News-Record.com

Well, at least for the Greensboro City Council campaign.

Here are the links to the reports I've received so far detailing latest round of fundraising and spending disclosures from the council candidates (I should have reports from Tom Phillips and Dianne Bellamy-Small soon).

Update (11/3): Reports from Phillips and Bellamy-Small are now posted below.

If you have comments on what you see, we'd love to hear from you.

At-large
Sandra Anderson
Florence Gatten
Yvonne Johnson
Don Vaughan

District 1
Dianne Bellamy-Small

District 2
Goldie Wells

District 3
Tom Phillips

District 4
Mike Barber
Janet Wallace

District 5
Sandy Carmany

Mayor
Keith Holliday

The George C. Simkins Jr. Memorial Political Action Committee - an influential voice in Greensboro's elections - has released its list of endorsements in Tuesday's Greensboro City Council races.

While there are three at-large seats available, the PAC only endorsed two candidates - current at-large council member Yvonne Johnson and challenger Sandra Anderson.

The group made no endorsement in Districts 3 and 5.

You can view the letter - which includes a brief explanation for the endorsements - by clicking this link.

Don Vaughan's out and Sandra Anderson took the most votes in the at-large race. Those were among the surprises in last night's City Council races.

If you happened to miss our stories from last night, they're here and here (thanks to City Hall reporter emeritus Mark Binker for his help last night).

I know this conversation is going on in a few places, but let me throw out the same question: why did what happened last night happen? And how might it change City Council over the next two years?

I'm Kory Dodd the N&R High Point Bureau's new city council and courts reporter. In the last few weeks I've seen many High Point residents complain about decisions being made by the council in Ward 6 despite the lack of a ward representative. A lot of growth is focused in that portion of the city and many new developments are planned there.

After Owen Strickland resigned from the position in July, the city council said they would not appoint anyone to fill the Ward 6 seat.

But with Lisa Stahlmann's election to the Ward 6 seat by a clear majority, Mayor Becky Smothers said Tuesday night that the city council will appoint her to finish the term.

I just received notice that the city council will appoint Stahlmann to the Ward 6 seat at 9 a.m. Thursday (Nov. 10) morning.

Is this too little too late?

If appointed, Stahlmann would only attend two city council meetings before the term ends (that includes the meeting in which she is sworn in).

Any other comments?

Here's a look how many voters hit the polls in Guilford County on Tuesday, courtesy of the county Board of Elections:

Municipality Turnout
Greensboro 12%
High Point 11%
Gibsonville 19%
Jamestown 24%
Oak Ridge 12%
Pleasant Garden 31%
Sedalia 32%
Stokesdale 13%
Summerfield 27%
Whitsett 26%

The numbers aren't pretty, particularly in Greensboro and High Point.

Obviously, this is not a problem's that unique to Guilford County. And even within each of these localities, there are probably different reasons for low turnout.

So we at Scoop ask you, the loyal reader, a couple of questions:

1) Why or why didn't you vote Tuesday?
2) Is there anything that can be done - either on a local or national scale - to get more people inside voting booths?

Guilford County commissioners want to build the county's new jail in downtown Greensboro. The latest proposal puts the jail in a county-owned parking lot between Blandwood and Edgeworth streets. A tunnel would connect the new facility to the existing jail, which would remain in use.

Cost breakdown here.

Eventually, the county must find a way to pay for the project. Will you support an $84 million bond refendum for 648 new jail beds?

The city is working to purchase property owned by landlord Bill Agapion at the corner of Cedar Street and Friendly Avenue, City Council member Robbie Perkins revealed at the tail end of Tuesday's six-hour council meeting.

The city has a contract to purchase the property for $1.65 million, Perkins said. Council members directed staff to present options for paying for the property at council's briefing session Nov. 22, with final action on purchasing the property likely coming at the council's Dec. 6 meeting.

Perkins said the city plans to clean up Agapion's property, combine it with a small piece of city-owned property on Friendly and put it out to bid. Five developers have already expressed interest in the property, Perkins said.

The News & Record reported back in September that the city was working to turned the fire-wrecked apartments owned by Agapion at 211 N. Cedar St. over to a private developer. City inspectors had cited the property for thousands of building-code violations prior to a June fire that destroyed the complex while it was undergoing repair.

Also late Tuesday, the city committed itself to spending no more than about $200,000 to move some storm sewer lines under the site of some condominiums planned as part of the first phase of the Bellemeade Village project on Smith Street.

The city will pay for the project with bond money originally targeted for the Church Street streetscape project.

More to come on both of these items Wednesday after Scoop gets a couple hours sleep.

Local blogger Ben Holder wasn't pleased about being prevented from speaking at Tuesday's Greensboro City Council meeting. You can check out an e-mail he sent to city staffers - and a response he received from City Manager Mitch Johnson - by clicking here.

This afternoon, Greensboro will mark the first year of the Greensboro Mosaic Partnerships Project, which paired civic leaders across racial lines and encouraged them to become friends and share experiences, with the hope those experiences would filter to the wider community.

Read more about the event here.

Thursday's 6 1/2-hour Guilford County commissioners meeting produced a host of short-term fixes to crowding problems at the county jails. Commissioners also voted to find and hire an architect to design a downtown jail.

We didn't get all this in the deadwood edition, so Scoop readers get the news first. At around 1 a.m., commissioners voted to:

- Remove federal prisoners from the jail system next spring, freeing up space for county inmates. The county now has a contract to house federal prisoners and earns money on the deal, but that contract runs out at the end of March.

- Ask the state prisons to take inmates serving sentences of 30 days or more from the county jails. State prisons hold inmates serving longer sentences, while county jails typically hold prisoners who are serving shorter sentences or awaiting trial.

- Move 40 inmates to the county prison farm. Sheriff BJ Barnes has said the farm needs security upgrades to house the prisoners.

- Move 25 inmates to jails in other counties.

- Hire an architect with jail-building experience to design a jail with 600 or so beds for a tract behind the existing downtown Greensboro jail that's now occupied by a parking lot. Any design would have to accommodate future expansions.

- Add 15 new jail officers to improve safety at the existing jails.

Left unclear was how much this would cost and how the county would pay for it. The board had discussed emptying about $1 million from an account called the inmate welfare fund, but it was decided that money would be used only as a last resort. The final tally will likely be well above $1 million for the budget year ending June 30.

After the meeting, County Manager Willie Best said he didn't know where the county would find the money. One solution is a pool of unappropriated funds that the county keeps in reserve.

The measure passed 7-3, with Democrats Melvin "Skip" Alston, Carolyn Coleman and Bruce Davis voting against. Those commissioners expressed support for letting a jail committee continue to study the problem. After the vote, Alston resigned from the committee.

The city is now using Infocaster - a new messaging system that allows more information to be displayed - on the city's government access channel (Channel 13). When meetings aren't being telecast or the channel isn't featuring other programming, the channel will also feature music from Time Warner's digital music package while the city's bulletin board is on display.

No word from the city on whether the musical selections will run more toward the classical and jazz selections offered on Time Warner's digital cable package or toward arena rock and old-school rap.

More information on the changes can be found here.

In honor of the holiday, we present this mix of turkey and politics, courtesy of the White House.

My story in today’s paper about Tuesday's City Council briefing session focuses on council’s reaction to the proposed Agapion property purchase, but that wasn’t the only item discussed.

Now that Guilford County is looking for an architect to design a new 500-600-bed jail in downtown Greensboro, county commissioners must decide how to pay for it.

One way or the other, taxpayers will foot the bill. But which wallet-lightening device will the commissioners employ? A bond referendum (read: property-tax increase) has been discussed, and a one-cent sales-tax hike over two years is being pushed by Sheriff BJ Barnes.

But there's another way. County finance director Brenda Jones Fox writes favorably of using a certificate of participation approach in this recent memo.

COPS financing, as it's commonly known, is basically borrowing at a higher interest rate (again read: property-tax increase) than a bond issue. Executing the loans for a jail will take two to three months, Fox writes.

But COPS don't require voter approval. That could appeal to a number of commissioners who fear that voters would turn down a bond referendum on the jail. A "no" vote could force the county to issue COPS anyway, but Fox writes that the bond failure could drive up the COPS interest rate and increase the chances of a lawsuit to stop the process.

The bottom line on COPS: a $100 million jail would cost $7.6 million over 20 years and add about two cents to the property-tax rate. County taxpayers now shell out 64.28 cents per $100 of property valuation.

But don't take those numbers for granted. Several commissioners have expressed support for a smaller, less expensive jail, so taxes might not go up that much.

Guilford County commissioners will choose a new chairman Thursday night. As we noted earlier this month, the chairmanship is a tough but sought-after position.

In all likelihood, the job will fall to Paul Gibson or Carolyn Coleman, both Democrats. Gibson has been talking about the job for months, and Coleman said this week she was pursuing the post. The chairman serves a one-year term.

The commissioners elect one of their own as chairman, so the trick for Gibson and Coleman is to find six votes among the board's 11 members. At this point, the six Democrats appear split, so the chairmanship could go to the candidate who wins the most support from the five Republicans.

I'll open this up to the Scoop readers. You've watched and read about the commissioners. Who's got the mojo to lead this unruly bunch? Is it Gibson, Coleman, or one of the others?

(A note: Democrat Skip Alston and Republican Steve Arnold have previously served as chairman, though that doesn't preclude them from being elected again. Democrat Bruce Davis is the current chairman.)

On the 50th anniversary of her historic refusal to give up her seat to a white rider on a Montgomery, Ala. bus, the Greensboro Transit Authority will join transit agencies across the country Thursday in a tribute to Rosa Parks.

Parks died in October at age 92.

As part of the tribute, bus drivers will wear black armbands, and a ceremony honoring Parks will be held at 6 p.m. at the J. Douglas Galyon Depot at 234 E. Washington St.

For more information, check out the city's news release.