Ladd on fire

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record's Susan Ladd is making the most of her new position as an advocacy journalist. In just a few short weeks, she is raising the bar for both her editorial and news reporting colleagues. I have not agreed with everything she has written, and some topics are more serious than others, but she is singlehandedly slaying stupidity and deception in a way I thought I'd never see at the News & Record again. It's refreshing, inspiring and, if she keeps it up, Greensboro will be better by her efforts.

Today, on developer Roy Carroll's furtive plan to reduce the number of Greensboro City Council representatives, Ladd writes:

What he wants on the council, Carroll wrote, is a “diversified majority of business executives and owners.”

Really? Why not a majority of environmentalists? A majority of preservationists? A majority of educators?

A majority of any one constituency would unbalance the council. The council needs members from diverse backgrounds and different segments of the community to represent the people it serves. A council dominated by business owners might well make decisions that disenfranchise all the other groups, including homeowners and neighborhoods.

“The simple answer is that a business professional would rather be part of a smaller decision-making group in which that person could effect change,” Carroll wrote.

Is effecting change anything like getting your way? It sure sounds like that.

Maybe, for example, it would be easier to get the city to close a street to benefit your development. Or to convince the city to enact a noise ordinance that placates your condo owners but hurts nightclub businesses.

Oh, wait. Carroll won both of those battles despite the objections of residents and other business owners.

How much more power does he need?

And just how is a plan to change the council’s size going to guarantee a body dominated by business people?

Oh, right. Donations.

It’s worth noting that Carroll contributed $5,300 to Wade’s campaign last year and $9,000 to the campaign of state Sen. Phil Berger (R-Rockingham), who has said Wade “may very well be on the right track” in proposing a smaller council in Greensboro.

But what’s good for Greensboro is apparently not good for Eden. Berger has made no attempt to reduce the size of the council in his hometown, a city of 15,000 residents represented by a mayor (elected at large) and seven council members.

The fact is that the Greensboro City Council, aside from an occasional spat, is a high-functioning body that broadly represents the residents of Greensboro.

This district-and-at-large system was created to ensure minority representation, and it has resulted in a more balanced and representative council, which currently has four women, four men, three people of color and a woman as mayor.

If anyone decides how and if that body is going to change, it should be the voters, not a lone senator who can trade favors in the legislature to ram through a partisan plan that helps only a select group of businessmen.

Especially when most of those businessmen hide behind cloaks of anonymity.

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