News-Record.com

For those trying to program their TiVos or crafting their three-minute statement to read from the floor, here are some schedule changes for the Guilford County commissioners:

From Eric Dyer in our Raleigh Bureau:

Guilford County's legislative delegation has elected new leaders.
Rep. Maggie Jeffus succeeds Rep. Alma Adams as chairwoman. Both are Greensboro Democrats.

Democratic Sen. Katie Dorsett of Greensboro is vice-chair. Newcomer Rep. Laura Wiley, a High Point Republican, holds down the bank account as treasurer and secretary.

The delegation held its first meeting of the General Assembly session Wednesday in Raleigh.

UPDATE: Browns Summit's Steve Troxler is certified as the winner of the Ag Commissioner race.

The State Board of Elections will meet in Raleigh Friday to make their third run as settling the Commissioner of Agriculture race between Guilford County Republican Steve Troxler and Democratic incumbent Britt Cobb. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. at the board's offices, 506 N. Harrington St.

As I mentioned in a story today, High Point's City Council will hold its annual retreat Saturday starting at 8:30 a.m. They have chosen an appropriate meeting place for the governing body of the home furnsihings capital of the world -- the La-Z-Boy Lecture Hall inside High Point University's Norton Hall.

Guessing that even loyal Scoop readers won't be rolling out of bed to make the 8:30 start time, I'll have gavel-to-gavel coverage in Sunday's paper - in the Greensboro section. Why? The Sunday High Point section is printed in advance. According to John Robinson, our press isn't big enough to print all the Sunday sections live, so High Point is one of the sections printed in advance.

The retreat story might make the front of the Greensboro section, but if not, be prepared to root around inside the section to find it.

I just filed my story on High Point City Council's annual retreat, so the brave among you will be able to read plenty more about it in Sunday's paper. Here are a couple of other quick thoughts.

The best way to cushion the blow of spending seven hours indoors on a sunny and warm (for February) day: leather chairs. City Councilors met inside the La-Z-Boy Lecture Hall at High Point University's Norton Hall, and the chairs were appropriately comfortable given the room's sponsor.

The News & Record came up during a discussion of how and when to borrow $73.65 million in bonds to pay for projects that voters approved in a November referendum. City Manager Strib Boynton held up a copy of a recent News & Record that had a story about bond projects approved by Greensboro's voters in 2000. He said he never wanted to see a headline about High Point's bond projects like this one.

High Point hopes to complete its bond projects in five to six years.

Update: Here's my story on the retreat.

In case you missed these stories in Saturday's paper, here are two election updates for you:

That is just one of many quotes from a press release announcing that Libertarian Party presidential candidate Michael Badnarik will be back in North Carolina this week.

At first, Scoop thought he might be coming to hit John Edwards up for a job after bonding over both being on the loosing end of the presidential campaign.

But no. A release sent in via our news-record.com feedback site indicates Badnarik is coming to speak about his campaign and Libertarian ideals at a couple of NC events:

Via our friends at the AP, here's the low down on Tuesday's swearing-in for Steve Troxler. Please note, a tractor is involved.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - Agriculture Commissioner-elect Steve Troxler won't delay in getting to work after he's sworn in to office Tuesday morning.

After the ceremony at the State Fairgrounds and a brief reception, Troxler will drive a tractor from west Raleigh to his new office downtown.

The State Board of Elections certified Troxler as the new commissioner Friday following a three-month legal battle with Democratic incumbent Britt Cobb over more than 4,400 missing votes in Carteret County.

Cobb conceded the election to Troxler as the State Board of Elections was to meet a third time to determine how to handle the lost ballots.
The concession prompted the board to certify Troxler as the winner by 2,287 votes among more than 3.3 million cast.

Troxler, a tobacco and wheat farmer from Guilford County, is North Carolina's first Republican commissioner elected by popular vote.

Troxler is expected to be joined by his wife and his two adult sons at the swearing-in, which comes more than three weeks after the official inauguration of other statewide elected officials.

I had rather grandiose plans to write about electronic voting machines long about November or December last year. Still have plans, but they've gotten put off so many times it isn't funny.

But the state legislature has been moving along with its own look at electronic voting machines and today a study committee has made some recommendations. I'm going to post the AP story on their recommendations on the jump.

I'd be interested in hearing comments about the steps the committee has recommended, either by comments or e-mail. Are those steps enough? If not, what else should the state be doing to make sure voters can have confidence in elections?

Now here's the jump:

The city of High Point has been repaid for helping cities in North Carolina and Florida cope with hurricane damage last year.

Crews from the city's public services and electric departments lent a hand to Asheville and the Florida cities of Leesburg, Lakeland and Vero Beach.

Those four cities reimbursed High Point a total of $333,379 for its expenses while providing hurricane relief.

There's been some lively discussion about the twilight years of the St. James II apartment complex on South Eugene Street. Our Margaret Banks wrote about the ailing complex in the Sunday edition, eliciting commentary on David Hoggard's blog.

Hoggard supports the contention of St. James' nonprofit managers that city leaders pushed the complex into the abyss or at least sat on their hands while crack dealers did the same. Remember that the apartments are adjacent to a site that was once pitched as the location for a new minor-league baseball stadium.

The directors of the Christian Counseling & Wellness Group, Donald and Sarah Graham, spelled out those accusations in their response to a city audit of the apartments' operation in 2004, which we have scanned and made available online in its entirety. In the audit report (click here to read the PDF) Internal Audit Director Len Lucas noting that the apartments' rehab work had been unexplainably stalled.

In response, the Grahams write (click here to read) "Are we sending up smoke screens and making excuses for the lack of progress toward completing the renovation project of St. James Homes II? The answer is absolutely not. This project has not moved forward because 'we have been redlined.'"

They continue: "We realize the sensitivity of this issue and the danger of rubbing certain individuals the wrong way, but we did not come this far to just give up all the battle that we have already fought. It is so sad to have so many people tell us that we can not save these apartments when the "establishment" - meaning city leaders and Down Town Greensboro, Inc. - wants them destroyed for their own personal agenda. We have had people call the city leaders the "Greensboro Mafia."

Lucas responds (click to read here): "I appreciate your candid responses, however there are still issues outstanding that do not appear to have a solution or plan of commitments in place to rectify."

"We appreciate both of your efforts to provide affordable housing in Greensboro. Unfortunately, it does not appear that St. James Homes II is a feasible project at this time," Lucas wrote.

City Council member Tom Phillips also responds to Hoggard's post, writing that "If this is a conspiracy, please explain it to me. Some people find it easier to blame others for their failures than to accept responsibility for themselves."

I'm writing a story for Tuesday's paper regarding a budding effort by the mayors of Guilford County's northwestern towns - Oak Ridge, Stokesdale and Summerfield - to bring a YMCA to the area.

Talks are still in very early stages and there are quite a few steps to be taken before the YMCA agrees to locate a branch there.

However, the mayors do have a general idea of what they want. Each said they would like to see a branch central to all three towns that would have ball fields that could be used by the ever-growing number of children playing youth sports.

And each mentioned the possibility that the towns could work together to but property or take other steps to bring the YMCA to the area. To gauge interest in such a project, the News & Record issued a query on our Reader Advisory Network to members who live in northwest Greensboro and Guilford County zip codes. (If you'd like to find out more about the network, click here.)

(Update: I'm posting a few more responses that I received after last night's deadline. You'll also notice if you read our story in today's paper - sorry folks, it's not posted - and the e-mail replies of the folks we quote in that story, the quotes are not the same. That's because for purposes of a story, we typically go back and re-interview the source over the phone or in person.)

Here are some of the replies:

This morning, our Margaret Banks writes about Republican County Commissioner Linda Shaw's contact with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development leading up to the agency's withdrawal of $900,000 in grants to fix up the St. James II apartment complex.

On Sunday, we wrote about the two managers of St. James II and their accusations that the city's establishment brought about the demise of the low-income apartments on Eugene Street. In a letter to the city (read here), Donald and Sarah Graham allege that the "Greensboro Mafia," namely "city leaders and Down Town Greensboro, Inc.(sic)" wanted the apartments to fail so they could be bulldozed.

While not on the City Council's agenda for tonight, St. James and Commissioner Skip Alston's remark that the city staff is "racist" may be a topic of discussion among council members at the end of the meeting.

You may remember Guilford County Commissioner Paul Gibson's "Legacy Fund" idea, which we wrote about here. Essentially, the county would charge an extra 5-cents on the property tax rate to create a $1 billion fund that could be used for capital projects.

In a memo (linked here), county Finance Director Brenda Jones Fox puts in her 2-cents. Among her thoughts:

"The structure places the burden of creating the Legacy Fund on taxpayers for the next twenty years however the benefits only accrue to taxpayers and citizens beyond a twenty-year horizon raising the issue of intergenerational equity. If the Legacy Fund were to pass it could make it more difficult to get voter approval to provide additional funding for capital needs that are currently present or would occur during the 20 years prior to any funds being available from the Legacy Fund."

Read Jones' memo here.

Are public bodies allowed to alter their past? Is parliamentary time travel possible? Apparently the Guilford County Board of Elections thinks so.

Hang with me; it takes a bit of explaining:

The board met Tuesday. At the end of its meeting, Chairman Jim Turner remembered - correctly - that back in December the board had voted to certify 441 ballots that had been cast out of precinct on Election Day.

Those votes are at issue in the contested election between County Commissioner Trudy Wade and John Parks and are the same type of ballots at issue in the contest of the state Superintendent of Public Instruction race. Since that meeting, the N.C. Supreme Court has ruled such votes are illegal but the county board hasn't gotten instructions on how to fix the problem.

As Turner recalled - again correctly - the three-member board voted to certify those votes but Republican member Jim Pfaff reserved the right to move for reconsideration later. Typically, a board can only reconsider a motion at the meeting where it originally passes or the next meeting.

That "next meeting" was in January and passed without anyone bringing up the issue of the 441 votes. In all likelihood, that won't matter because the state board will give the county board specific instructions on what to do.

But Turner said he wanted to keep all the board's options open. Essentially, he wanted the board to make a motion that would keep the issue of the 441 votes alive. But technically, because that January meeting had passed without anyone saying anything, the board had missed its window to do something.

What to do?

Easy.

Change the minutes.

Lead by Turner, board members voted to amend the minutes of their January meeting to say that they had, in fact, voted to continue the issue related to the 441 votes.

No kidding.

They voted to record in their minutes from January that they took an action that actually didn't happen until Feb. 15.

Turner said the move was legal because it corrected an oversight, despite the fact it would seem to conflict with NC GS 163-31 which reads:

The county board of elections shall keep minutes recording all proceedings and findings at each of its meetings. The minutes shall be recorded in a book which shall be kept in the board office and it shall be the responsibility of the secretary, elected by the board, to keep the required minute book current and accurate. The secretary of the board may designate the director of elections to record and maintain the minutes under his supervision.

Granted this is a small, procedural point and it likely will never come into play. But does anyone see a problem here? Anyone?

(Update: If it makes a difference, both Turner and Pfaff are lawyers.)

Most days, I would just file this memo (Updated: fixed the link) in the "good to know" file. However, the fact the county has hired an minority business coordinator is noteworthy given grumbles last month by Commissioner Skip Alston and Carolyn Coleman. Both commissioners complained that the county staff was dragging its feet on hiring a minority business coordinator.

If you're interested in the history, I'll paste an old story on the topic after the jump.

If you're following the once-heated debate over the "Battleground Oaks" shopping center, you might have to wait a little longer to get a decision.

On Monday, the zoning commission recommended in favor of (story here) a 103 acre plan for a shopping center, apartments and condos at the corner of Battleground Avenue and Old Battleground Road. The city council was supposed to make that decision final on March 1, but the developer has asked to push that hearing back to March 15 because several of the key folks in the development are going to be out of town. The council typically approves developers' requests to continue items.

Remember that this development set off a big debate as it was the "test case" for how much weight would be given to the city's comprehensive land use plan. Now that the developers have tweaked their plan, there appears to be a lot less opposition this time around.

Update: One of the opponents of the development, Ted Eaves, writes to the city council saying that there are still plenty of folks that don't want the shopping center and apartments:

"Although I was unable to stay for the debate on the development yesterday at the Zoning Commission meeting, I want to assure you that I am still strongly opposed to this development being placed in this location. And my opinion is shared by many of the residents of these neighborhoods. The turnout at the zoning commission meeting does not reflect our feelings, rather it is a reflection of the meeting time and the lengthy battle that this has turned into."

Via this post at Southern Rants we learn that the blogging teach-in for "elected officials, government-types, and interested candidates" is on. Those interested can check out this link.

Among the emails sent to the city council recently was this message from Natalie Koeplinger, whose sidewalk has been the recipient of, shall we say, presents from a neighborhood canine.

"I was told that their is no ordinance against not cleaning up after your pet. I think the time has come for a local ordinance requiring pet owners to clean up after their pet, if we don't have one. Most owners in my neighborhood carry doggy doo bags, however there are those priviledged few who want to share. It is also becomming a nuissance in the parks as well, where it seems like the dogs are the only ones who get to use it. Can you please pass an ordinance to make it a fineable offense for not cleaning up after your pet?"

After confirming that, in fact, there was no excrement edict, Council member Tom Phillips only suggested that what's good for Fido should also apply to Garfield.

"I'll only vote for that if we require cat owners to clean up after their cats and walk them on a leash," he wrote.

We'll pick up after this later.

High Point's red-light camera program has been in the news quite a lot this week, to put it mildly. City officials announced Thursday that the program will be suspended at the end of the month pending their appeal of a Superior Court ruling that Guilford County Schools are entitled to 90 percent of the proceeds from the red-light camera citations.

A fuller explanation of what happened this week is available here and here. (My thanks to intrepid courts reporter Eric Collins for his help this week.)

In this morning's story about High Point suspending its red-light camera program, I mentioned a pending bill in the state Senate introduced by Sen. David Hoyle, D-Gaston. There are some interesting elements to the proposal that I didn't have room for in today's story.

More after the jump...

High Point City Council meets at 4:45 p.m. Monday. Items on the agenda include a proposal to rebuild Kepley's Barn - a popular reception hall that burned down in 2001 - as part of a larger commercial development called Kepley's Center off Eastchester Drive in north High Point.

Whenever my preview story gets posted, I'll add a link to it. Until then, you can check out the agenda for Monday's meeting here.

Update: My story on Monday's meeting is here.

The Guilford County Commissioners will meet Thursday night and you can get your official score card (the agenda) by clicking here.

Loyal readers of Inside Scoop (Hi Mom!) will recognized two of the items.

We wrote about a zoning case on Alamance Church Road that would allow for a convenience store near Alamance Elementary School. The county planning board voted to allow the store but neighbors have appealed the case to the county commissioners.

It's the only public hearing item of the night.

But don't ignore the commissioners' consent agenda, those items considered uncontroversial and usually handled with just one vote.

On the consent agenda this week is Commissioner Paul Gibson's push for a legacy fund, the idea of levying an extra 5-cent sales tax to create a $1 billion capital account that would be used for projects 20 years from now. Item I-C5 would send the concept to the School of Government in Chapel Hill for study.

We wrote about one staff member's evaluation of the plan here.

There are other fun tidbits on the agenda, so go and read it for yourself and tell us what catches your attention.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em, just not on the floor of the state House or Senate.

Back at the end of January the N.C. Senate banned smoking in its chamber. Until this year, Senators were free to puff away during sessions if they were so inclined.

The N.C. House banned smoking in 2003. Smoking is banned in the visitors' galleries of both houses.

However, you are free to light up in the hallways, lobbies and the ever-popular back rooms, which just wouldn't be the same if they weren't smoke-filled.

As long as neither chamber bans the bottle of hooch Scoop has stashed in our filing cabinet, we'll all get along just fine.

To read the Senate rules click here.

You can read more about it in Wednesday's paper (link here), but the city council seemed receptive this morning to the idea of spending $750,000 to pay for "streetscape" improvements around Action Greensboro's Center City Park. The money would come from the 2000 transportation bond, where it was originally designated for improvements to Church Street. While the council generally doesn't vote in these morning briefing sessions, they directed their staff to move ahead with plans to retool that money for the park.

So what does $750,000 get you? Check out this summary here: 11,500 square feet of brick sidewalks, 15 raised tree planters at $12,000 each, 18 streetlights at $10,000 a pop and other miscellany.

In the same meeting, Budget Director Larry Davis passed out this chart comparing what Greensboro spends on certain things like parks and police to other North Carolina cities. Council member Robbie Perkins pointed out that Greensboro spends a lot more on parks per person ($88.24) than Durham does ($28.87).

"The difference between 88 and 28 is a lot," he said.

Don Vaughan shot back, "Yeah. But look at Durham."

That's according to a report funded by the Federal Highway Administration that examined data from red-light camera programs in Maryland, Virginia and the great state of North Carolina.

The study's findings are summarized in this Washington Post story.

According to the study, right-angle crashes decrease because fewer drivers run red lights, while rear-end crashes increase because more drivers slam on the brakes to avoid running a red light and incurring a fine.

In dollars and cents terms, the study found, society saves an average of $28,000 to $50,000 each year for each intersection with a red-light camera.

We're going to write all about Gov. Mike Easley's proposed budget in Thursday's paper, completel with pretty graphics. But we know loyal Scoop readers are detail people.

Well, have yourselves a ball looking at all this stuff. But don't come crying to Scoop when you have to get a stronger prescription for either your eyeglasses or the medicine that keeps those voices in your head at bay - the ones that get all angry when they read things that sound like they should be English but read like Aramaic car rental calculations.

The News & Record has been writing about the St. James II housing development, which despite receiving more than $1 million in taxpayer-funded aid may be torn down. Among the characters in that story is County Commission Skip Alston.

Alston managed St. James II several years ago and the city housing staff has suggested that the apartments were allowed to deteriorate on his watch.

Alston caused a furor when he said that city staff members were racist for making that allegation.

Those who need more background on the story can click here for News & Record editor John Robinson's take or click here for Inside Scoop's own post on the matter. Other News & Record coverage of the St. James II story can be found by clicking here.

For those who don't know, in addition to being a county commissioner, Alston is also president of the North Carolina NAACP.

At Thursday night's County Commissioner meeting, Alston addressed and reinforced his comments. What follows is a transcription (as best I could manage) of two pieces of audio tape. The first segment was recorded during the meeting. The second segment was recorded afterward.

Update: Our story on Thursday's meeting can be found by clicking here.

I'm delivering as true a reproduction as possible, but was forced to note at several points where my tape was inaudible. A dash ( - ) in the dialog means that the speaker began a thought but broke off and started a new sentence. Information (in parenthesis) was added for clarification.

(Updated: Click here for an audio file of the after-the-meeting-interview with Skip Alston.)

Scoop is brushing up on our Karaoke rendition of "Tiny Bubbles," since that's about as close as we'll get to the National Association of Counties' annual conference, held this year in July in O'ahu, Hawaii.

Somehow, the bosses didn't buy the argument that we really wanted to check out what all those county officials are flying 3,000-plus miles to see: America's Best Transit System. What's that? Oh, yeah, there's some sort of beach nearby as well.

No word yet on which, if any, Guilford County officials you should ask to smuggle you back some macadamia nuts.