Author: John Hammer

Thursday, Oct. 20 is the first day of early voting. The ballot for the Nov. 8 election isn’t as long as it looks because, on the composite ballot, there are nine uncontested races, which means as long as those candidates remember to vote for themselves, they win.  No voter will receive a composite ballot at the polls because it includes all the races in Guilford County, so all nine uncontested races won’t be on any voter’s ballot but some of them will be.

The Greensboro City Council took action, if not to end, to at least ameliorate one of the constant complaints about rezoning cases, at the Tuesday, Oct. 18 meeting.

For a fleeting moment, it appeared that sanity would prevail at the Greensboro City Council meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 18 in the Katie Dorsett Council Chamber – but the moment passed.

Early voting for the Tuesday, Nov. 8 election opens at all 15 Guilford County locations at 8 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 20. Early voting will also be held on Friday, Oct. 21 beginning at 8 a.m., but all sites will be closed over the weekend and will resume at 8 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 24 and be open through Saturday, Nov. 5.

The Greensboro City Council is scheduled to hold its one business meeting of the month on Tuesday, Oct. 18 beginning at 5 p.m. in the Katie Dorsett Council Chamber.

The agenda for the Tuesday, Oct. 18 meeting calls for the City Council to consider funding the design of new equipment services garage for city vehicles.

The proposal for the City of Greensboro to offer mortgage and rental assistance to city employees includes almost all city employees. According to the presentation at the Greensboro City Council strategy session on Thursday, Oct. 13 – unlike the city’s current first-time homeowner mortgage assistance program, which has an average median income cap, there would be no income cap on city employees eligible to receive up to $15,000 in mortgage or rental assistance from the city.

The Greensboro Water Resources Department performs more than 1,100 water quality tests every day, maintains over 3,000 miles of water and sewer lines, deals with 158 water main breaks in a year, and tries to keep over 109,000 customers satisfied.

The Greensboro City Council kicked off its yearly effort to produce a “legislative agenda,” which is a list of items the council would like the North Carolina state legislature to pass. The major difference in this year’s legislative agenda is that the City of Greensboro has a brand-new employee dedicated to creating the legislative agenda – a task that previously had been done by the city legal department. The new Intergovernmental Relations Manager LaToya Caesar-Crawford began her presentation with “What is a Legislative Agenda?” 

Interim Police Chief Teresa Biffle gave a disturbing report on the vacancies in the Greensboro Police Department at the City Council strategy session on Thursday, Oct. 13. The councilmembers didn’t seem fazed by high vacancy rate that, according to Biffle, is going higher, and the City Council offered no real solutions.

Details on the proposed project to provide temporary housing for the homeless are few and far between. At a special meeting on Monday, Oct. 10, the City Council voted 7-1 to allocate $535,000 to purchase 40 pallet houses for “The Doorway Project” to provide temporary housing for the homeless.

Early voting opens on Thursday, Oct. 20, but there is also an important deadline a lot closer.  Friday, Oct. 14 is the last day to register to vote for the Nov. 8 election.

One of the items the Greensboro City Council is discussing at the “strategy session” on Thursday, Oct. 13 is a city employee mortgage and rent assistance program. Making Ownership Viable for Employees (MOVE), which is being proposed by the 2022 Leadership Edge Cohort, is to provide up to $15,000 of down payment assistance and up to $7,500 in rental assistance to eligible city employees.

The City of Greensboro announced this week that the new Office of Community Safety was created in September.

The Greensboro City Council is holding a “strategy session” beginning at 1 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 13 in the Katie Dorsett Council Chamber in city hall.

The Greensboro City Council discussed but didn’t approve several new initiatives to help the homeless population at the special meeting on Monday, Oct. 10. One of those was to provide a safe parking lot for 35 vehicles for homeless people living in their cars.  The parking lot according to the report would be available from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m.  Security and a bathroom facility that cost an estimated $100,000 would be provided.

On Nov. 1, the $25 fine for taking your garbage can to the street too early, or leaving it out on the street too long, is scheduled to go into effect.

A Guilford County candidate for state representative was right at the top of the list of candidates who have convictions or charges pending for crimes other than minor offenses and traffic violations. State House District 59 Democratic candidate Sherrie Young was listed as having “pending gun charges.” Young is running against five-term incumbent Republican District 59 state House Rep. Jon Hardister.

The Greensboro City Council approved a motion to spend $535,000 on “Pallet House” units at a special meeting on Monday, Oct. 10 in the Katie Dorsett Council Chamber. The motion to approve the sole source contract with Pallet PBC Inc. for $535,000 passed on a 7-1 vote with Councilmember Zack Matheny voting no and Councilmember Yvonne Johnson absent.

On Tuesday, Sept. 20, the City Council held a closed session to evaluate City Manager Tai Jaiyeoba. District 3 City Councilmember Zack Matheny sent an email Jaiyeoba and copied his fellow councilmembers on Monday, Sept. 26 about some of the issues he has with the city manager.

It appears to be official that the Greensboro City Council will have a work session on Thursday, Sept. 29 beginning at 2 p.m. in the Katie Dorsett Council Chamber in city hall.

Last week the Greensboro Parks and Recreation Department received national accreditation by the Commission for the Accreditation of Park and Recreation Agencies.  The recognition was given at the National Recreation and Park Association’s annual conference in Phoenix.

Guilford County’s plan to take on an additional $1.7 billion in debt hit a bump in the road at the North Carolina Local Government Commission (LGC) meeting on Thursday, Sept. 22. Rather than approving the $1.7 billion in school bonds passed by the voters of Guilford County in the May 26 primary election, the LGC tabled the item and asked for more information.

The Greensboro City Council had five annexations and original zoning requests and two rezoning requests on the agenda at the Tuesday, Sept. 20 meeting. The City Council approved every request, all but two by unanimous votes.

Even the City of Greensboro appears to be confused about the expenditure of the $59.4 million in American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds the city received.

Despite what may be reported elsewhere, the City of Greensboro has allocated all of the $59.4 million it received in American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds.

The City of Greensboro government – under the direction of City Manager Tai Jaiyeoba – is becoming more opaque. The members of the Greensboro City Council campaigned on transparency in government but haven’t done much about it.

Mayor Nancy Vaughan had a few comments on the news of the day at the Tuesday, Sept. 20 City Council meeting, which lasted over seven hours.

At the Tuesday, Sept. 20 meeting, after plowing through five annexation and original zoning and two rezoning cases, the City Council got to the general business portion of the agenda where the City Council allocates money.

The City of Greensboro announces more opportunities for the public to weigh in on the selection of a new Greensboro police chief. On Sept. 19, the City of Greensboro announced that it is holding three “community input sessions to aid in the search for the next police chief.”

The Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts held a luncheon on Tuesday, Sept. 20 to celebrate the success of its first year of operation.

The Atlantic Coast Conference announced that it is moving its headquarters from Greensboro to Charlotte.

The Greensboro City Council is scheduled to approve yet another developer for the Union Square redevelopment project at the Tuesday, Sept. 20 meeting.

The Greensboro City Council monthly business meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 20 is once again dominated by requests for annexation and original zoning.

The plans for a new Amazon fulfillment center in Greensboro, first reported by Rhino Times, has been cancelled.

The City of Greensboro website lists a meeting of the Greensboro City Council Monday, Sept. 19 at 1 p.m.

Peach Orchard Drive in northeast Greensboro is set to receive a whole passel of traffic calming devices. A lot of neighborhoods complain about “cut through” traffic speeding down their streets, and not much happens.  However, someone at city hall heard the complaints from the Carriage Woods and Orchard neighborhoods and took action.

The Triad United Rowing Association has upped its game for the 2022 High Point Autumn Rowing Festival on Sunday Oct. 2 at Oak Hollow Lake. The HP Autumn Rowing Festival has been held since 2014, but for the first time this year international collegiate competition has been added. Crews from Duke University, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and the University of Cambridge will race for Lenny Peters Cup.  The festival is sponsored by Bethany Medical.

The Greensboro Police Department (GPD) wants more feedback from the public and is using a new tool to get it. On Wednesday, Sept. 14 the GPD launched a new public survey tool, Blockwise in partnership with Zencity a global technology company.

Voting opened for this round of participatory budgeting (PB) projects at the North Carolina Folk Festival last weekend. Those over 14 years old are also invited to vote online on the PB website.

An article on the front page of the News & Record on Tuesday, Sept. 13 had bad news for the few print subscribers the daily newspaper has left.

In Greensboro, the last general election was only seven weeks ago and another election is on the horizon.

Former District 3 City Councilmember Justin Outling came within a few hundred votes of being elected mayor in the July 26 election. During Outling’s campaign, which because of the delayed election lasted over 18 months, he repeatedly called for more City Council work sessions on public safety and crime. Outling lost the election to Mayor Nancy Vaughan, and it appears that the idea that the City Council should meet regularly about public safety issues went with him.

The announcement that Wolfspeed will build a $5 billion factory to make wafers for computer chips in Chatham County was considered so important that the White House sent out a press release about it on Friday, Sept. 9.

High Point University (HPU) is growing by leaps and bounds. HPU announced that for the 2022-2023 academic year it would be welcoming its largest student body in history with a total of 6,000 students including 1,600 new students.

Unless your idea of a good time is sitting in traffic, there are some areas of Greensboro that should be avoided this weekend.

The Greensboro Department of Transportation (GDOT) has put out a press release warning residents of a scam involving traffic tickets. According to the GDOT, a local resident received an email purporting to be a traffic citation for a violation recorded by a traffic camera in Greensboro. The fatal flaw in this scam is that Greensboro doesn’t have any traffic cameras that issue citations.

The City Council elected in 2017 was nothing if not indecisive. Since eight of the nine members of that City Council were reelected on July 26, it appears the City of Greensboro is in for three more years of indecision. At the Thursday, Sept. 1 work session, the City Council appeared to be supportive of proposed ordinance amendments that mainly deal with the homeless population in downtown Greensboro. However, at the Tuesday, Sept. 6 meeting, City Councilmember Goldie Wells expressed a desire to put a hold on taking any action until those experiencing homelessness could be consulted.

The North Carolina Folk Festival kicks off at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 9 in downtown Greensboro, and over 100,000 people are expected to attend. The music stops on Friday at 10:30 p.m. but starts up again on Saturday, Sept. 10 at noon and runs to 10:30 p.m.  On Sunday, Sept. 11 the festival begins at noon and the three-day festival ends at 6:30 p.m.