The first Greensboro City Council business meeting of 2023 set a record that is going to be hard to beat.

The Tuesday, Jan. 17 City Council meeting began shortly after 5:30 p.m. and adjourned at 6:09 p.m., lasting just a little bit more than half an hour.  Since it was the first business meeting of 2023, the meeting set a record for the shortest meeting of the year, but it’s one that is going to be hard to break.

The meeting lasted longer for the City Council, since it held a closed session beginning at 4 p.m.

But considering that the City Council only holds one business meeting a month, to finish all the business for a municipality of 300,000 in 30 minutes is noteworthy.

The agenda included two different requests for annexation and zoning, but one of those requests – for property on Bridgeport Road and Cedar Park Road, which had been continued from the Nov. 15, 2022 meeting – was withdrawn by the applicant at the Jan. 17 meeting.

So, the only annexation and zoning request that was heard was for property at Cahill Drive and South Elm-Eugene Street and the vast majority of the request was to rezone the property from Planned Unit Development (PUD) to PUD with several restrictions on the development removed.

The restrictions on the development had been included when the City Council approved the original PUD zoning, until the final parcels of land could be annexed and zoned.  So, the purpose of the annexation, zoning and rezoning was to annex and zone the final 1.7 acres in the 30-acre development and remove the restrictions.

City Councilmember Yvonne Johnson, who doesn’t like to waste time at meetings, made the motion to approve the request before the public hearing on the item was officially closed.

Since the City Council had previously discussed and approved the PUD zoning, there wasn’t much need to do it again.  However, without Johnson pushing her fellow councilmembers along, that certainly could have happened. The motions for annexation, zoning and rezoning passed unanimously.

The City Council also voted 8-1, with Councilmember Zack Matheny voting no, to allocate up to $160,000 for financial audits or reviews for nonprofits to enable them to receive a total of $586,000 in faux American Rescue Plan funds.  Matheny spoke against this in the City Council work session when it was discussed.

The City Council is requiring nonprofits receiving the faux ARP funds to submit either a financial review or an audit, and eight members of the City Council agreed that the city should foot the bill up to $20,000 each for those required financial reviews or audits.

City Councilmember Nancy Hoffmann participated in the meeting via Zoom.

About