News-Record.com

To Councilman Mike Barber :

Mike, please do what's right to keep Greens-
boro from looking like Detroit or South Central
LA. ! ! ! For Pete sake, keep the trash collection
moving if anything else. The trash has already
begun to mount up in several area's of Greens-
boro causing our city to look like slums and
a welcome center for the transit bumbs you find
in the large cities. Companies don't want to
locate to cities that are an EYE SORE ! ! ! The
grass, trees, and weeds should have the most
attention. Hundreds of post cards, brochures,
and flyers on Greensboro with be falsely telling
the country that Greensboro is this beautiful
place in Central North Carolina while in real
time we will look like hell ! ! !

Thanks Pal, Ben B.

I think you should cut the budget for landscaping and call on volunteers to step in and take care of the upkeep. We have master gardeners here, make it a project!

Our City Government is insane. We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a bicentennial party. We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars acquiring new park property at Barber park, yet we cant keep our city maintained. Whats wrong with using community service crews to do the work. These folks owe a debt to society let them really work it off.. Make it part of the ankle bracelet requirements. If you need to bring it back to the city services department, then use the funds to hire part-time young people to do the work. How many articles have we had this year about the job shortage for young people. Our City Council needs to think...how can we turn these downturns into opportunities for our communities.

Quality of life in Greensboro has gone straight downhill under this greedy, self-serving city council and mayor. They've passed their pet development projects, now they're going to neglect the rest of the city. Can't we run these creeps out of town?

Public spaces should be reasonably maintained, period. A weedy, overgrown, unkempt "Welcome to Greensboro" sign speaks volumes, negatively, both to visitors and to residents.

I agree that using landscaping duties as public service or youth employment are viable options -- either is preferable to letting the city quite literally go to seed.

Everyone that wants to keep the city looking perfect could volunteer some of their time for the cause. It also sounds like a good time to put those criminals to work. We have a decent amount a criminals sitting around doing nothing and I'm sure they could handle the labor side of things. Weeding, spreading mulch, planting flowers. Reducing the labor cost should cut the landscaping budget in half.

Greensboro should learn to think outside of the box every once in a while.

The question I asked myself before I had even read half-way through this article was "I wonder how many of the parks affected will be on my side of town?" I am a white female, who would be considered upper middle class, who lives in a Southeast section of Greensboro that is predominantly Hispanic and African-American. There is a park nearby my home and I do use it as do other folks in my neighborhood; however I must admit, one must travel to the "other" side of town if one wants to really enjoy the scenery or have a picnic. "My side of town" already has the joy of limited police presence coupled with slow response which allows us to reap the benefits of constant noise from booming bass sounds from cars speeding up and down our roads while dodging kids as best they can....Are we really that suprised that these cuts would occur in the lower income areas??? Some of our County Commissioners build huge homes with all of the bells and whistles so that their kids/grandkids never have to visit a city park to enjoy a Sunday afternoon; however there are lots of kids (and adults) who rely on the parks to have fun and fellowship with their friends and families. I am in total agreement that our leadership needs to think outside the box to reduce costs but they also need to do this in a fair and equitible way....if I have the opportunity to volunteer to keep my park clean then I certainly would want someone in a more affluent neighborhood to have that same opportunity.