What could be the last meeting of the Greensboro City Council elected on Nov. 7, 2017, will be held at 5:30 Tuesday, July 19, in the Katie Dorsett Council Chamber.
This City Council is believed to be the longest serving City Council on record. First elected to four-year terms on Nov. 7, 2017, and sworn into office on Dec. 5, the current City Council had its four-year terms extended by the state until after the election on Tuesday, July 26 – originally scheduled for Nov. 2, 2021 – was finally held and certified.
The Nov. 2, 2021 City Council election was first postponed because the US Census data necessary for City Council redistricting was delayed due to COVID-19 restrictions. It was then delayed again by the North Carolina Supreme Court so that legal challenges to statewide redistricting, which had nothing to do with the City Council election, could be settled.
The City Council has tentatively scheduled an “Organizational Meeting” for the newly elected City Council for Monday, Aug. 1, but that will be dependent on when the election results of the Tuesday, July 26 election are certified.
As soon as the election results are certified, the newly elected mayor and city councilmembers can be sworn into office.
Not all members of the current City Council have been serving for over four-and-a-half years. At-large Councilmember Hugh Holston was appointed by the City Council in September 2021 to fill the seat left vacant when former At-large City Councilmember Michelle Kennedy resigned to accept the position of director of the Greensboro Neighborhood Development Department.
In 2015, the voters passed a referendum to change the terms of the mayor and city councilmembers from two years to four years. So the 2017 election was the first to elect the members of the City Council to four-year terms and, as it turned out, they were elected to more than four-and-a-half year terms.
Until the July 26 election results are certified, nobody knows exactly how much more than four-and-a-half years the City Council will serve. If there is a delay in certifying the election, the current City Council will serve until the results are certified.
Let’s hope there are a lot of new faces around the table on Aug. 1.
Vote the bums out!
Too bad ALL. of the present council can not be replaced. A whole lot of wasting the tax payers money, a whole lot of Cronyism with members receiving tax payer funds that sit on the council. A hidden agenda with the 400,000.00 Gun show purchase. The largest tax increase in history and maybe the largest increase in the US.
IT IS TIME FOR A CHANGE -Vote Katie Rossabi, Tony Wilkins, Thurston Reeder and write in Chris Meadows for Mayor!
For those of us who love this city, respect the police, do not approve of tax dollars going to special interest of many council members and are just plain tired of paying the highest taxes ever, we will continue to pray that this will be the last council meeting for the current mayor and liberal members! To listen to local debates and realize the numerous untruths they tell such as Greensboro’s crime is lower at present, Greensboro is prepared to handle the new businesses (Zoom and Toyota) with trained personnel, housing and transportation, they were actually able to lower the tax rate by 3 cents…and on and on…they have repeated these untruths so often that they seem to actually believe them! Many politicians say things that are not true, but this group takes the cake with their “I and me” attitude that is nothing but solid untruths! We must get out and vote…Vote for Meadows, Matheny, Reeder, Wilkins and Rossabi to restore truth and integrity to Greensboro!