Arrogant or complacent? Incumbents blow off Conservatives' forum

GREENSBORO, NC -- The Conservatives for Guilford County (C4GC) held a candidates forum last night for those running for Greensboro City Council. According to the News & Record:

"Only eight of the 26 people seeking council seats — and none of the incumbents — turned out for Conservatives for Guilford County’s forum."

C4GC is being underestimated. They put people to work in last year's Guilford County Commissioners race and, in my opinion as a voter in the district, made the difference in Jeff Phillip's defeat of incumbent Paul Gibson. They will only have learned and improved since then and, I suspect, will be even more effective in council races of more concentrated geographic area where shoe leather and word-of-mouth make a difference.

Dismissing them out of hand reflects poorly on candidates—especially incumbents. Even to those not in sync with their political alignment, it says of the candidates who won't engage them that those candidates are insulated and narrow minded. It wasn't just the 60 people in attendance who will form an opinion of the candidates who ignored the forum, but those of us reading and hearing about it are taking note too.

As it turns out, lack of transparency by city government emerged as a theme at last night's forum. That is a problem—one that is not ideological, that interests a wide swath of voters and that this current council has been completely unwilling to address. Too bad they avoided the subject yet again.

There is plenty of time left in this election and the spending hasn't begun yet, but it seems as if some candidates are complacent, maybe even cocky, about their prospects. I will not be surprised if there are some "shockers" to come.

Those who attended C4GC's forum were:

George Hartzman (mayor)
Marlando Pridgen (at-large)
Chris Lawyer (at-large)
Jean Brown (at-large)
Tigress McDaniel (district 1)
Wendell Roth (district 3)
John Alexander Underwood (district 4)
Alex Seymour (district 5)

Learn more about the candidates on GreensboroCouncilCandidates.com

Rumor: City to settle black officers' discrimination suit

GREENSBORO, NC -- Greensboro mayor Robbie Perkins has called a special closed session meeting of the City Council for tomorrow. It is to discuss the discrimination lawsuits filed against the city by 39 current and former black police officers and another discrimination lawsuit filed by the former chief of police, David Wray, who is white.

Knowledgeable sources anticipate city council will agree to settle the suit brought by the 39 officers, but not Wray's.

UPDATE: According to WFMY, the city council decided not to settle the lawsuits and to proceed to trial.

Statue of WFMY reporter to be erected at Guilford Battleground Park

GREENSBORO, NC -- In a fascinating testament to the good things that can come from ignoring mistakes, the National Park Service has decided to honor a WFMY reporter with a statue in the Guilford Battleground Military Park.

Two weeks ago WFMY reporter Michael Radostits posted an erroneous story to the station's website in which he identified General Nathanael Greene as the victor over the British Redcoats at the Revolutionary War Battle of Guilford Courthouse in contradiction to actual events. Radostits wrote:

"On Saturday, people came out to celebrate General Greene's 271st birthday at Guilford Courthouse National Battlefield in Greensboro. It's the same sight [sic] where Greene earned his victory over the British."

Although it had been previously heretofore known that Greene actually lost the battle, the National Parks Service has decided to honor Radostits with a statue in the park for singlehandedly changing history. Park spokesperson Martha Lighthorse explained:

"We contacted WFMY about the error. We called them, facebooked them, tweeted them and texted them, but the story remained uncorrected. We tried to get creative and sent a General Greene impersonator to the station, but they mistook him for a Good Morning Show guest and he ended up featured on a segment about back-to-school fashion."

Lighthorse described a subsequent meeting with park staff:

"We started thinking, this may not be so bad. After all, Greene already has the largest statue in the park and it really does sound more exciting to say that Greensboro was named after a winner instead of a loser, so we thought, what the hey? Let's do this thing and honor Michael for making history better."

The Park Service announced yesterday that they will erect a statue of Radostits in the park. A press release explained:

"With history no longer subject to facts, we felt free to take some liberties with the design of the statue and had it fashioned in the "Modern Colonial Greek" style. (Pictured below).

The press release went on to explain:

We will celebrate the erecting of the Radostits monument with a reenactment of the battle of Guilford Courthouse, with General Greene's army joined by a battalion of Jedi Knights as they take on the Redcoats and the WWE All Stars on horse-drawn chariots. The battle will conclude with Radostits himself riding to the rescue in an authentic replica of a solar-powered M4 Sherman Tank."

Radostits could not be reached for comment, but he Tweeted:

omg! icymi #guilfordpark 2 erect (LOL) fab statue of @radostits cuz i da man. deets on fb. YW #greensboro #generalgreen #corporalklinger #majornelson #mrhand

HORNSWAGGLED!

GREENSBORO, NC -- In a stunning display of willful ignorance, the Greensboro City Council danced around a $10 million black hole in the room last night and approved the purchase of land to accommodate a downtown performing arts center.

Mark my words, it won't be long before the City will be trying to round up another $10 million to cover what they will surely describe, and the brain dead local media will dutifully report, as an "unexpected" shortfall. Here's why.

In 2012, when the idea of a possible performing arts center downtown was taking shape, the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro came to City Council and asked for $200,000 for a study to determine, among other things, what it would cost to build such a facility. The City provided the money, the task force hired a consultant and, in January of this year, they produced a master plan. You can see it here.

It was very thorough in estimating the facility's cost, including estimations for everything from the building, to heating and air, to electrical—twenty-seven pages of the kind of professional evaluation that would inspire confidence that the resulting cost would be reasonably reliable. The conclusion?

"The estimated total Project Cost for the Greensboro Performing Arts Center in mid-2012 dollars is $60.5 million."

After a lot of twists and turns, $60 million is exactly what the City of Greensboro and the Community Foundation have now come up with to spend through usage fees, hotel/motel tax and private contributions. $60 million is the "total" budget everyone was discussing at the meeting last night when debating whether or not to buy privately owned land for an arts center at the Bellmeade site.

Just one problem though—one $10 million problem. The twenty-seven page itemized professional cost estimation to which the City contributed $200,000 determined the cost of the facility at $60.5 million in mid-2012 dollars if it was built on property the city already owned. It did not include land acquisition costs or demolition costs.

The projected $60.5 million did not include land acquisition costs or demolition costs. Yet, somehow, as if by magic, City Council last night determined that they could take $10 million out of a $60 million budget to buy some land and still have enough money remaining to pay for a facility that was projected to cost $60.5 million in mid-2012 dollars without land acquisition or demolition costs.

There was a single slide in a GPAC task force presentation that considered the possibility of acquiring the land at the Bellmeade site. It anticipated shaving $5 million off the cost of constructing the facility and using $5 million to purchase land. Of course, that anticipated a lesser facility and only $5 million to purchase land the city council is now hoping to buy for $10 million and for which they've already spent, as of last night, $7.6 million.

It gets worse. While the city was setting aside their subtraction-immune $10 million to purchase a downtown block, their vote last night was actually to buy only seven of the nine needed properties. For those seven properties, Council agreed to spend $7.6 million. The owners of the other two properties have not yet been willing to agree to sell. They've been holding out and now they have the City over a barrel. The sky is the limit for what those owners can demand now.

A breath of fresh air

GREENSBORO, NC -- Kudos to News & Record reporter Dawn DeCwikiel-Kane.

For some reason, it has been extremely difficult for local media to report accurately on the nature of downtown teen violence. A single attack by one person on another became a wilding flash mob organized by social media; a series of small fights over a seven hour period became a 400-teen brawl as local TV news people insisted we disbelieve our lying eyes and described video of crowded streets as showing throngs of people fighting.

It is a sad state of affairs that has earned us a permanent but unwarranted black mark on our Wikipedia entry and ill repute world wide.

Today, DeCwikiel-Kane just raised the bar. In a story about the Community Theatre of Greensboro wanting to start some teen activity nights, DeCwikiel-Kane described some of the downtown crimes in a straight-forward stick-to-the-facts way. That might seem unremarkable—that it is what reporters are supposed to do—but it is head and shoulders above the sensationalism and breathless hyperbolic misinformation of other local media and it stands out as notable*.

Thank you, Ms. DeCwikiel-Kane.


[* It should be remembered that  DeCwikiel-Kane's colleague Joe Gamm, in writing about one night in particular, also managed to stick to the facts.]

Just plain dishonest

GREENSBORO, NC -- I like the idea of a performing arts center downtown, I don't like that the location at the top of the list of the citizens' task force (the YWCA site) is being rejected in favor of another location and justified with suspect explanations.

Start with the math: The City says the proposed site, while $10 million more costly than the YWCA site, will offer more income from 250 VIP parking spaces. Their published projections assumed those would be 100% occupied at each event and that there would be 180 events per year -- a figure they originally attributed to a consultant's study. That was false. The consultant's study, as the City now admits, anticipated 149 events per year. The City explains the "error" by saying they "blended" (their word) the consultant's number with a projection of 220 events made by city staff. That 220, however, includes 50 rehearsal and load-in days, events for which there will be no audiences to pay for VIP parking.

Can we not, as a City, approach this decision with honesty? If this parking revenue falls short, taxpayers will be on the hook to make up the shortfall.

That's not all. Not included in the City's calculations of "increased" parking revenue at the proposed site are things that will deduct from that revenue:

1. Loss of revenues from the property taxes currently collected on those properties when they become public property.
2. Loss of revenues from the city-owned parking spaces currently on that block.
3. I'm not sure, but I can't seem to find that their calculations include demolition of the buildings on the property.
4. The cost of tearing down the War Memorial Stadium (which the City relies on in their projections to force events to the new GPAC).

Finally,  who are the stockholders of the corporate entities from which the City will be buying the properties? Council agenda items often include detail about the people behind the corporations with whom the City is being asked to do business. There is no such list attached to the proposal to purchase the corporate-owned properties at the proposed location.

The fantastical imaginings of the Triad Conservative

GREENSBORO, NC -- If one has an interest in influencing local elections, as Conservatives for Guilford County's Dr. Joe Guarino does, it helps to know the electorate. That's best done by leaving behind ideological assumptions and getting in touch with, well, the facts.

In arguing against allowing college students to vote where they reside, Dr. Guarino writes on his blog Triad Conservative:

"Here in Greensboro, for instance, students attending local colleges and universities can be extremely disruptive of local elections because they can skew the results against the interests of taxpayers."

Not just "disruptive," Guarino says, but "extremely disruptive;" and by disruptive, one assumes that means that, but for those meddling kids, local elections would have different results.

As is frequently Guarino's pitfall though, he has substituted some phobic assumption for an examination of the facts. Using a voter intelligence web application I'm developing, I took a look at the participation of college-aged voters in the last local election (2011 general).

Here are the facts to which Guarino attributes extreme disruption:

36,387 voters total voted in Greensboro's 2011 municipal election.
135 ( 0.37%) voted on-campus at NCA&T
36 (0.09%) voted on-campus at UNCG

What about off-campus students? That's a little harder to pin down, exactly, but let's use as a proxy voters 18 to 22 years old. Some college students will be older, but not all people 18 to 22 are college students either. How many 18 to 22 year-olds voted in the last local election?

598 (1.6%) voters city-wide ages 18 to 22.

In fact, only one age group voted less than 18 to 22 year-olds in the last local election, those 93 years-old and up.

The interest and passion Conservatives for Guilford County have for local elections is admirable. Representatives like Guarino would better serve the group by engaging the facts rather than attacking a group of people without reason.

GPAC task force for the LULZ! ...and the graft

GREENSBORO, NC -- After a year-long process of meetings, studies, consultations, charettes and community outreach which lead the Performing Arts Center Task Force to recommend a location that has been summarily and inexplicably dismissed by unnamed city staff, it appears the only reason for the effort was for City Council to funnel $145,000 in "salary" to the director of the task force and Mayor Robbie Perkin's former campaign manager.

Brilliant! Diabolical, but brilliant!

The ghost of Martha Long reports on proposed performing arts center

GREENSBORO, NC -- The News & Record, and Greensboro at large, would benefit greatly from putting a reporter on the city government beat who doesn't approach her job as if she's writing a society column. A little skepticism and inquisitiveness is sorely needed and sorely lacking.

From an article today that claims to report "everything you need to know" about the proposed performing arts center:

"The center will be on a block of North Elm Street downtown. City officials determined this spot was better than other options because it allowed for paid parking spaces."

The community went through a long and well publicized process of public meetings, charettes and consultations involving hundreds of volunteers from across the city assembled into a task force to study, evaluate and make recommendations for a proposed arts center. This was done through the Community Foundation of Greensboro at the official charge of and with financial support, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, from the Greensboro City Council.

The task force studied several possible locations including the one now deemed best by—according to the News & Record—unnamed "city staff," and they recommended a different site: The old YWCA location. It was with this imprimatur of an inclusive process and well considered recommendation that City Council approved a pledge of financial support and under which assumption private donors made contributions to the effort and opinion writers gave their support.

Now, without explanation, the conclusions of the community have been tossed by the wayside in favor of the recommendations of anonymous "city staff."

Thus there are thee big gaping holes in the N&R's "everything you need to know" story:

1. What was the genesis for "city staff" ignoring the recommendations of the volunteers of the Community Foundation task force? At whose direction did this effort begin and why?
2. The story mentions speculative expectations for increased revenue from premium parking; what is the very real and empirically measurable loss from taking a block of private property off the tax rolls and the loss of the existing city-owned public parking already on the site?
3. Who owns the property "city staff" is proposing be purchased at this new location? Not just the corporate entities, but the stockholders. 

I have little confidence the local media will answer these questions and every expectation City Council will ignore them too on its way to approving this as they make the year-long process undertaken by community volunteers the butt of a big joke.

Too bad Martha Long won't be around to report on the inaugural gala. We'll have the next best thing though.

Billy proposes a 180

GREENSBORO, NC -- Blogger Billy Jones proposes Greensboro pursue an "open source government." It would be like turning around a battleship, but it's a good idea.

Right on!

From the Huffington Post:

"In the video above, Dax Ewbank of Oklahoma City accuses [Rep. James] Lankford (R-Okla) of misleading people in a recent letter in which he attempted to tamp down fears that NSA programs were being used to target normal U.S. citizens."

Katei Cranford adds profile to GreensboroCouncilCandidates.com

Katei Cranford, candidate for Greensboro City Council at-large, has added her profile to GreensboroCouncilCandidates.com.

Cranford, 28, works as an advocate for the creative community and is registered as unaffiliated. She says her three top issues are embracing innovation for job creation, increase transportation connectivity and develop a cohesive identity for Greensboro.

In answer to what she will do, specifically, to increase transparency in city government, she says, "As a huge proponent of two-way communication, I will ensure a legitimate response to any inquiries or critique with which I'm presented & strive to eliminate the hierarchy between citizens & leaders."

Ben Holder adds profile to GreensboroCouncilCandidates.com

GREENSBORO, NC -- Ben Holder, candidate for Greensboro City Council at-large, has added his profile to GreensboroCouncilCandidates.com.

Holder, 42, is a property manager and is registered as Democratic. He says his three top issues are to hire a new police chief, hire a new city manager and hire a new city attorney.

In answer to what he will do, specifically, to increase transparency in city government, he says, "I have been the guiding light for Greensboro for a decade. Nobody in this city, not the media or the government, has fought for transparency and uncovered lies as successfully as I have. I do it."

No objections from Council as City bestows special secrecy on candidates

GREENSBORO, NC -- The City of Greensboro has a public records request tracking system, PIRT, they call it: Public Information Request Tracking. It is supposedly for the purpose of tracking requests for city records.

It's a sham. A costly, time wasting, frustrating sham that has been perverted into a means of delay, bullying and intimidation imposed on a select few members of the public.

Only a small number of certain individuals' requests are entered into the tracking system, those mostly being some local bloggers, labor representatives and reporters from Yes!Weekly—whom the City previously tried to stop from publishing with a secret lawsuit (the City lost).

People who escape the tracking of the PIRT system and have their requests answered without being monitored include:

1. Elected representatives, including members of city council
2. Professional media (excluding Yes!Weekly)
3. Lawyers
4. Engineers and architects  
5. Real estate and business people
6. Former city employees

City Manager Denise Turner-Roth goes one step further and heaps extra scrutiny on the few people entered into the PIRT system by publishing their names and the information they requested in a memo that she sends to city council, city staff, community bigwigs and local media every Friday.

Until recently, the Manager's weekly memo included the requests of challenger city council candidates, people like George Hartzman (mayor), Ben Holder (at-large) and Sal Leone (district 5), but not the requests made by incumbent candidates.

Now, in a mind-numbing exhibition of just how rudderless the City's management is in their approach to transparency, the City Manager has decided that, rather than level the playing field by including the requests made by sitting city council people in her weekly memo along with those made by challenging candidates, no candidate requests—challengers' or incumbents'—will be included in her weekly memo.

Think about that:

People elected to represent us and those seeking to represent us, the very people of whom we should expect the greatest transparency and accountability, are being given special privileges by the City Manager so that they may avoid scrutiny. She is wrapping a special cloak of secrecy around their interactions with city government while continuing to subject a small group of other citizens to extra attention.

As astonishing as all of that is, the real kicker is that all of our elected representatives on city council, every single one of them, is aware of and has voiced no public objection to this practice. Remember that the next time you hear a city council person talk about how important government transparency is to them.

I asked to be afforded the same courtesy the City Manager has provided to candidates: to have my records requests excluded from the Manager's weekly memo, I was told that privilege is only for candidates. Yes, I was specifically told that the special cloak of secrecy is only for those who do or may represent us.

Worth noting is that mayoral candidate George Hartzman expressed his objection to the policy quite vociferously. As he wrote in an email to City Council about his requests being removed from the Manager's weekly memo:

"I most certainly did not ask to have candidate requests hidden, as it would contradict the transparency theme of my campaign. I advocated for all requests, including those from incumbents, be included."

Nancy Vaughan adds profile to GreensboroCouncilCandidates.com

GREENSBORO, NC -- Nancy Vaughan, candidate for Mayor of Greensboro, has added her profile to GreensboroCouncilCandidates.com.

Vaughan, 52, is a community volunteer and currently sits on City Council as an at-large representative. She is registered as Democratic. She says her three top issues are jobs/economic development, neighborhood stabilization and solid waste management.

In answer to what she has done, specifically, to increase transparency in city government, she says, "I think we should revisit the Council Financial Disclosure form. Use a form similar to what is used at the state level, modified for Council business and extended to Board and Commission members."

Marikay Abuzuaiter adds profile to GreensboroCouncilCandidates.com

GREENSBORO, NC -- Marikay Abuzuaiter, incumbent candidate for Greensboro City Council at-large, has added her profile to GreensboroCouncilCandidates.com.

Abuzuaiter, 59, is owner of Mahi's restaurant. She is registered as Democratic. She says her three top issues are economic development, infrastructure maintenance and poverty.

In answer to what she has done, specifically, to increase transparency in city government, she says, "When a citizen requests information from me I have supplied it! Many times it has only been an answer to a question or direction on where to find an answer. I have never ignored a citizen request."

Mike Barber adds profile to GreensboroCouncilCandidates.com

[CORRECTION: This post originally misidentified the race in which Mike Barber is running. He is a candidate for an at-large seat. That has been corrected.]

GREENSBORO, NC -- Mike Barber, candidate for Greensboro City Council at-large has added his profile to GreensboroCouncilCandidates.com.

Barber, 51, works as a an attorney and is CEO of The First Tee of The Triad. He is registered as Democratic. He says his three top issues are job growth, community safety and fiscal management.

In answer to what he will do, specifically, to increase transparency in city government, he says, "Recommend utilizing key word software that places most emails on a server and available to the public, which will also reduce the high volume of public record requests and cost. Create a panel to review other correspondence and flagged emails. Create a 3rd public monthly meeting for speakers which actually allows for discussion between council members and public. "

Socially connected and wrong

GREENSBORO, NC -- WFMY has recently taken to promoting themselves as "the source for the socially connected." The source for what, they don't say, but if I had to guess, it would be error-prone information.

It's one thing if the station wants to carve out a nice little sugary space of vapid small talk for themselves—car dealerships seem to think it's the perfect demographic—but please, then, stay away from stories that might involve the conveyance of actual facts. You're not the ones to tell us.

On their website today, WFMY reports of yesterday's celebration of Revolutionary War hero Nathanael Greene:

"On Saturday, people came out to celebrate General Greene's 271st birthday at Guilford Courthouse National Battlefield in Greensboro.  It's the same sight [sic] where Greene earned his victory over the British."

Greene did not win the battle. The British won and took the courthouse. In fact, Greene is perhaps the war's most celebrated loser. That's one of the things that made this battle, and Greene as a military tactician, so remarkable. Outnumbered and poorly equipped, Greene had his Southern army and the Virginia Regulars who joined him in defending the Guilford Courthouse take defensive positions in wooded areas where the usual advantage of British General Charles Cornwallis' tight and disciplined formations was diminished. The British ended up paying a high price in casualties for their victory.

With heavy losses and dwindling supplies, the British were in no condition to continue to fight so far from their supply lines. Three days after the battle, Cornwallis withdrew his troops to Wilmington.

I tried emailing the WFMY news desk about the error, but the message bounced as that mailbox is full.

City Council pulls a fast one, screws working people.

GREENSBORO, NC -- On the last City Council meeting's agenda was a resolution to move the start time of council meetings to 4:00 (they previously started at 5:30), but to keep the public comment period (speakers from the floor) after presentations, which were to begin at 5:30.

Instead, council decided to move the meeting start time to 4:00 and keep the current agenda order without delaying public comment until after 5:30. In practicality, this means that the public comment period will likely begin around 4:30 and that, to assure a spot in line, people will have to arrive and sign up to speak before 4:00.

Obviously, that's hostile towards the schedules of working people.

The motion to make these changes was made by at-large representative and mayoral candidate Nancy Vaughan. It was seconded by district 4 representative Nancy Hoffmann. Voting in favor were Tony Wilkins, Robbie Perkins, Yvonne Johnson, Jim Kee, Vaughan and Hoffmann.

Voting against the change were T. Diane Bellamy-Small, Zack Matheny and Marikay Abuzuaiter.

Too dark?

GREENSBORO, NC -- Dang raises an interesting question. Why is the city contemplating spending $7.8 million for 7 acres or so of land for a possible performing arts center when the City's redevelopment commission already owns 13 undeveloped acres on the south edge of downtown?

Is it because the area is "a little too dark?" he asks.

One wonders. Although the site was once suggested for a new baseball stadium, that idea was shot down with the excuse that the land was a contaminated brownfield. Federal dollars were available to clean it up, but the excuse stuck and the ballpark went to its present location.

Subsequently, federal funds were used to clean up the site, it has been approved for additional federal dollars to subsidize a parking deck there and it has easy access via Lee St. and Elm/Eugene to I-40 and I-85.

As I mentioned, the city already owns the land, so there would be no need to spend millions to buy property from campaign contributors.

It's a very commonsense location for a performing arts center.

What's coming instead?

Dog shit.

That's right, a proposal has surfaced to put a dog park there.

Ah, Greensboro: Spend $8 million dollars to buy and demolish private property that currently generates about $60,000 per year in tax revenue, remove that property from the tax rolls and leave free vacant land 15 years in the longing for development to the dogs.