The first regular meeting of the newly elected Greensboro City Council will be held on Tuesday, Aug. 16 in the Katie Dorsett Council Chamber beginning at 4:30 p.m.
The newly elected City Council is almost identical to the old City Council, so the first meeting of the new City Council shouldn’t be much different from the last meeting of the former City Council.
The only difference brought about by the election is that City Councilmember Zack Matheny will be representing District 3 in place of former City Councilmember Justin Outling who ran for mayor.
Mayor Nancy Vaughan won her fourth term as mayor in a close election over Outling. However, that could be somewhat deceptive. In the first two mayoral elections Vaughan won in 2013 and 2015, she was elected to two-year terms. In 2017, the terms for mayor and City Council were extended to four years. So Vaughan has now won two two-year terms and two four-year terms as mayor.
The Aug. 16 City Council meeting has no public comment period, but the public is allowed to comment on any item on the agenda.
For those planning to attend or watch the meeting, the agenda calls for the City Council to go into closed session at 4:30 p.m. and the public portion of the meeting is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. However, the closed sessions often run long which means the public portions may begin sometime after 5:30 p.m.
Recusals were a campaign issue in the mayor’s race and Tuesday night there should be a number of recusals. Matheny is president of Downtown Greensboro Inc. (DGI) and funding for DGI is item I.2 on the agenda. It is expected that Matheny will asked to be recused from that vote.
There is also funding for the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce and the Guilford County Economic Development Alliance on the agenda. Vaughan is on the board of both organizations and according to a new state law she should be recused from votes on those issues.
The consent agenda – which is a list of supposedly noncontroversial and housekeeping type items that are not discussed and all passed with one vote – contains 32 items. Councilmember Sharon Hightower usually has a few consent agenda items that she is allowed to discuss, so it could take a while for the City Council to work its way through that agenda.
If you want to get a better take on conservative or libertarian views; go on an internet video website and search on on GB(Great Britain)News. Watch editorial comments by Neil Oliver, Mark Stein, Mark Dolen, and Nigel Farage.
The Dems run the county. The few voters who showed up have seen to that.
It is time to leave the county. The City where I was born and grew up is no more.
See ya, bud. LOL