News-Record.com

Tuesday, Nov. 2 is Election Day. If you live in Guilford County and are unsure of how to go about voting, surf over to the Board of Elections website for some helpful info: http://www.co.guilford.nc.us/government/elections/index.html

Everybody else, feel free to stick around. We here at Inside Scoop will pretty much all be working the late shift, but we'll leave this thread open throughout the day for you to discuss whatever election day topics spring to mind. And if you want to alert us to something going on with the elections, feel free to drop us a line here as well.

For election results and stories this evening, the News & Record homepage is: http://www.news-record.com

The Greensboro City Council is usually a pretty reserved bunch, especially compared to the other governmental body across Phil McDonald Plaza. About the only time there's a spirited discussion is after all of the agenda items are done and it comes to the "items from council" portion. That's the time everyone can distribute darts and laurels.

Starting off, Council member Yvonne Johnson asked why the city didn't vote to move Halloween back a day so it wouldn't be observed on a Sunday.

Mayor Keith Holliday and Council member Tom Phillips argued that it wasn't the city role to dictate when a holiday is celebrated. City Attorney Linda Miles agreed.

"I don't think in all fairness you can control when children go trick-or-treating," she said.

The longest and the most informative discussion came from Phillips, who usually has plenty of constructive criticism. Tom cleared up some misunderstandings about the city's rental inspection ordinance and asked about the re-deteriorating stretch of Randleman Road near I-40.
But the most frank discussion came as Phillips and others on the council let it be known that they didn't like being left in the dark about the merger of the Chamber of Commerce, Action Greensboro and the Greensboro Economic Development Partnership. The city gives money to two of the three groups, and the mayor and the city manager serve on some of their boards. But it seemed that few on the council other than Holliday knew about the merger until it was a done deal and reported in the media.

Phillips: "That's the history in Greensboro. A small group of people decide something and don't tell anyone."

Johnson: "We just felt blindsided."

Council Member Sandy Carmany said she had reservations about the makeup of the board, pointing out that there was nobody from "my side of town" on the group's executive committee.

Holliday apologized for not letting the council in on the impending merger and suggested a get together with the heads of the new Greensboro Partnership before the council's next meeting. It's at 5 p.m. in the ground-level conference room on Nov. 16 if you're interested in going.

Back in September, we reported about a "community relations project" being launched by Mayor Keith Holliday. Holliday gave an update to council members in the form of a memo (posted here) that sums up the progress of pairing folks for the seminars and updates the financing.

Holliday said that after council member Tom Phillips raised questions about the city contributing $30,000 for the project, he decided to ask private donors to bear the entire cost of hiring the Rochester, N.Y. consultant to facilitate the program. So far, Holliday said $194,000 of the $319,000 cost had been raised.

But he defended the usefulness of the program, dubbed the "Greensboro Bicentennial Mosaic Partnership Project."

"There were some initial concerns by a few people regarding duplications of efforts but when the concept and details were more fully explained, I believe most people concerned realized the value of reaching individuals within our community that probably would not be exposed to race relationship building as a matter of course in their daily lives."

Project co-director Pat Boswell said a committee has almost finished inviting the 180 folks to be a part of the program, and the first orientation meeting will be Nov. 18.

Inside Scoop will post a listing of the participants as soon as it is finalized.

Full disclosure: My boss, Editor John Robinson, has been invited (he blogs about it here), and his boss, Publisher Robin Saul, is on the project's advisory committee. Neither have any involvement in our writing about the program.

...you know the rest.

Sure, election day was last week, but two key election-related events will determine the final makeup of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners this week.

John Parks won the at-large Guilford County Commissioner race over incumbent Trudy Wade, coming from behind by virtue of provisional ballots cast last week but not counted until today.

The Guilford County Board of elections certified election returns this afternoon, after spending the better part of two hours culling provisional ballots, separating those that were cast be registered voters from those cast by people not allowed to vote.

Of the 2,182 provisional ballots cast, 1,194 were counted.

Reasons for throwing out a provisional ballot can vary. Simple reasons include that the voter in question was did not register by the deadline or did not include needed information on their voting form. The Board of Elections threw out 22 ballots cast by one-time felons who had failed to re-register with the board of elections.

As reported earlier, provisional ballots changed the outcome of one Guilford County race. John Parks beat Trudy Wade for an at-large county commissioner seat, despite Wade having a lead after election night.

Guilford County's Steve Troxler may have provisional ballots to thank for his win in the statewide Ag Commissioner race. The AP reported the following Tuesday afternoon:

"Republicans Steve Troxler and Les Merritt were poised to capture seats on the Council of State following a canvass Tuesday of vote totals in last week's election, a state official said.

"Gary Bartlett, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said unofficial county tallies from the canvass show Troxler with enough votes to oust incumbent Democrat Britt Cobb from the agriculture commissioner's office and Merritt defeating incumbent Democratic auditor Ralph Campbell.

"The results will not be firm until the canvass is finished Wednesday, Bartlett said. The process involves counties double-checking their tabulations from voting machines and adding totals from provisional ballots."

Sure, she's a television personality and all, but that didn't help Cindy Farmer fight city hall - or rather the Guilford County Planning Board - Wednesday night. Farmer appears on the Fox 8 (WGHP) morning news as an anchor, according to the station's web site.

Among the cases on the Planning Board's agenda Wednesday was a request to change the legal designation of a piece of property along Alamance Church Road at Southeast School Road. Previously set aside for farm uses, the owners wanted the new designation of limited business.

That designation would allow for a convenience store and other businesses that would serve the neighborhood.

However, the five-acre parcel abuts Alamance Elementary school. (Read the planning staff report on the case here. It's the second item, complete with a map.)

Farmer was among a group of about a dozen neighbors asking the board to reject the plan. They worried that the new businesses would create more traffic in an already congested area and that store patrons might trespass at the school.

"I was reading a story on the news today that Charlotte was the number one city in the state for sprawl," Farmer said, musing that the Greensboro area might be heading in that direction. She gave one of the longest, and most impassioned, presentations of the opponents, calling the potential development a "disaster."

At least five board members were unimpressed. The board voted 5-2 to allow the change, although the request could be reviewed by the Guilford County Commissioners if it is appealed.

A final note: unless they overflow the hearing room at the Old County Courthouse due to a particularly interesting case, Planning Board meetings are shunned usually by television news. But there was one station with a cameraman and a live truck on the scene Wednesday night: Fox 8.

...for City Council member Yvonne Johnson, the latest public official in these parts to start themselves a blog.

And thanks to JW for the heads up.

An e-mail from George Gilbert at the Guilford County Board of Elections:

"The Guilford County Board of Elections will meet at 10:30 a.m. On Tuesday, November 16,2004, for the purpose of conducting a recount of the votes cast in the November 2nd election in the contests for Commissioner of Agriculture, Superintendent of Public Instruction and the At-Large contest for the Guilford County Board of Commissioners for the 2nd seat to be awarded

"The meeting will take place in the Old County Courthouse at 301 W Market St, Greensboro."

Kay Cashion will replace Jeff Thigpen on the Guilford County Board of Commissioners. A story will be in Friday's paper.

There are two meetings of note next week.

We reported in Saturday's Greensboro edition of the paper (the story will run Monday in our High Point edition) that Trudy Wade has filed a protest in her loss to John Parks in the at-large County Commissioner race.

Wade held a 74-vote advantage when voters were tallied on election night. But that did not count more than 1,000 provisional ballots which would be tallied a week later. Those votes gave Parks a 242-vote win.

Wade's protest focuses on some of those provisional votes. Provisional ballots allow someone to cast their vote even when poll workers can't immediately determine whether they should be allowed to participate in the election on Election Day.

(For those who want to get into the nitty gritty: these electronic documents were provided by Wade's lawyers on Friday. They are in Microsoft Word format: A letter to Elections Director George Gilbert; the actual protest form prescribed by the state; and the addendum to that form, which really explains what's going on.

If you're totally confused by that headline, head over to the word nerds at Merriam Webster. They've got a special section devoted to political phraseology, complete with the etymology of words like pundit (originally meaning a Hindu sage), incumbent, and bully pulpit.

A couple of things that didn't make it in time for our story (unposted) this morning on the city council:

The Guilford County Commissioners will meet on Thursday, Dec. 2, for the final full meeting of the current board. They are scheduled to decide on their incentive offer to Dell. You can see the agenda by clicking here.

Their next meeting will be the morning of Dec. 2, when the new board will be sworn in.

A few housekeeping items:

...but interesting anyway.

John Best Jr. is a Durham City Council member who apparently has been under scrutiny for being behind on some bills. Recently, a judge held the councilman in contempt of court, which the Durham Herald Sun duly reported. (A Google-cahsed version of the story is here.)

To help him fight the charges, Best and his current wife have fired up a new website, part of which gives residents helpful hints on how to contribute to his legal defense fund.

N.C. Sen. John Edwards is doing a farewell tour - actually, he's calling it a "Thank You Tar Heels Tour" - that will land in Greensboro on Nov. 30.

Edwards will be at the Greensboro Historical Museum at 11:30 a.m. According to a news release from his office, the event is open to the public.

...and find out if the city's leaf crews have gotten around to your humble dwelling to suck up your extra leaves. At this city-run site, you can type in your address and find out whether the city has come through your neighborhood yet for one of the two remaining rounds of pickup this season.

For instance, type in 1403 Pebble Drive, home of Mayor Keith Holliday, and you'll find that crews are working in his area of the city, but they haven't gotten to his street yet.