City Councilmember Justin Outling described his monthly “Java with Justin” meetings as “eclectic” discussions with a “diverse” group of people.
The meeting held Friday, Jan. 17 at Dolce Aroma coffee shop on South Elm was both. Men, women, young, old, employed, retired, black, white, tea drinkers, coffee drinkers – if you were looking for a diverse group, the 17 people who filled the seating area in the coffee shop had a lot of diversity.
The meetings begin with Outling going over what he believes are the more controversial parts of the City Council agenda for the next meeting, and then people can bring up any issue that they want.
Outling talked about the $250,000 federal Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) that was continued from the previous City Council meeting in part because nobody was certain what the council had approved at the November meeting.
Outling said that accepting a $250,000 federal grant was usually not something the council discussed, but in this case some councilmembers expressed concern that the resolution stated the Police Department would cooperate with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Division of Homeland Security and they were against that.
Outling pointed out that the Greensboro police don’t collect immigration information from people, so they had nothing to give to ICE.
His prediction was the City Council would vote to accept the grant, but several councilmembers would vote against it.
Greensboro is the lead agency on the JAG and distributes grant money to Guilford County and High Point. Someone asked if Greensboro turned the grant down what would happen to the money for Guilford County and High Point and Outling said his understanding was that the grant to Greensboro was for all three government entities.
Other topics discussed included:
Syngenta incentives
Affordable housing
I-Ride, GTA, public transportation in general
Housing density
Sustainability
The Tanger Center
Minority and Women’s Business Enterprise (MWBE)
Written Consent for police searches
Greensboro Community Justice Action Committee
Durham
Boards and commissions
Police Body Cam Videos
Zoning – Not In My Backyard
United Way
Ticket prices at the Piedmont Triad International Airport
And no doubt a couple other topics.
