Author: Scott D. Yost

The City of High Point is telling residents to hold their horses before getting in the car – and that’s especially true for people who live on smaller streets. 

On Monday, Dec. 10, the Guilford County Sheriff’s Department released a list of the names of 25 employees fired by new Sheriff Danny Rogers and his staff.  With the entire list now public, many are attempting to read the tea leaves and discover why, out of 631 employees in the Sheriff’s Department, those 25 were dismissed.

On Sunday, Dec. 9, Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Alan Branson declared a State of Emergency for all of Guilford County due to the major winter storm Diego.  Branson said he did so after conferring with Guilford County Emergency Services officials.

Guilford County Emergency Services staff had their hands full thanks to the tremendous amount of snow dumped on the county and its roads on Sunday, Dec. 9. 

Passenger traffic is up at Piedmont Triad International Airport (PTIA) and that means something else may need to go up as well – the number of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents.

The Guilford County Animal Services Advisory board met on Thursday, Dec. 6 and got a strong message from some animal lovers who spoke from the floor: Find a way to use social media more effectively.

The Guilford County Animal Shelter is right on track – the only question now is where to get $15 million to pay for it.

By now, just about everyone knows a whole lot about Guilford County Sheriff Danny Rogers, but they might not be familiar with the man who is, as of Monday, Dec. 3, the second most powerful law enforcement officer in the department’s chain of command – brand new Chief Deputy Edwin Melvin.

Everyone knows that Greensboro with all of its streets is busy during snow storms, but Guilford County doesn’t maintain any streets, so do county employees just get a day off when it snows?  Not hardly what many citizens don’t realize is that Guilford County government goes through a great deal of preparation to assure that services are maintained when the white stuff falls.

New Guilford County Sheriff Danny Rogers has promised all kinds of changes for the Guilford County Sheriff’s Department – but one of those changes will be very visible right away: the new uniform policy. 

Guilford County officials were hoping to have the kiddie train at Northeast Park up and running in time for the Christmas festivities at the park, but that is not to be once again this year.

The Piedmont Triad Partnership, a regional economic development group with a goal of promoting a 12-county area in central North Carolina including Guilford County, laid out its “Carolina Core” regional branding effort in August, and now it’s gearing up for a big rollout of the initiative meant to draw a lot of attention to the central part of the state.

On Thursday, Dec. 6, the all-important 911 emergency call system in Guilford County – and in other areas across the southeastern United States – went down, with calls to 911 failing to go through or being redirected to other phone numbers. State emergency response officials say that the widespread outage, which lasted several hours on Thursday, appears to have been resolved and there is now a widespread investigation into the reason for that rare failure.

Let’s face it, not much work gets done between mid-December and New Year’s Day. That’s as true for local governments as it is for other sectors of society – however, Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Alan Branson is clearly already thinking about 2019. He said this week that Guilford County government is going to have a busy year ahead, and added that the year will bring a lot of financial challenges.

Guilford County Commissioner Carolyn Coleman who lives in Pleasant Garden and others in and around the town are saying they want their section of the county to see its fair share of development. Coleman has brought the issue up recently at several county commissioners meetings and she said this week that, while projects – industry, new restaurants, new retail, etc. – seem to be popping up all over the county, the same isn’t true of Pleasant Garden and southeast Guilford County.

Guilford County government just flushed $421,000 in taxpayer money down the commode.

New Vice Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Jeff Phillips said this week that the county is starting to move the needle in the right direction when it comes to the number of foster children in the county’s care, but he added that the problem is still enormous and it is something Guilford County has to make one of its top priorities in 2019.

On Wednesday, Dec. 5, while people across the country paid their final respects to George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States, local leaders were doing so as well.

Former Summerfield Town Councilmember Todd Rotruck said this week that Guilford County is stonewalling him on a public records request he submitted months ago. He said he is having a great deal of trouble getting a response to what he said is a straightforward request for information that he needs in order to continue his legal battle to regain his council seat.

Guilford County Register of Deeds Jeff Thigpen has been chosen by the Greensboro Regional REALTORS Association as the winner of the association’s 2018 Public Service Award. The honor was announced at a ceremony on Tuesday, Dec. 4 at the association’s headquarters at 23 Oak Branch Drive in Greensboro.

The Vital Records section of the Guilford County Register of Deeds Office was shut down Monday afternoon by a frightening event in which quick-thinking deeds’ staff and a deeds’ customer may have saved a man’s life.

It’s still early December, but it’s beginning to look a heck of lot like Christmas in Greensboro – and that was especially true at the Children’s Home Society of North Carolina where, on Tuesday, Dec. 4, an area real estate company dropped off 105 bikes for kids to find on Christmas morning.

Longtime Guilford County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Tim Mabe – who has served for over three and a half decades under three Guilford County sheriff’s – posted an emotional statement on Facebook – just before new Sheriff Danny Rogers was sworn in. In that post, Mabe poured out his thoughts on the department and his dismissal from it, and it generated a big reaction from community leaders and others.

Forsyth County is considering the purchase, preservation and development of about 215 acres of Duke Energy land to establish a new public park with roughly two miles of lakefront along Belews Lake – an area that’s very popular with Guilford County residents.

On Monday, Dec. 3, the Guilford County Board of Commissioners held a morning meeting to conduct a swearing-in ceremony and, though that sounds as though there’s something new on the way, the board was exactly the same old board after the swearing-in as it was before: Six commissioners were sworn back into their previously held seats for another four years.

It’s good to be the king – and Chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners Alan Branson must also believe it’s good to be the chairman.

Guilford County commissioner swearing-in ceremonies are always a jovial affair, however, on Monday, Dec. 3, the commissioners had an unusually elevated level of fun – with just about every single commissioner getting solid laughs at some point in the morning from the cheery audience in the Old Guilford County Court House.

Guilford County Chairman of the Board of Commissioners Alan Branson has already served one year as chairman, but some county residents may still not know much about the man who is now, for the second year in a row, the most powerful elected official in Guilford County government.

Guilford County government wants to hear from you.

The Guilford County health department likes to catch health problems early – especially when it comes to school children, and under a new program – Ready for School, Ready for Life – that department is going to start helping those children really early on. Specifically, county health workers are going to get involved before a child is even born: They’ll step in when the parents are just starting to think about conception.

Piedmont Triad International Airport (PTIA) is trying to get a runway rehabilitated but now it has to go back to the drawing board at a cost of $133,000. 

A rose by any other name is pretty much still a rose but there’s a lot more to a name change when it’s the result of a merger of a national law firm and one of North Carolina’s best known firms.

When Guilford County Sheriff-elect Danny Rogers is sworn in on Monday, Dec. 3, most eyes will be on Rogers, however, there’s a lot of subtext in his swearing-in ceremony since the man doing the honors – former NC Supreme Court Chief Justice Henry Frye – has been a major advocate for the themes of racial justice that Rogers says will be important in his administration as sheriff.

Guilford County Sheriff-elect Danny Rogers has his backers and his detractors, however, whatever anyone says about him, this much is true: Even before being sworn in, Rogers has brought a great deal of statewide and even some national attention to the Guilford County Sheriff’s Department.

For the second year in a row, Forbes magazine has named North Carolina as the country’s Best State for Business.

Guilford County Sheriff-elect Danny Rogers is now hitting back hard at his critics – especially Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes – and is adamantly defending his move to fire 28 employees in the Sheriff’s Department.

Guilford County Sheriff’s Department Colonel Randy Powers, one of the nearly 30 employees who has been told that as of Dec. 3 when Sheriff-elect Danny Rogers takes over he will no longer have a job, is expressing his concerns over what he said is the wholesale dismantling of effective Guilford County Sheriff’s Department programs that have been carefully put in place over the years to keep the county safe.

Guilford County staff is getting things ready for a huge day on Monday, Dec. 3 when newly elected officials will be sworn in in Greensboro and High Point – and the Guilford County Board of Commissioners will elect a new chairman.

If you have some home additions or structures on your property that you never listed with the Guilford County Tax Department, you might want to do so because they’re probably going to catch you in February anyway.

The High Point Rockers baseball team – which will play ball starting in May in the new downtown stadium in High Point – has hired a high profile former major league player to help lead the team: the 1987 World Series Most Valuable Player, and 1988 Cy Young Award winner, Frank Viola.

Jobs, jobs, jobs. That’s what every community wants and the good news according to the Guilford County Economic Development Alliance (GCEDA) is that Guilford County is bringing those jobs in.

High Point Mayor Jay Wagner and City Manager Greg Demko say the city’s downtown is seeing tremendous investment – and that there’s much more to that story than just the new baseball stadium project.

Mars may need women but Cone Health needs nurses.

New Guilford County Sheriff-elect Danny Rogers has selected Steve Parr, a Republican who ran against Sheriff BJ Barnes in the 2018 Republican sheriff’s primary, to be one of his top right hand men in the new Sheriff’s Department.

The satisfaction level at the Tuesday, Nov. 27 meeting of the Piedmont Triad Airport Authority was sky high thanks to new numbers that show a dramatic uptick in the number of seats on passenger flights serving the airport.

Does he or doesn’t he?

That is: Does District 3 Republican Guilford County Commissioner Justin Conrad want to be chairman of the Board of Commissioners for the next 12 months? Conrad, who is now vice chair of the board, has been talking and meeting with commissioners from both parties this week and everyone seems to agree on one thing – the job is Conrad’s if he wants it.

Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes said on Tuesday, Nov. 27 that Guilford County Sheriff-elect Danny Rogers is conducting a “bloodletting” – defined as an indiscriminate massacre – of the Guilford County Sheriff’s Department by firing a huge number of officers, including many who play key leadership roles in the department.