Author: John Hammer

Former Sixth District Congressman Howard Coble died over four years ago, but he’s still receiving awards.

Imagine you discovered the city had been double billing you for garbage collection.  So you contact the city and the city agrees that through a clerical error, you had been double billed and for years paid twice as much as you should have for garbage service.

It looks like Greensboro is going to have a 12-week paid family leave program for its employees included in the 2020-2021 budget, if not sooner.

The Greensboro City Council passed the three amendments to the construction budget for the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts at the Tuesday, Jan. 7 meeting.

Judicial Watch is known for suing government entities, and now it has set its sights on the Guilford County Board of Elections office, which is hard to understand.

The vast majority of press releases from Downtown Greensboro Inc. (DGI) are filled with good news about downtown Greensboro.But the press release that went out Monday, Jan. 6 wasn’t about downtown Greensboro or DGI. It was about a new position for DGI President Zack Matheny.Matheny has been elected to the International Downtown Association board of directors.

One item dealing with The Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts has been dropped from the agenda for the City Council meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 7, and two agenda items have been amended.

The Greensboro City Council is holding a special meeting on Thursday, Jan. 16, to consider a unique request for a $1.7 million economic incentive.The request is from Syngenta, and what makes the request unique is that Syngenta is requesting an economic incentive, not for a capital investment that will allow it to add to its workforce, but for a capital investment so it won’t move its operation – including 650 jobs that pay an average of $107,000 – somewhere else.

At the Greensboro City Council meeting Tuesday, Jan. 7, the council will take votes and conduct the city’s business.Which may not sound like news, but for the past two years the City Council has held a meeting on the first Tuesday of the month where it did neither. The council, with the notable exception of Councilmember Sharon Hightower, sat and heard speakers come to the podium and speak for five minutes about whatever was on their minds, but by agreement did not discuss their statements or take action.

Goal setting can be a tricky process, and as it turned out Greensboro wasn’t even close when it set the goal of turning 100 renters into homeowners in 2019.But it wasn’t close in the right direction. By the end of 2019, the Neighborhood Development Department and Housing Consultants Group (HCG) had helped 317 families purchase homes, which translates into nearly $43 million worth of real estate purchased according to HCG Executive Director Sofia Crisp.

The population of Greensboro is growing and it’s also getting older according to an annual report by the Greensboro Planning Department.

Greensboro in 2020 is going to be in the mental health business, which has always been a province of the Guilford County government.One of the issues raised about Greensboro starting a mental health program was that it was a service provided by Guilford County, but it appears that Guilford County is at least going to participate in paying for the program.

In 2019, a year when Greensboro had 44 homicides, which is the most murders Greensboro has ever had in a year, the first homicide was reported on Jan. 16, 2019.The first homicide for 2020 was reported on Jan. 1, and it was a triple homicide.

The Greensboro Aquatic Center (GAC) announced another big win in the competition for national swimming meets.It was announced Thursday, Jan. 2, that YMCA of the USA (Y-USA) will hold five national swimming championships at the GAC.

The Greensboro Farmers Curb Market on Saturday, Dec. 28 was the last one for a while at 501 Yanceyville St. where it has been for over 60 years.Jan. 4, 2020, the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market will have moved down the street about a mile to its temporary home at Revolution Mill. 

Ken Miller resigned as police chief of Greenville, SC, on Tuesday Dec. 31.

Greene Street will become a two-way street in 2020 according to Zack Matheny, president of Downtown Greensboro Inc. (DGI).

The portion of I-840, which is the official name of the Urban Loop between Battleground Avenue and Lawndale Drive, officially opened to traffic Monday, Dec. 30.

TripAdvisor.com gave Greensboro something of a year-end boost on Saturday, Dec. 28.

Last week most City of Greensboro offices were closed for three days. This week most are only closed on Wednesday, Jan. 1.

In 2020, Greensboro will spend $500,000 on a new mental health program, which includes a mental health response team that will be available 24/7 for any city employee who believes they are dealing with someone who is having a mental health crisis.From the City Council discussion on Dec. 17, which is the only time the new program has been discussed in public in any detail, several issues were apparent. One, nobody knows the details of how the program will work, or the actual goal of the program.

This is the time of year for predictions about the upcoming year, and one is that in 2020 the State of North Carolina will finally have a budget.

It appears that 2020 is going to kick off with a bang, at least as far as rezoning requests go.There is already one rezoning request on the agenda for the Wednesday, Jan. 22 Zoning Commission meeting that has garnered quite a bit of opposition and at this point no one knows exactly what the request will be.

The report from the Greensboro Criminal Justice Advisory Commission (GCJAC) Restraint Review Sub Committee packs a lot of information into one page.

Good news for Greensboro and Guilford County was reported on the front page of the Dec. 26 edition of the Wall Street Journal.

Just about everything was closed Wednesday, Dec. 25, in recognition of Christmas, but most businesses reopened on Thursday, Dec. 26.

The changes in downtown Greensboro have picked up the pace considerably in 2019.

Cone Health is working with the Greensboro Transit Agency (GTA), which runs Greensboro’s bus service, to solve a problem created when GTA streamlined its bus routes last summer.

The search for a new Greensboro police chief is now down to two candidates.

For the third year in a row, North Carolina was rated by Forbes as the best state in the country for business.

Friday morning, Dec. 20, Deborah Napper arrived at the Board of Elections office in the Old Guilford County Court House a little before 11 a.m. to file to run in the District 5 Guilford County Board of Education race. Filing closed at noon, so Napper had plenty of time, which turned out to be fortunate.

Not many potential candidates show up at the Guilford County Board of Elections three minutes before filing closes, not to file, but former Greensboro City Councilmember Tony Wilkins did.

Greensboro, through a competitive process, has been chosen to host the Next City National Vanguard Conference in May 2020.

The morning of Friday, Dec. 20, the last day to file for the 2020 election, is certain to be busy at the Guilford County Board of Elections office.But not everyone waited until the last day to file. Chris Meadows, the first vice president of the Guilford County Republican Party, filed to run for the state House District 57 seat on Thursday, Dec. 19.

Those who don’t frequent downtown Greensboro seem to constantly be worried about parking.If you fit into this category then Saturday, Dec. 21 and Sunday, Dec. 22 are days that should be ideal for your downtown shopping, dining or wandering around trip because Downtown Greensboro Inc. is providing free valet parking from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Mayor Nancy Vaughan and other city councilmembers can often been seen checking their text messages during City Council meetings.For those who want The Tanger Center for the Performing Arts to open on schedule, that turned out to be a good thing at the Tuesday, Dec. 17 meeting.

If actions speak louder than words, then the Greensboro City Council really likes City Attorney Chuck Watts.There was no statement made, but the City Council on Tuesday, Dec. 17 unanimously passed a motion to give Watts a $19,000 raise, from $190,000 to $209,000 a year. That’s a 10 percent raise, which is much better than rank-and-file city employees who received an average of a 3 percent raise in this year’s budget.

The $500,000 mental health program contracted by the City Council on Tuesday, Dec. 17 revealed the inner workings of the City Council.During the discussion of the program, Councilmembers Justin Outling, Tammi Thurm and Sharon Hightower all asked that the City Council hold a work session on this program that is taking the city in a brand new direction. The City Council has never had a work session on the new mental health service that the city will now be providing.

Following an 8-1 vote of the City Council Greensboro is now for the first time in the mental health business.

Those who have business with the City of Greensboro next week will have to do it early or late. Most of the city offices will be closed Tuesday, Dec. 24, Wednesday, Dec. 25 and Thursday, Dec. 26, which only leaves city offices open on Monday, Dec. 23 and Friday, Dec. 27.

Usually property is rezoned to allow some kind of change, but on Monday, Dec. 16, the Greensboro Zoning Commission approved a rezoning so everything could stay just like it is.

Republican 6th District Congressman Mark Walker announced that he’s not running for anything – in 2020.

The Greensboro Board of Adjustment voted unanimously to throw the sign regulations out the window and allow Cone Hospital to put up the signage a consultant says it needs. Cone, by the way, was granted a variance in 2013 for the signage that it currently has. If Cone were forced to follow the sign laws in Greensboro, it would be far more difficult to navigate than it is now.

The final scheduled Greensboro City Council meeting of 2019 will be held beginning at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 17.But the meeting begins with a closed session to do a six-month review of City Attorney Chuck Watts, so unless you want to sit and wait for 90 minutes, the real show time is 5:30 p.m.

Mental health is one of the top topics on the Tuesday, Dec. 17 Greensboro City Council meeting agenda.

Lt. Stacy Morton is no longer employed by the Greensboro Police Department.

City Councilmember Justin Outling usually begins his “Java with Justin” meetings by talking about items on the agenda for the upcoming City Council meeting.The meetings are held at the Dolce Aroma coffee shop at 8:30 a.m. the Friday before the monthly City Council business meeting held on the third Tuesday of each month.

Greensboro Mayor Nancy Vaughan was re-elected chair of the North Carolina Metropolitan Mayors Coalition at its annual convention this month, appropriately enough in Greensboro. Vaughan was first elected chair in November 2018.

The Greensboro Neighborhood Development Department released a report this week detailing fair housing complaint patterns in the city and the report is one of the first steps in developing a 10-year affordable Housing Plan to improve access to and the condition of affordable housing in Greensboro.

Up until Thursday, Dec. 12, only Democrats had filed to run in the North Carolina 6th District congressional race.But by Thursday afternoon, the race had livened up with three Democrats in the race and two Republicans filing almost at the same time in Raleigh.