Flying carpets to become popular mode of transportation, critics skeptical.

Alien spacecraft causing global warming, critics skeptical.

</sarcasm>

This is the kind of tripe the News & Record thinks people will pay to read.

Bill Robinson's fallacies printed as fact in News & Record

GREENSBORO, NC --  The News & Record continues its wretched practice of publishing errors of fact in its letters to the editor. Today, it's this from Bill Robinson of Greensboro:

For those of you under 30 and concerned about jobs and the economy, in 1998 and 1999 the country was spiraling down into recession. Who do you think was [sic] president and first lady?

There was no recession in 1998 or 1999. In fact—you know, real fact, not ideological hallucination—the 1990s were the longest period of growth in U.S. history. The nearest recession was in 2001, George W. Bush's first year in office—a point of fact that would be quite inconvenient to what one assumes is Robinson's "logic."

It would be a simple thing for the News & Record to check the claims of empirical facts asserted in the letters it receives and, when they are wrong, to reject the letters on that basis. Like this:

Dear Mr. Robinson, there was no recession in 1998 or 1999. You are welcome to correct the error and resubmit your letter.

Otherwise, what is the letters page but a comfy home for every crackpot with a mistaken understanding of the world? Isn't that what the Internet is for?

The News & Record: safe haven for mediocre journalists

GREENSBORO, NC -- It's one thing if a reporter might not have had an opportunity to get up to speed on a community's history or has yet to develop his own professional standards. It is quite another thing when a news organization coddles those inadequacies. That's an environment for professional decay.

Robert Lopez writes a piece at the News & Record today that is so sub par, it should not have been published -- if the News & Record itself had any standards.

The story, about the City of Greensboro settling a police officer's discrimination suit for $25,000, suffers from two grave deficiencies, both, unfortunately, not uncommon at the News & Record.

The first is the despicable, deplorable, lazy and amateurish deployment of he said,she said reporting in place of the facts. Renowned journalism professor Jay Rosen has referred to this technique of pitting the claims of one person against another without aligning their claims to available facts as a wholly inadequate vestige of the pre-internet age of journalism. It's too easy for such reports to be revealed as deficient on the web—"lame," Rosen calls them—as is happening here.

When Lopez reports that police officers who sued the city said a lineup book containing their pictures was used to "frame" them and that the former chief of police said otherwise, leaving it at that, Lopez is positioning his reporting as nothing more than stenography, a regurgitation of competing claims and not a source for fact-finding despite widespread public knowledge that such facts exist. Lame.

In fact, the use of the line-up book was thoroughly investigated by the FBI, the SBI and the Department of Justice. None found any wrongful use of the lineup book. The City of Greensboro swore in an affidavit it had no evidence of misuse of the lineup book and, indeed, none has ever been produced. Lopez fails to report these salient facts. Lame.

Lopez also lacks a knowledge of local history and, here, his editors should have helped him out. When Lopez writes that the officer who sued the city claimed that a tracking device was put on his car and claims that his picture appeared in the line-up book, without reporting how those claims align with the facts, Lopez reveals himself to be ignorant of the facts found in the history of this matter. It was widely acknowledged and reported that a tracking device was placed on the officer's car. That's a fact, not just an individual's assertion, as Lopez would have it. Lame.

Additionally, city council members, some still on council (Zack Matheny and Yvonne Johnson), saw the line-up book in question. There are two credible sources with first-hand knowledge who are in a position to say whether or not the officer's picture was in the book. Lopez ignores those sources, leaving the officer's assertion unchecked. Lame.

Lopez reports as if there is no truth, no facts; only assertions. The worst part is that his efforts pass muster with his editors. That is not only lame, it's common practice at the News & Record. It's bad business too and it's bad for the professional development of the reporters who work there. A reporter who wants to be a mediocre journalist and stay a mediocre journalist will find accommodation at the News & Record.

Four great Greensboro law domain names for sale

For sale or lease, collectively or individually, four great search engine-boosting domain names for attorney or law practice.

greensboro-criminal-lawyer.com   
greensboro-dwi-lawyer.com  
greensboro-speeding-ticket-lawyer.com   
greensboro-traffic-ticket-lawyer.com

Send inquiries to admin@altmedia101.com.

Prognostication: Walker prevails in runoff

GREENSBORO, NC -- Based on an examination of the primary turnout and my sense of the race since then, I predict Mark Walker will prevail in tomorrow's Republican runoff for North Carolina's Sixth Congressional district by a margin of 400 to 500 votes.

Barnes & Nobles' stupendously moronic business model

GREENSBORO, NC -- After reading rave reviews of Jon Duckett's Javascript and Jquery: Interactive Front End Web Development, I thought I'd buy a copy. I checked Barnes and Noble's website to see if it was in stock at the Friendly Center store. It was. The price shown was $22.07.

I located the book in the store, but its cover price was $39.98, so I went to the customer service counter to ask about the discrepancy. Before I could even finish my question, the nice lady was nodding knowingly. As she explained, books at Barnes and Nobles are more expensive if purchased in the store.

I must have had quite an expression on my face because the lady responded with, "I know, I know."

"That's really dumb," I said, "now I'm going to leave the store, without making a purchase and go buy it online, probably from Amazon just to further express my displeasure with such gouging." (Alibris looks like a good option.)

"But you can have it today if you buy it in the store," the lady tried to convince me.

Nice try, but an 82% premium for instant gratification just wasn't a selling point.

"And, the money will stay in your community and you'll be supporting your local store," she said.

Yeah, but my local store is trying to stick it to me, that hardly engenders the kind of goodwill that makes me want to support that store.

I buy local plenty, I shop the farmers markets when I can and I prefer independently-owned restaurants and stores to chains; but they aren't gouging their customers. Barnes and Noble, on the other hand, is trying to make a business out of sticking it to local shoppers.

I feel sorry for the people working at the store, but geez o'man, somebody in the chain of command needs to get a clue.

The News & Record stinks so bad

From Joe Gamm in the News & Record today, reporting on the City of Greensboro settling a lawsuit brought by former police officers:

"[Former Police Chief David] Wray resigned in 2006. Plaintiffs alleged he maintained a “black book” that was used to unfairly investigate black officers. Wray contended the department used the book to investigate a sexual assault."

The News & Record continues their atrocious willingness to let competing assertions substitute for fact, but the truth is the realities of the "black book" are far different from what the News & Record portrays. It wasn't just Wray who said the book was a legitimate investigative tool, it was the City of Greensboro, in a sworn affidavit, signed by the very city manager who locked David Wray out of his office, who said the book was compiled for the purpose of solving a crime.

Furthermore, the city also admitted in that affidavit, that it had no evidence of the line-up book being misused. Finally, the use of the book was investigated by the SBI, the FBI and the Department of Justice, all of whom found no improper use of the book. Only one police officer was tried as a result of investigations into the "black book"—for improper use of a federal computer—and he was acquitted.

The News & Record ignores the context of these details and reports the purpose of the black book as unknown beyond the competing assertions of two parties. There is no truth here as far as the News & Record is concerned, they are content to commit what renowned journalism professor Jay Rosen calls the ethical lapse of he said/she said reporting. It makes them look incompetent, or worse, contemptuous.

Opaque "Union Square Campus" demands answers

GREENSBORO, NC -- I have a wish. I wish that someone in our local paid media would stop, take a breath and realize they've gotten ahead of themselves in reporting on what has come to be described as the "Union Square Campus." This project, to be located on publicly owned land at the south sides of the downtown intersection of Elm Streets and Lee Streets, was once considered too contaminated for development until I identified federal funds to pay for for environmental remediation.

Twelve years later (nobody ever accused Greensboro of being supersonic), the site is ready for development and, in the blink of an eye, it has become "Union Square Campus." While the impression created so far is that this will be some sort of satellite campus for area universities, the ownership and money interests have been hard to follow. Instead we've had misrepresentations of the role of project's first building and tortured descriptions like this that are obviously more about hype than clear explanation:

"[A] catalytic higher education development with a first-building focus on training and education for health care professions..."

A catalytic higher education development?

It doesn't help that there is no online resource that describes the project in any detail—no web page, no Wikipedia entry—nothing other than disparate press release-driven announcements regurgitated by local media.

Between few public records, sparse news stories and the rumor mill, there are more questions than answers. Here are some things the professional media ought to clear up for us:

Who will own it?
Currently, the land for the project is owned by the City of Greensboro. Unpublished sources say that a developer was chosen who was to purchase the land but was disqualified for some unknown reason and a new developer was chosen but they have not taken possession of the property. In other words, they haven't purchased it but remain identified as the developer. Who is the intended eventual owner of the land and is the City of Greensboro going to sell it to them at fair market value or will be it be "donated"? Was the developer chosen through an open and fair process in the best interests of the citizens of Greensboro? Who will own the buildings, and not just the first; what is the ownership plan for additional buildings? Who is deciding?

These are matters of fiduciary responsibility of public property. Answers to these questions are of the utmost public interest.

How much is education related? Really.
Supporters hype the project as devoted to education—"A catalytic higher education development"—but only a single building has been described as being education related. Previous discussions and people who claim to know say that the property is also to include apartments and condos as well as commercial and office space.

Is the project being promoted as education related to procure public funding and public support when some portion, if not most of it, will be for other purposes?

Who gets the money?
It has been announced that the first building is to house classroom space, to be rented, hopes are, to local universities. Presumably, there will be other future rents, no matter the purpose of other eventual buildings. To whom will those rents go? Is that arrangement, whatever it may be, in the best interest of the citizens of Greensboro?

The next time reporters type "Union Square Campus" in a story, I wish they'd stop and ask themselves, "How much do my readers know about what this is? How much do I know?"

Councilwoman Hoffman mum on business relationship with city loan recipients

GREENSBORO, NC -- In a recent post about a company receiving city development funds despite being out of compliance with the terms for receiving those funds, I cited local bloggers who claimed that Greensboro City Councilwoman Nancy Hoffman is partners in a separate business with the principals of the company that received the loan, Greensboro Parking Group, LLC. An anonymous commenter questioned the veracity of the claim that Hoffman and the loan recipients are business partners.

So I attempted to verify it directly with Hoffman. After more than a week of multiple emails, to her city account and personal account, and numerous attempts to reach her by phone, including two messages left on her voicemail, I have not heard back from her. If Hoffman is not in business with people to whom she voted to give city funds, it would be a simple thing to say as much—with a phone call or email reply.

Did Hoffman vote to give city funds to business partners (who also happen to have failed to have lived up to their end of the agreement)? People who claim to know say yes. Hoffman, for her part, isn't talking.

Did sitcom producer try to bamboozle city council with fake magazine cover?

GREENSBORO, NC -- In June of last year, the Greensboro City Council approved a loan to Black Network Television (BNT) to help finance a sitcom titled Whatcha Cookin'. When the borrower could not meet the conditions of the loan, city council took the matter up again a month later to consider modifying the terms. That modification was denied. Now BNT is claiming discrimination and suing the City of Greensboro for $50 million.

At the July meeting, when council considered modifying the terms of the loan, a representative of BNT addressed the council as a speaker from the floor. She included a Power Point presentation and recited all of the good things that were happening for the sitcom, including, she said, an article in Upscale Magazine. That claim was accompanied by a slide that showed what appeared to be a cover of the magazine. On it, was a portion dedicated to Whatcha Cookin'. The presentation zoomed in on it to reveal three pictures supposedly from the article and the headline: "BNT Cooks Up Comedy with Whatcha Cookin'."

Here it is the cover as it appeared in BNT's Power Point presentation to the council (click to enlarge):

Here is the real cover  (click to enlarge):

Here is video of the portion of the BNT presentation to council where the Upscale Magazine cover is shown (twice) and described:

News & Record gets crucial sitcom lawsuit fact wrong

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record is reporting that the City of Greensboro is getting sued for a loan it approved then "pulled." The city council approved loan offer was made to Black Network Television (BNT) to help finance their production of a television sitcom titled Whatcha Cookin'. Reporter Joe Gamm writes:

"BNT owners Michael and Ramona Woods sued the city, seeking more than $50 million in connection with a loan the city had approved for the sitcom but then pulled." [Emphasis added.]

That is contrary to the facts, and the News & Record, with a reputation for repeating the assertions of sources without checking them against the available record, gets another crucial point wrong.

The Greensboro City Council, in June of 2013, approved a $300,000 low interest loan to BNT with the condition that the loan be collaterized by a lien on the BNT's owners' house. That condition stipulated that the city of Greensboro was to be in no worse position than second in the line of creditors for liens on the house. It was subsequently discovered that there were two liens, a mortgage and a home equity line of credit, on the owners' house already. That would have put the city third in line, a condition not in conformity with the agreement passed by council.

In July of 2013, council considered (p. 46) revising the terms of the loan so that the city would accept third position. Council rejected that change, with a majority voting to deny it. That left standing the original agreement. Indeed, in responding to a letter from BNT's attorney claiming the city reneged on its loan offer, the city attorney, on October 31, 2013, reiterated that the loan was still available. He wrote:

"If anything, the City and your clients could proceed under the original terms as was mentioned during the meeting. The original terms are still available."

The News & Record is wrong, the city did not "pull" the loan. It declined to modify the original terms of the loan offer, but left it standing.

UPDATE: Owen Covington at The Triad Business Journal makes the same mistake. These reporters need to review the video record of the July, 2013 Greensboro City Council meeting. The council voted to deny modifications to the original loan agreement, they did not rescind the original loan offer.

Summer reruns: Prepare for stories of mobs and riots

GREENSBORO, NC -- School is out, and around here we know what that means. It's time for local TV stations to rev up their scare machines and crank out wildly distorted fear mongering stories of marauding teenagers.

Cub "reporters," recently graduated with degrees in Personal Branding and minors in Hair and Makeup for the Camera, will find some downtown fight or incident of disorder and breathlessly exaggerate it beyond any resemblance to the facts. Dutiful anchors will read what's on the teleprompter, revealing the perfect amount of panic from behind their facades of sage concern while failing to recognize the mendacity of the words they are burping forth. If we're lucky, local politicians may even seize upon the fakery, deny the clear protestations of the police that the media have it wrong, and fan the flames to pursue some public policy for which they would otherwise have no support.

The bar is set pretty low, though, so it will be tough to beat previous years' winners.

WFMY, 2011: A Month of Violent Flash Mobs

In the summer of 2011, WFMY took a single assault and an overturned flowerpot and turned them into an entire month of "police [battling] large flash-mob beatings and vandalism." This whopper, refuted by police, lead the City of Greensboro to stop communicating with WFMY and to demand a meeting with station management to express their displeasure with WFMY "creating storylines." The story fanned all sorts of racist reaction to the detriment of our community.

WFMY never publicly corrected their story or apologized..

WGHP, 2013: 400-Teen Street Brawl

In the summer of 2013, WGHP reported a "massive brawl" downtown involving "400 teens." They even showed surveillance camera video of what they said was the fight. It never happened though, and the video, while showing crowds of people, some running and agitated, did not show a single punch, kick or any people fighting—much less 400 people—but WGHP played the video over and over, instructing viewers to see in the grainy and out of focus footage something that did not exist. This whopper, picked up by the Drudge Report and other media across the country, was also refuted by police, who described, and records document, a series of small and unrelated fights over a seven-hour period on a Saturday night, resulting in eleven arrests. Police accounts did not stop then-mayor and downtown resident Robbie Perkins from repeating the falsehood in an effort to rally support for a downtown youth curfew. The story also inspired  racist reactions to the detriment of our community.

Like WFMY before them, WGHP never publicly corrected their story or apologized (nor did Perkins who subsequently was voted out of office).

Hyping minor achievements

GREENSBORO, NC -- When did we start pretending that minor achievements deserve the same recognition as major accomplishments? Two examples from this past few days: The area's fifth grade "graduations," and the Greensboro Grasshoppers "winning" the "first half" pennant.

Graduation is for granting a diploma or degree and a baseball pennant is for the winner of a league's season. What's next? Kindergarten graduation and a fifth inning pennant?

Paved in gold: $13 million per mile sidewalk needs construction audit

GREENSBORO, NC -- Dang asks some good questions (in his usual brash way) about the City of Greensboro staff's recommendation that another $26 million be authorized for the downtown greenway.

The public should see an audit of the money spent so far. An official construction audit. We were initially told that the four mile loop would cost an already lofty $26 million. Now it needs another $26 million? That would bring the cost to $13 million per mile. That's more than half of the cost of the four mile portion of the urban loop being built from Bryan Boulevard to Battlegournd Avenue, and that is a six lane highway with four bridges and an interchange.

Something doesn't smell right at all.

Mayberry wanting to be Chicago

GREENSBORO, NC -- The Troublemaker recently wrote about a company that had a contract with the City of Greensboro to make certain improvements to a downtown property and open a restaurant to have employed a certain number of people as conditions for receiving $200,000 of public funds.

As The Troublemaker documented, the company, Greensboro Parking Group, LLC,  missed deadlines, became delinquent on their property taxes, had the original contract with the city extended four months after it expired and missed milestones that were to be met before the public funds were given to them. The city gave them the full $200,000 anyway, before the milestones were met—some of it even after the contract extension expired.

Could there have been any early warning signs that these guys needed a close watch? The corporate seal they affixed to the contract with the city might have been a clue. In case you can't tell, that's a pencil rubbing of a quarter (click to enlarge).

Meanwhile, another blogger notices that one of the principals in Greensboro Parking Group (who is also a partner in a separate downtown property with city council woman Nancy Hoffman) is living high on the hog.

The question remains why the company received public funds when the terms of the contract were not met.