Author: Scott D. Yost

The Greensboro nonprofit that states its goal of “enhancing the city’s quality of life and economic and civic engagement” is collecting data on worker skills and workplaces in its 2024 Talent & Workplace Survey, which is now underway and will wrap up in early April.

 Those who head down to the High Point Library will be seeing a lot of activity at the building.

The entrepreneurship arm of the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce – known as Launch Greensboro – has the job of accelerating growth for area entrepreneurs through things like teaching, mentoring and showing them how to access capital.

Things are always pretty exciting in the Town of Summerfield because the town is deeply divided when it comes to the question of how much development should take place there.

You have your own debt and you most likely know how much that is, but, as a resident of Guilford County, you have the burden of carrying the county’s debt as well, and you likely don’t know your share.

In November 2023, the Guilford County Audit Committee called a special meeting to go behind closed doors and discuss a personnel issue regarding the county’s finances with the county attorney.

Everyone knows what young men think about when the weather turns warmer and spring is near, but Guilford County elected officials and administrators think about something a lot less sexy – the start of the budget process.

If you weren’t alive 50 years ago then you could not have witnessed the miraculous way that the University of North Carolina men’s basketball team beat Duke, but you’ve probably heard about it and maybe even seen the last 17 seconds of the game on YouTube.

People who came out to the Steven Tanger Center in downtown Greensboro on Friday, Feb. 23 had paid a good amount of money to see “An Intimate Evening with David Foster and Katharine McPhee.” But they got a big bonus when Foster let Brody Bett – a 14-year-old singer and musician who live in Greensboro – come out of the audience, sit down at his piano and blow everyone away with a rendition of “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

An interesting thing happens when you cast your vote in Guilford County this time around.

There’s probably never been a time in the history of Guilford County government that the Board of Commissioners and the Guilford County manager have been so willing to give everyone whatever they ask for.

Voters in town and city elections in North Carolina last year had to show a valid ID in order to vote, but the March 2024 Primary Election is the first time that requirement is being implemented in a statewide election.

Those people in northern Guilford County who don’t want to see development encroach into an historically rural area lost a small battle in a big way when the Guilford County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to overturn a no-vote by the Guilford County Planning Board and therefore gave developers approval for a new land use option for four acres at the intersection of NC 150 and Spencer-Dixon Road.

 Guilford County staff and Guilford County commissioners spend a lot of their day-to-day time fighting fires and dealing hastily with whatever problems or issues the world throws at them. 

Guilford County is one of the few counties in North Carolina to have two major cities, and that means, when it comes to providing county services, there has to be two of everything so as to be convenient to both cities. 

Usually, people don’t like to talk about syphilis.

When the Summerfield Town Council voted 4-to-1 earlier this month not to renew the employment contract of Summerfield Town Manager Scott Whitaker, Whitaker didn’t have much of a reaction.

In recent years, some local governments have had trouble finding enough lifeguards and other staff to keep the public pools open and, as everyone knows, it’s still really, really difficult to find good help these days.

The ambitious goal set in the spring of last year by Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Skip Alston to essentially end homelessness in Guilford County before the winter of 2023 wasn’t met, and now the new goal is to do so by the winter of 2024 if not before. 

With all of the economic development success that’s come to the Greater Greensboro Area in recent years, there’s a lot to celebrate– and the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce has every intention of doing exactly that this week.

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) is launching what it’s calling the “Statewide Peer Warmline” starting on Tuesday, Feb. 20.  

After being delayed almost a year because of a contract between Samet Corp. and Guilford County derailed, the county has a new construction company joint venture working on the new headquarters for the Guilford County Sheriff’s Department and a new timeline for the project – which is now predicted to be complete on March 7, 2026, just in time for the workers to kick back, open a beer and watch the ACC Tournament.

When they built the new baseball stadium in downtown High Point they called it a “multi-use” facility, and between a new soccer team, the High Point Rockers baseball team and now a slate of college baseball games, it will be getting a lot of use in the coming months.

If you’re qualified to vote, but aren’t registered yet, you can register in person and then vote at one of Guilford County’s many early voting sites using the “same-day registration” process. 

It used to be that 2024 seemed like it was a long time away.

Everybody knows the early bird gets the worm and most people know that it’s the second mouse that gets the cheese.

At the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Thursday, Feb. 15 meeting, the board decided unanimously that it could spare $1 million in county money to support the Servant Center – an organization that helps homeless veterans and others get back on their feet and into permanent housing.   

Whenever someone brings up the civil rights sit-in movement in Guilford County, they are almost always talking about the famous sit-in by four black men at the Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro. 

Guilford County has been spending money like crazy for three years straight, but it somehow still has the best credit rating a county can have and it has lots of people who want to buy its bonds. 

It’s interesting that Guilford County is now working with Forsyth County to find out exactly where the county line is, because several years ago, after Guilford County endured a huge battle with Alamance County over that county line, it seemed almost certain that the Rockingham County line – which is also in dispute – would be next.

The Guilford County Board of Commissioners got a taxpayer funded trip up to Washington DC earlier this week to attend the National Association of Counties Legislative Conference, and one of the highlights of the event was getting to see the president who came and addressed the group of county officials in attendance.

This week, the Summerfield Town Council voted 4-to-1 to give Town Manager Scott Whitaker two months’ notice that the council would not be renewing his current contract – leaving 99 percent of the people in that town convinced that the council would not be renewing any contract at all with Whitaker. 

According to stats released on Wednesday, Feb. 14 by the State of North Carolina, as of the start of February, 346,408 newly eligible North Carolinians were enrolled in Medicaid and have access to health care provided under the plan.

Usually, when you find a tick on yourself, you just kill it and throw it in the trash.  “Not so fast!” says the Guilford County Department of Public Health, which is now calling on you to put it in an envelope and mail it free of charge to NC State University.

After an extended closed session on Wednesday, Feb. 13 – that actually ran until 1 a.m. the following day – the Summerfield Town Council came into open session and voted 4-to-1 to give Summerfield Town Manager Scott Whitaker 60 days notice that his current contract would not be renewed.

Valentine’s Day is a day for romance for those people lucky enough to be in a romantic relationship. 

Years ago, it would be rare for the majority of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners to make the journey to a national legislative conference.

The Guilford County Board of Commissioners isn’t the Guilford County Planning Board, but, when a Planning Board decision is appealed, it lands in the laps of the commissioners.

On Thursday, Feb. 15, the Guilford County Board of Commissioners is scheduled to receive $265,306 from the State of North Carolina to promote COVID-19 vaccinations and give free vaccinations to anyone who wants them.

Most Guilford County employees work in Guilford County-owned buildings, however, since June of 2022, some employees of the county’s MWBE Department have worked out of the Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship at 1451 S. Elm-Eugene St.

Unlike the real year, which runs from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, Guilford County’s fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30, which means that Dec. 31 is the halfway mark. 

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) is investing $5.5 million into a program called “FIT Wellness,” which is part of the state’s  “Formerly Incarcerated Transition” program in the UNC School of Medicine.

One of the hardest jobs in the world is Human Resources director and one of the absolutely very hardest jobs is Human Resources director for Guilford County government, where, among other things, your job is to settle disputes between the roughly 3,000 county employees.

A dental building donated to Guilford County a decade and a half ago by a husband and wife owned dental practice is having a more positive impact each year as the county uses it to provide dental services to kids whose families otherwise might not be able to afford those services.

Those who follow Guilford County politics remember what a long, drawn out, contentious, convoluted dispute Guilford County had for years and years with Alamance County over the border between the two counties. 

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is providing Guilford County with a $150,000 grant to enhance women’s health, which fits in well with the county’s current priority of providing more support to women before and after giving birth. 

Every city and town in Guilford County gets a portion of the sales tax revenue collected within the county each year except for one – Stokesdale – and, despite a recent push to the Guilford County Board of Commissioners to see that change, the town isn’t going to get any of that money this year either…

Guilford County Commissioner Pat Tillman had an interesting question at a recent work session of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners where the board was discussing several important Sheriff’s Department issues, such as officer pay and the…

he High Point Library has two new events coming up later this month that should prove very popular – a book discussion for the mind and, a few days later, a health discussion for the heart…

If you are walking or driving around Greensboro and see someone who looks like a giant ant, or like someone who just got off the slopes at Aspen but forgot his or her skis, don’t worry – everything’s OK.  It’s just that,