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September 2007 Archives

September 4, 2007

Today's Scoop

We at Scoop hope you had a fantastic labor day. After a weekend of pulling strange looking weeds from the yard, Scoop is dosing up on Motrin and cortisone cream.

Meanwhile, you good folks can dose up on today's environmentally friendly print edition of Inside Scoop, assembled with mostly recycled material from Capital Beat and the new young thing.

May Scoop also recommend for your reading pleasure:

September 5, 2007

No city money for sit-in museum

Here's a copy of Tom Phillips' resolution about denying city funds to the sit-in museum:

"Whereas, in 1993, Sit-In Movement Inc. was formed as a nonprofit organization to raise funds to purchase the FW Woolworth building to renovate and convert the building into a museum to honor the sit-in movement begun on Feb. 1, 1960, and

"Whereas, in spite of raising significant funds, Sit-In Movement Inc. has fallen short of its goals and has asked the City of Greensboro for funding, and

"Whereas, while the City of Greensboro initially provided $225,000 to help the organization get started, the citizens of Greensboro have defeated bond referendums on two occasions that would have provided public funding for the International Civil Rights Center and Museum.

"Therefore be it resolved that the City of Greensboro will not authorize the use of Greensboro tax revenues for the completion of or operation of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum, and

"Be it further resolved that the City of Greensboro encourages its citizens to make private donations to complete this worthwhile project."

As noted in today's story, this doesn't rule out the use of Greensboro's portion of HUD money for the project.

Cool interactive annexation map

The city has a cool feature that lets you type in an address and see if it is one of the spots that could get annexed.

Click here for the city's main annexation page.

Click here for the link to the interactive map.

September 12, 2007

Committee commotion

Linda Shaw is disbanding a committee that was studying possible changes to Guilford County's economic incentives policy.

The committee formed last year after commissioners declared a moratorium on incentives. It was eventually lifted. The committee last met in September 2006.

An excerpt from Shaw's letter to county officials and business recruiters:

For the past five months I have been waiting on Dan Lynch and Loren Hill to get back with us on plans they wanted to present on behalf of the business community. I have contacted our manager on two or three occasions over the past five months to see if we could call another meeting and was told to "wait until next month." This went on until about a month ago when the manager suggested we call a meeting.

About this same time I discover (to my embarrassment when asking Dan Lynch about the report) that Dan and Loren had given this report to Rob Bencini two to three months ago. No one bothered to inform me of this and to be honest, I don't understand why. As a matter of fact, I still haven't seen the report and suggestions.

It is disheartening when a commissioner (or commissioners) is trying to do something that will not only help our economy but will also come up with ways we can help small businesses only to have our staff not working with us to accomplish this. I am writing this to let you know that I informed Crystal yesterday to disband the committee and inform everyone involved. I want to thank the members again as well as Dan and Loren .

Linda O. Shaw, Chair of the Incentive Committee

(This thing came in one block, so I inserted paragraph breaks to make it more readable. And just so you know, Dan Lynch and Loren Hill are local business recruiters, Rob Bencini handles economic development for the county, and Crystal Maurer is the deputy clerk to the board of commissioners.)

Update: Just saw this Sept. 21 memo from County Manager David McNeill to the commissioners:

Rob Bencini and I met with Commissioner Shaw this week to discuss the status of the Economic Development Incentive Committee. The current policy will be revised and presented to the committee at a meeting tentatively set for Thursday, Oct. 18 at 3 p.m.

September 13, 2007

Gilbert and the machines

Here's some discussion of the Guilford County commissioners' unanimous decision to oppose a U.S. House of Representatives bill that would require the use of a voter-verified paper ballot nationwide.

The man bringing the recommendation to the board: Elections Director George Gilbert. He told the board that the National Association of Counties doesn't like the bill either.

More from the N.C. Coalition for Verified Voting, which supports the bill.

September 27, 2007

Tax matters

You'll notice something when looking at the list of counties seeking authority to raise land-transfer or sales taxes this fall: No big boys.

From the N.C. Association of County Commissioners:

When the deadline for putting the options on the November ballot passed in early September, 11 counties (Brunswick, Chatham, Gates, Henderson, Hoke, Macon, Moore, Pender, Polk, Swain and Union) had decided to put the 0.4 percent land transfer tax option on the ballot, 11 counties (Catawba, Columbus, Cumberland, Greene, Hertford, Lenoir, Martin, Pitt, Robeson, Sampson and Surry) were pursuing the sales tax option, and five counties (Davie, Graham, Harnett, Johnston and Rutherford) had decided to put both options in front of voters. In addition, Alexander County will seek the quarter-cent sales tax option Jan. 8, and six counties (Caswell, Duplin, Edgecombe, Lee, Onslow and Pamlico) have announced plans to pursue one of the options in next May's primary election.

None of the state's nine largest counties are on the list. You've got some fast-growing ones, like Brunswick and Chatham, but the big ones like Mecklenburg, Wake, Forsyth and Guilford are staying on the sidelines for now.

Guilford commissioners are putting this thing off until May, if they do it at all. Some other large counties don't want to tick off taxpayers who will vote on bond proposals in November.

Expect this discussion to heat up again in the next few months, when the larger counties decide if they want ot put the sales or transfer tax on the May ballot.

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