City Councilmember Michelle Kennedy is asking for a correction of the article about the budget work session, but we stand by the story that states she objected to the funding for Sanctuary House.

Kennedy says that she is a supporter of Sanctuary House, but at the May 22 City Council meeting when the discussion was about whether or not to continue to fund organizations like Sanctuary House because they had been funded before – instead of to branching out to different nonprofits and nonprofits that furthered a City Council priority – Kennedy noted that Sanctuary House was a county priority area. That didn’t sound like support for Sanctuary House at the time and still doesn’t.

Several people who attended the council meeting agreed that Kennedy’s comments were not in support of funding Sanctuary House. I don’t see any way in context the comments could be interpreted as supportive.

Former City Councilmember Tony Wilkins, who was defeated in his reelection bid, had pushed hard to get funding for Sanctuary House. There was a question whether the funding would continue without Wilkins to push for it. Sanctuary House was one of the few nonprofit organizations funded by the city that was talked about by name.

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District 59 state Rep. Jon Hardister told me he had a call from a teacher recently who told him that he had been teaching since 2005 and had never received a raise.

Hardister said he was a little baffled since the Republican controlled legislature has been giving teachers raises ever since it took control of state government and the budget in 2013.

So Hardister looked this teacher up and discovered that he started teaching in 2005 at about $28,000 a year and in 2016-2017 the last year for which figures were available was being paid over $48,000.

Yet, Hardister said the teacher was adamant he had never received a raise. It makes you wonder what this teacher thinks “raise” means because he certainly had to know that he was being paid more money than he was in 2005 and he should be making more this year because teachers received another raise in the state budget and have another raise coming next year.

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I happened to be standing in front of a financial institution on Greene Street recently watching people park in the free 15 minute parking spaces, go in, take care of their banking business and come out get in their cars and leave.

Then I walked up the street two blocks to another financial institution. But there was no free parking. Even people going to the ATM had to find a quarter or risk a ticket. Although there are 15 minutes spaces in front of the ATM, the bank has two-hour spaces like so much of the downtown. Who needs to spend two hours in a bank?

The difference is that the first financial institution was the Greensboro Municipal Federal Credit Union, where many city employees bank. The second was a BB&T where regular citizens bank. Doesn’t it seem like someone on the City Council would insist that their constituents receive the same consideration as city employees?

There are actually a number of downtown businesses that would benefit from free 15 minute parking out front, but instead most have metered two-hour parking. If the City Council really wants to make the downtown more business friendly, why doesn’t it provide on-street parking designed for the businesses in that block instead of the one size fits all attitude the city currently has.

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It seems that many people misunderstand the North Carolina Education lottery which puts between $600 and $700 million into North Carolina schools every year. That sounds like a lot of money but when you consider that the state school budget is nearly $10 billion, the lottery money is more than a drop in a bucket, but it is not enough to solve the school funding needs for the state.

Some people seem to think that the education lottery was supposed to totally fund schools, but it was never meant to be more than an additional source of revenue.

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The City of Greensboro clearly puts a lot of time and effort into its website, so it baffles me that it can’t get meetings like this month’s Zoning Commission meeting listed on its calendars. It’s a meeting that is held every month and seems like it would be easy to post.

The good news that at least the city listed the City Council meetings for May on the calendar something it hasn’t always done in the past.