News-Record.com

North Carolina voters put the smackdown on new tax plans Tuesday, rejecting 27 of 32 proposals to raise land-transfer or sales taxes.

All the transfer tax proposals were rejected, and many went down hard. Voters in Catawba, Martin, Pitt, Sampson and Surry counties passed sales-tax referendums.

The scorecard from the N.C. Association of County Commissioners.

More on the transfer tax from the N&O.

Guilford commissioners have been especially cool to the transfer tax idea, but it's conceivable that a sales-tax referendum could reach voters as early as May. Commissioners will discuss all this at a work session on Thursday.

What: Greensboro City Council meeting
When: 5:30 p.m. today
Where: Melvin Municipal Office Building, 300 W. Washington St., Greensboro
On TV: Time Warner Cable channel 13 .
On the agenda: Lots to discuss. City Manager Mitchell Johnson will receive his annual evaluation during a private meeting at 4:30 p.m. No, this isn't an attempt by the outgoing council members to give him a quickie raise before they leave office. Actually, the council is about two months tardy in performing his annual review. The council also is expected to approve several annexations that would ultimately boost Greensboro's population by about 10,000 people. Then the board must adjust the City Council voting districts to accommodate the changes.
How to speak: Each speaker will be allowed a maximum of three minutes on non-agenda items and cannot cede their time to another speaker. The speakers-from-the-floor period will be limited to a maximum of 30 minutes.
The full agenda: greensboro-nc.gov

Three members of the Greensboro City Council attended their final briefiing session on Tuesday morning: Mayor Keith Holliday, Councilman Tom Phillips and Councilwoman Sandy Carmany. City Manager Mitchell Johnson gave them a depressing little tidbit to carry away with them - a ballpark idea of how many hours they've spent in council meetings since they took office.

Sandy Carmany: 2,484
Keith Holliday: 1,764
Tom Phillips (second stint on council only): 1,152
Florence Gatten (who was absent, but also leaves the board next week): 864

I'll never complain about long meetings again.

Hey, who am I kidding. Of course I'll complain again.