Author: Scott D. Yost

Something big is coming to High Point but everyone will have to wait until lunchtime Thursday, Feb. 21 to find out what it is.

Grandover Resort was the place to have breakfast on Tuesday, Feb. 19 if you had anything at all to do with economic development in this region.

Events in Summerfield took an astonishing turn that left town’s people buzzing on Monday, Feb. 18.  

How’s this for encouraging people to buy a “Catalyst Club” season ticket to the High Point Rockers baseball games: Unlike the rest of the crowd, who will have to get by on mere beer and wine, Catalyst Club members will be allowed to buy mixed drinks at the games.

Guilford County’s top dog catcher, Animal Control Supervisor Lisa Lee, left that job on Sunday, Feb. 17, but she hasn’t gone far at all: On Monday, Feb. 18  Lee – who began heading up Animal Control in June 2017– started her new job as the community engagement manager for Guilford County’s Animal Services. 

Piedmont Triad International Airport (PTIA) just got some good news and some bad news.

The good news: In early April, United Airlines is adding new non-stop service to Houston.

The bad?  It’s likely only for a week.

And the winners are…

Well, winnersmight not be the precise term, but four lucky candidates have indeed been named to the brand new Guilford County Board of Elections – and county election officials think they know who the fifth and final member will be.

When you are the Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners looking for a place to hold your annual retreat, where do you have it? 

Why, Guilford County of course.

It’s nothing new for there to be a ruckus in Summerfield these days and this week the uproar there is about NC General Statute 1-521, which states that, when a “quo warranto” action is used to try and knock a town council member or city council member out of a seat, “It is unlawful to appropriate any public funds to the payment of counsel fees in any such action.”

When it comes to hiring government help, five grand isn’t a lot of money; however, animal welfare advocates in Guilford County are hoping that a new $5,000 grant will go a very long way toward the goal of helping dogs, cats and other animals at the Guilford County Animal Shelter find a loving home.

Guilford County dogs have been told to “stay.”

Specifically, they haven’t been orderedto stay; they have only been told to stay if they wish to stay, at Joymongers Brewing Company, that is.

They say the early bird gets the worm and High Point’s Bruce Davis is hoping the early declarer gets the mayor’s job.

On Tuesday, Feb. 12, Davis became the first candidate to throw his hat in the 2019 ring for the seat currently occupied by High Point Mayor Jay Wagner, who everyone expects to declare his intent to run for reelection later this year.

Guilford County Sheriff Danny Rogers didn’t waste much time replacing former Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Edward Melvin who turned in his letter of resignation on Tuesday, Feb. 12, for “personal reasons.” 

On Thursday, Feb. 12, Superior Court Judge David Hall, issued a stay in the lawsuit brought by former Summerfield Town Councilmember Todd Rotruck against sitting Town Councilmember Dianne Laughlin – who occupies the seat Rotruck was elected to in November 2017.

Guilford County Sheriff’s Department Chief Deputy Edward Melvin, who was just named to that position by Guilford County Sheriff Danny Rogers about two months ago, is turning in his resignation.

The Guilford County commissioners have had a hard time finding a good place to hold their annual retreat this year but they’ve finally landed on one: the new NOAH’S Event Venue in High Point at 4130 Mendenhall Oaks Parkway.

The latest chapter in the ongoing battle between former Summerfield Town Councilmember Todd Rotruck and the Town of Summerfield unfolded on Monday, Feb. 11 in courtroom 3-G of the Guilford County Courthouse in Greensboro. 

Guilford County doesn’t have good luck with its parking decks and that bad luck continued this week when the Guilford County commissioners were informed that the county-owned underground parking deck beneath the Phill G. McDonald Plaza in downtown Greensboro is in need of an estimated $9 million in repairs.

President Donald Trump just delivered his annual State of the Union assessment and now the Guilford County Health Division of the county’s Department of Health and Human Services has released its also once a year “State of the County’s Health Report.” 

Absolutely perfect.

That’s how the North Carolina Institute for Public Health (NCIPH) rated the Health Division of the Guilford County Health and Human Services Department in its 2019 accreditation evaluation. 

With the economy roaring and the unemployment rate near an all time low, the Guilford County Workforce Development Board has the difficult job of helping keep the county’s businesses supplied with a stream of skilled workers to feed the demand.  The organization has just made two moves intended to further that effort.

Guilford County Sheriff Danny Rogers is making a plea for what he says is a dire need for the county to raise the pay of the men and women serving in the Guilford County Sheriff’s Department. 

Supporters of a proposed Cure Violence program in Greensboro offered a passionate and unified message at the Guilford County Board of Commissioners meeting Thursday, Feb. 7.

At the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, Thursday, Feb. 7 meeting, Aydin Lyrik, a self-employed Greensboro resident, told the nine commissioners – and the audience in the meeting room and watching on TV – that he underwent a harrowing experience last August in which he was shackled naked in the Guilford County jail in Greensboro for hours, called the N-word and mistreated after being arrested on a drunken and disorderly charge.

They say there’s no harm in asking and that’s exactly what the Guilford County Board of Commissioners did in a very big way at their Thursday, Feb. 7 meeting: asked the State of North Carolina for $10 million so the state could foot half the cost of constructing a new adult care mental health facility on Third Street in Maple Professional Park in Greensboro.

The North Carolina Folk Festival in downtown Greensboro looks like it may be getting some much appreciated state help.

On Thursday, Feb. 7, NC Rep. Jon Hardister filed a bill – called simply the NC Folk Festival Funds bill – that would provide a $100,000 state grant for the festival that’s held in Greensboro.  State Reps. John Faircloth, Pricey Harrison and Amos Quick joined Hardister as primary sponsors of the bill.

At a Thursday afternoon, Feb. 7 work session of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, county staff told the commissioners that the clock was ticking and they needed to go for it – make a big play, that is – but the board, in spite of that advice, decided to drop back and punt.

The Guilford County Family Justice Center is best known for helping victims in cases of physical violence within marriages, relationships or families; however, this spring, the justice center will offer a program meant largely to help the county’s elderly keep from getting swindled out of their money.

One thing county officials in North Carolina hate more than anything is “unfunded mandates” – and boy is Guilford County being hit with a whopper of one this year.

Pick a number.

Pick one between 0 and 57 million.

It hasn’t received much publicity but the 100 counties in North Carolina including Guilford County have not had boards of elections since the courts declared the old North Carolina Board of Election unconstitutional in December. 

No one enjoys getting bills in the mail no matter what the size, but when a bill shows up asking for payment of $1.5 billion, it raises the consternation to a new level.

Guilford County no longer has a Board of Elections and, when it gets one back – whenever that is – it will look different than it did before, perhaps radically different.

High Point University is stepping in and attempting to play the same role the US Cavalry played in old westerns:  Save someone just in the nick of time. 

There wasn’t a whole lot of good news presented by a consulting group hired to assess the needs of the Guilford County school system, but one thing school officials apparently do not have to worry about is an increasing student population in the coming years.

Recommendations from the results of a just revealed consultant’s study call for closing down 10 schools in the Guilford County system including Kiser Middle School, Hampton Elementary School and Kearns Academy.

On Thursday, Jan. 31, representatives of Tallahassee-based MGT Consulting Group dropped a bomb on the Guilford County Board of Education and the Board of Commissioners. 

Right now, there’s a huge push to address school violence and other safety concerns – Guilford County commissioners and school board members are meeting this week to discuss school system security needs – and, on Friday, Feb. 1, the High Point Police Department will hold an active shooter exercise at Phoenix Academy to help students, teachers, administrators and the general public know how to respond in case of such an event.

No action by Guilford County government in the last decade has done more to bring statewide attention to the county’s operations than the opening of the Guilford County Family Justice Center in 2015, and that trend continues this week when more than 300 people from around the state come in to the county for the 2019 NC Family Justice Center and Collaborative Communities Conference.

The Cure Violence program proposed for Guilford County has taken another step closer to becoming a reality.

The Battle of Summerfield – the ongoing, nearly year-long battle over the Summerfield Town Council seat formerly held by Todd Rotruck – is about to heat up once again: Guilford County Superior Court has set a date of Monday, Feb. 11 to hear a very rare court action known as a “quo warrento” lawsuit that could remove a sitting member of the Summerfield Town Council and put Rotruck back into that seat until his appeal is heard.

High Point is thinking small but that’s not a bad thing.

The city is one of six in the country that has won a technical assistance grant to help manufacturers put unused and underused buildings back in business through the use of small-scale manufacturing operations.

The coming new cutting-edge mental health facility in Guilford County may not just be for Guilford County residents.  It looks now as though one likely consequence of getting state funding for the project is that the facility could not limit its patient care to Guilford County residents.

Guilford County Commissioner Skip Alston, who has served as chairman of the Board of Commissioners five times, can now add another accomplishment to his resume: Alston has been elected as the 2019 president of the Greensboro Men’s Club, one of the oldest, most storied and most significant clubs in North Carolina. 

Backers of a new initiative to jointly market four megasites in central North Carolina as the “Carolina Core” said in late 2018 that efforts to propel the plan forward would ramp up big time after the start of the year – and boy have they: Carolina Core ran the table in January, being a key topic of conversation at the meeting of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, the Piedmont Triad Airport Authority and the Guilford County Economic Development Alliance (GCEDA).

Guilford County has developed a very powerful secret weapon for recruiting new aviation companies to the area – in particular to the new 800-plus acre megasite under construction at Piedmont Triad International Airport (PTIA). 

The City of High Point’s checklist for the 2019 baseball season:

Build shiny new multi-million dollar stadium. Check.
Hire staff, vendors and players. Check.
Publicize the tar out of it. Check, check and check.

The Guilford County Economic Development Alliance (GCEDA), at its first meeting of the year on Thursday, Jan. 24, adopted a budget for 2019 – providing notice of the strategies the group will use in its attempt to bring more business to the county this year. 

Guilford County Board of Commissioners Chairman Alan Branson knows there’s no silver bullet for the economic challenges facing the county, but this week he said there is one thing that would help a great deal. 

A wily rooster that has been terrorizing late sleepers in Greensboro for over a week was finally apprehended this weekend by Guilford County Animal Control.