News-Record.com

The 27 people who attended last night's District 1 forum, excluding six City Council candidates, were nearly unanimous in their view that city government is letting them down.

The town hall-style meeting, hosted by the N&R's Allen Johnson and Eddie Wooten, surprised me. I didn't expect so many people to come out, nor did I anticipate the depth of their unhappiness.

Maybe people who are content don't show up for events like this, but the folks who attended the 75-minute session at the Glenwood library seemed closely connected to their communities and very well informed.

Many say the city is not providing adequate police protection or respondinig to calls for help. A woman is bothered by "crackheads" knocking on her door at 2 a.m. A man can't sit on his front porch anymore because of all the panhandlers. A woman won't go to a neighborhood store because the parking lot is filled up with drug dealers. A man won't bother to call police about drug dealers in his neighborhood because he's afraid he'll end up talking to a cop who's in with the drug dealers. Another man said he's worried about calls for more police because they'll end up arresting kids who need other kinds of help.

In sum, the feeling was that there aren't enough police to reduce crime, and the police can't really be trusted anyway.

Some people blistered the city for wasting money, like on the Friendly median, or for not collecting parking fines. Heads nodded when a man complained that the city has no business trying to annex 10,000 more residents when it can't provide adequate services for its current population. He quipped that Greensboro might be better managed if it were annexed by High Point. The City Council doesn't show any leadership but simply takes direction from the city manager, someone said. All the incumbents need to be voted out, another said.

Wow. There's a message here, and the city's elected officials ought to pay attention.