News-Record.com

In case you missed it, a group of consultants on Tuesday gave Guilford County commissioners some long-term ideas for relieving the chronic overcrowding in the county’s two jails.

They laid out four options for the commissioners to consider, available here (Sorry for the smudging on the first page. I made some notes and had a little adventure with the white-out). The report is a bit text-heavy, but if you spend some time with it you'll get a good idea of the choices facing the board in the coming months.

The options basically boil down to building a new jail and/or expanding the existing jails in Greensboro and High Point. There's also a good chance that the board could mix and match some of these ideas when they make a decision. Any new facility wouldn't open until 2009, at the earliest.

Note that no price tags are attached to any of the proposals. Those numbers will be revealed in October when the group issues its final report.

Last month, High Point City Council approved spending $60,000 to $70,000 on a study by Greensboro-based management consultants The Herman Group of how well prepared city residents are for available jobs.

The council also appointed an oversight committee to guide the progress of the study. The committee held its first meeting Tuesday, which we were unable to squeeze into the paper due to space constraints and news about Hurricane Katrina and the approval of the state lottery.

Here's a quick look at the highlights of the meeting...

Guilford County Manager Willie Best was looking out the window earlier this summer when he saw something that alarmed him: men wearing bermuda shorts.

These weren't just any men; these were Guilford County employees who worked in offices, not outside in the sun.

"I don’t mind casual," Best said. He noted the county's observance of Casual Friday, when employees often favor golf shirts over dress shirts. "But I thought that was a little too casual."

The shorts sightings eventually led to this memo to all county department directors, outlining clothes that should be left in the closet when employees report to work. Halter tops, flip-flops, mini-skirts, sweatpants, baseball caps, and yes, shorts, are all on the no-no list.

Workers who break the rules must leave the premises and change clothes, the memo says. Best said employees can now consult members of a staff committee if they have questions about what's appropriate and what's not.

"You can call and ask," he said. " ... but more than likely if you call and ask then maybe you're thinking it's something you shouldn't wear."

This is at least the second time in recent years that a high-ranking county official has examined employee attire. Scoopster Mark Binker wrote this story in February:

In Friday's paper, I wrote about the first round of campaign filings for Greensboro's city council race. Scoop welcomes your observations about the reports and who is giving to whom.

To read the candidate's full reports, including contributors who gave more than $100 and campaign expenses, click on the following links:

At-large:
Florence Gatten
Yvonne Johnson
Don Vaughan

District 1:
Dianne Bellamy-Small

District 2:
Goldie Wells

Dsitrict 4:
Mike Barber
Janet Wallace

District 5:
Sandy Carmany

(Note: Candidates who aren't spending more than $3,000 on their campaigns don't have to file finance reports.)

From this morning's Savannah Morning News:

Savannah City Manager Michael Brown is a candidate for the same position in another city.

Savannah City Council met behind closed doors Thursday to discuss the situation and come up with a "contingency plan" for replacing Brown if he leaves.

No one is saying publicly where Brown is a candidate. However four different people with knowledge of the situation, but who asked not to be identified, said in separate conversations that Brown was approached by a recruiting firm for the city manager position in Greensboro, N.C.
...
When asked if he was a candidate in Greensboro, he said: "There is nothing for us to discuss."

Greensboro officials haven't disclosed their finalists yet. The city's former manager retired Aug. 1.

Brown has been well-liked in Savannah during his 10-year tenure. He was hired in 1995 to replace the late, long-time city manager Don Mendonza.

Also: Top story in SMN today: Brown gets raise, City Council breaks law

Note: The Michael Brown noted in the SMN is not the same person as Michael "Brownie" Brown of FEMA noteriety, although he too is now in the job market.

After our story today about negotiations to buy the former Canada Dry bottling plant next to the Greensboro Coliseum, several council members wanted to make it clear they were looking on the property as an important investment for the coliseum, not necessarily because it has been mentioned as a site for the ACC Hall of Champions.

It's important to look at who is heading up the push for the ACC Hall. The idea was brought to the council in January by Coliseum Director Matt Brown (a city employee) and Dick Grubar (the chairman of the coliseum's advisory board). Also involved in the preliminary discussions were Marc Bush (Greensboro Sports Commission), Mike Bumpass (Greensboro Merchants Association), David Jameson (Greensboro Chamber of Commerce), Henry Fourrier (Convention and Visitors Bureau) and Kevin Green (also on the coliseum advisory board).

When Brown and the other Hall organizers unveiled their plans, they had architectural drawings that showed the museum on the Canada Dry plot and incorporated parts of the existing building. At first glance, the council had positive things to say about the museum but were eager to have someone other than the city pay most of the cost.

So while some, including Brown, are pushing for the museum to go there, council members say buying the land is just a good idea to pick up the last piece of the land puzzle to finish out the coliseum's campus.

"It's not about the ACC. It's about having a critical piece of property," council member Tom Phillips said, even though he opposes the Hall of Champions idea.

On the manager front, the council met in closed session again this morning to meet with an unidentified candidate. Mayor Keith Holliday said he couldn't give an estimate as to when a choice would me made. He said it was partly due to the wealth of good candidates the council has to pick from.

As we wrote in today's Inside Scoop column, at-large candidate Sandra Anderson's finance report was a little tardy in reaching the Board of Elections. Like we did with the other candidates, here is her report in PDF form.

Looking through her report, it seems that many of supporters work in the development and real estate industries. This would seem to make sense, since Anderson is a homebuilder and most candidates draw support from their friends and professional colleagues. I would also note that developers are big givers to most of the incumbents.

The largest contribution though, $2,000, is from a non-developer, Opthalmologist Robert Groat.

I don't know their names, but I wanted to thank the front desk staff at the Airport Marriott for helping me get my story on minimizing noise from the planned FedEx hub in today's paper.

The last in a series of three meetings at the Marriott on a noise-abatement plan for the hub was running late Tuesday night - very late. It was scheduled to end at 8:30 p.m., but the discussion was still raging at 10 p.m. - the time my story was due.

Fortunately, most of the story was already written based on an earlier meeting, but I needed to dictate some updates to the story from the late meeting. Unfortunately, my cell phone died around 9:45 p.m.

Unable to find a pay phone, I turned to the front desk staff, who were happy to provide me one of the phones from behind the front desk to call my editor despite the fact that a) I wasn't a registered guest and b) I'm sure I had a slightly crazed look in my eye because the story was late.

Five or six phone calls and an hour later, the story was wrapped up (thanks to Eric Dyer for taking my rat-a-tat-tat dictation and the copy desk for helping make some sense of the story). I wanted to thank the people at the front desk for helping, but unfortunately they were busy with actual paying customers.

But I just wanted them to know their help was appreciated.

Top presidential advisor Karl Rove urged supporters to stand behind George Bush at a fundraiser Thursday night in Greensboro.

The event was hosted at the Irving Park home of local businessman Louis DeJoy and his wife, Aldona Vos to benefit the Republican National Committee. Vos is a top fundraiser for Bush and serves as the ambassador to Finland Estonia. (Update: My apologies. I confused the countries that were served by Dr. Vos and fellow Greensbororian and former Ambassador Bonnie McElveen-Hunter.)

Guilford County Republican Party Chairman Marcus Kindley said Rove answered questions from guests around the state. According to Kindley, Rove talked about the nomination of Judge John Roberts and the response to Hurricane Katrina.

Kindley recounted Rove's statement that it would be "very interesting when all the events unfolded" about the response to Katrina, suggesting that when the full story comes out, the Bush administration would be vindicated.

Rove also reportedly talked about how the public has a misconception about the federal government's role in disaster response and when they are supposed to step in. In the meantime, Rove urged the faithful in attendance to, well, remain faithful.

"He told us to hang in there," Kindley said.

Consultants from Greensboro-based The Herman Group preparing a study on workforce preparedness in High Point should have their final report ready in mid-October. The purpose is to provide a snapshot of the preparedness level of the city's workforce versus the skills needed by employers.

But in meeting with an oversight committee for the study Monday, the consultants had a couple of interesting things to say...

When Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes talks about the need for a new jail, he pretty much envisions the process playing out one of two ways.

1) The county willingly builds a jail.

2) The county is forced to build a jail.

Barnes worries about the latter scenario, which could start with a bunch of former inmates deciding that the overcrowded jails violated their civil rights. They get together on a class-action lawsuit and sue the county for a whole mess of money.

Then a judge steps in and orders the county to build a new jail, leaving the county little choice on how the jail gets built.

Letters like this one are what the sheriff is talking about.