The Greensboro City Council is holding a rare Thursday virtual work session on March 4 at 2 p.m.
The council holds regular meetings on the first and third Tuesdays of the month, and when it has work sessions, it almost always holds them in the afternoon prior to the 5:30 p.m. meeting. So it is rare for the City Council to meet on a Thursday.
Both items on the agenda for the work session were continued from the Tuesday, Feb. 16 City Council meeting and the plan is to have them on the agenda for the Tuesday, March 16 meeting.
The two items on the agenda for the work session are the “Airport Overlay Update” and “Economic Development Incentive Program Update.”
Both of these items were thought to be ready for a vote on Feb. 16, but the City Council decided that they needed to be discussed at a work session before the vote and continued both items to make that possible.
The airport overlay zone amendment was continued because of a disagreement between the Piedmont Triad Airport Authority and the Planning Department on the proposed regulations in the more restrictive Airport Overlay District 1.
The Airport Authority has asked that the same notification and noise abatement construction regulations that apply in Airport Overlay District 2 further away from the airport, also apply in Airport Overlay District 1 which is closer to the airport.
The Planning Department is not in favor of having the notification and noise abatement construction regulations apply in Airport Overlay District 1 and did not include them in the proposed amendments.
The reason the City Council did not approve the new Economic Development Incentive Program on Feb. 16 is that Councilmember Sharon Hightower requested that companies locating in the impact zones, identified as economically distressed areas, be required to hire a percentage of their workforce from the impact zones.
The two impact zones make up the area that is usually referred to as East Greensboro.
Hightower suggested the companies be required to hire 10 percent of their workforce from the impact zones and Mayor Nancy Vaughan questioned whether that percentage was high enough.
Councilmembers Justin Outling and Marikay Abuzuaiter have both questioned the advisability of placing further requirements on businesses planning to locate in economically distressed areas.
“Hightower suggested the companies be required to hire 10 percent of their workforce from the impact zones and Mayor Nancy Vaughan questioned whether that percentage was high enough.”
Required? As in, if you don’t hire a minimum of 10% we will stop your company from getting any City contracts? Sounds to me like our Council is a form of a socialist dictatorship, which is already evident in Washington, DC.
And you wonder why so many companies are not willing to work with the City, even if they were the lowest bidder.