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From the City of Greensboro comes the following press release:

The city is hosting a series of public meetings this month to receive feedback about the city's future transportation needs.

During these meetings, city staff will provide information about potential transportation improvement projects. Attendees are encouraged to provide input on which transportation projects they would support.

Residents may drop in at any of the meetings listed below between 4 and 7 p.m. Brief presentations will be made at 4:30 and 6 p.m.

Meeting schedule:

* March 11: Peeler Recreation Center, 1300 Sykes Ave. (District 2), and Lawndale Baptist Church, 3505 Lawndale Ave. (District 3)
* March 13: Peck Elementary School, 1601 W. Florida St. (District 1), and Westover Church, 505 Muirs Chapel Rd. (District 4)
* March 20: Central Library, 219 N. Church St. (District 2), and Lindley Recreation Center, 2907 Springwood Dr. (District 5)
* March 25: Shiloh Baptist Church, 1210 S. Eugene St. (District 1), and Lawndale Baptist Church, 3505 Lawndale Ave. (District 3)
* March 27: Westover Church, 505 Muirs Chapel Rd. (District 4), and Lindley Recreation Center, 2907 Springwood Dr. (District 5)

Cool site celebrating the city's 200th birthday.

The state level NAACP (called the conference of branches) for North Carolina is weighing in on the alleged destruction of evidence from the 1979 Klan-Nazi shootout in Greensboro.

In two separate letters, the NAACP calls on state and federal agencies to come in and investigate the case.

Click here to read the letter to the state's federal delegation.

Click here to read the NAACP letter to Gov. Mike Easley and Attorney General Roy Cooper.

Update: I spoke a little while ago with the Rev. William Barber, who heads the state level NAACP organization.

"It is not an issue of not having confidence in the City of Greensboro, but issues like this are bigger than Greensboro," Barber said.

More in tomorrow's paper.

If you were listening to public radio today around lunchtime, you might have heard our own Margaret Banks being interviewed by WUNC's Frank Stasio, host of The State of Things.

Stasio asked Margaret to break down what she knows about the NAACP request for a federal investigation on allegations of destroyed police files connected to the Nazi-Klan shootings from 1979. The interview lasts about 10 minutes.

City says 70 manhole covers have disappeared.

Here's the agenda for Thursday's county commissioners meeting. And if you want to go, here's the skinny:

What: Guilford County commissioners meeting
When: 5:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: Old County Courthouse, 301 W. Market St., Greensboro
On TV: Cable channel 13 in Greensboro and other areas of Guilford County outside High Point; cable channel 8 in High Point.
What’s going on? The board will consider buying about 63 acres valued at $522,000 for a purchase price of $318,800 to use as open space beside another tract the county bought in 2007. Commissioners will get a look at getting another 19 acres of open space land near Northeast middle and high schools for $59,400. The land is valued at $120,000. They may also decide to offer a 1920s-era house for donation to anyone who wants to move it from property on 211 South Edgeworth St., the proposed site for a new county jail. The building would be transferred to Preservation Greensboro Inc., which would help find an owner who could pay to move the house off the site.
Want to be heard? Speakers can address the board on non-agenda items regarding county business for three minutes at the start of the meeting. A sign up sheet will be available near the lectern.
What’s next? The open-space purchases could be accessed by the public shortly afterward if approved. As for the house, it’s not completely free: Any takers must scrounge up about $100,000 to pay the estimated cost to move the building.
Live video

Now for the really controversial polling data of the day. From Public Policy Polling:

PPP recently polled North Carolinians to find out who they pull for in the Duke-UNC basketball game. The results:

UNC 40%
Duke 24%
Don't care 36%

Maybe it's just the crowd I run with, but the number that seems off to me there is the 36 percent that don't care. We probably live in the one state in the union where people don't think ESPN is over-hyping the coming Duke-UNC (or is it UNC-Duke) showdown.

Of course, unlike with elections, polling data doesn't really reflect the likely outcome of the game...or does it?

For the record, I'm not a college basketball fan but do take sides in Lacrosse.

For the first time in his short tenure as chairman of the Guilford County Board of Commissioners, Kirk Perkins instituted the 3-minute time limit for commissioners during discussion on agenda items.

The move happened during a heated discussion on the board's voting procedure that had been brought up in previous meetings. In short, the board was tying to pin down whether a commissioner should have his or her vote counted as a "nay" during decisions made when that commissioner isn't in the meeting room.

In recent months, when a commissioner wasn't in the room, their vote was counted as a no - even if they had to leave for an emergency. In many boards the vote of a commissioner who isn't present is counted as neither for nor against the issue.

On Thursday, they changed that, and made a commissioner's absence mean that there wouldn't be any vote recorded for them, which aligns the rules with the board's past practice.

But they had a lengthy debate along the way that resulted in the re-introduction of 3-minute time limits for commissioners to speak on issues at a meeting.

Cross-posted from Capital Beat.

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Update: Click here for a short online news story.

Back in 1971 Greensboro lost the protest petition. Now the voices that say residents should get it back are getting the attention of local legislators.

(Don't know what I'm talking about. Read up: here / here / here / here.)

Rep. Pricey Harrison said this morning she has requested a bill be drafted that would repeal Greensboro's exemption from protest petition law. At least four other members of Guilford County's legislative delegation (Reps. Earl Jones and Alma Adams and Sen. Katie Dorsett, all Greensboro Democrats and Greensboro Republican Rep. John Blust) are aware of the issue and disposed to look at it.

If the delegation does decide to move forward, it won't be easy necessarily.

"I've briefly looked at the law," Blust said. "I do want to find out why in the world was Greensboro exempted. It seems like something that should be applied evenly across the state."

Barbara Silver-Smith and Crystal Rhoades have applied for a federal contract to run a halfway house for federal inmates at 3107 S. Elm-Eugene St. The Greensboro Zoning Commission on Monday night rejected the application for a special-use permit, but Silver-Smith and Rhoades will appeal. The building that would house the inmates has businesses on three sides. Single-family homes are across the street, and other neighborhoods are nearby. Is this facility in this location a good idea? Why or why not?

Cross-posted from Capital Beat.

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The Guilford County legislative delegation (The House and Senate members that represent some piece of the county) will hold two - count 'em two! - public hearings this Spring before heading back to Raleigh in May.

Hearing number 1 will be in High Point, Monday, April 14, 6 to 8 p.m. at the High Point City Council Chambers: 211 S. Hamilton Street.

Hearing number 2 will be Monday, April 21, 6 to 8 p.m. in Greensboro at the Melvin Municipal Building (what normal people call city hall) on Eugene Street. That meeting will be televised.

From a news release:

Both of the hearings are open to any citizen who would like to address the delegation. The hearing will provide an opportunity for the delegation to receive input from citizens about their concerns and issues, as well as provide opportunities to receive input from local municipalities and other entities representing Guilford County.

[snip]

Citizens are encouraged to come to either location to share their thoughts with their elected members of the North Carolina General Assembly. Speakers will be given limited time (3 minutes) and are asked to come early to sign up or contact Representative Jeffus' office. Please be prepared to give your name, address, telephone number and organization. Organizations and individuals who need additional information are asked to contact Representative Jeffus' office. Email address is maggiej@ncleg.net or telephone is (919) 733-5191.

For those who haven't been to one of these shindigs, it's a chance to lobby the legislative delegation (or as many of them as show up) about stuff you think they should work on in the coming legislative session. Invariably, various government, nonprofit and industry types will line up to speak about their pet projects du jour, but there has been a fair amount of input from regular citizens at past meetings.

We're working on a bond story to look at the county's current debt load and find some estimate of the extra cost to run and staff all the stuff that $670 million in bonds would need.

Voters will decide on the bond referenda in the May 6 primary.

Working on that story led me Thursday to Michael Halford, director of Guilford County's budget management and evaluation office, to chat about about the upcoming 2008-09 budget process.

Halford's early projection for a 2008-09 budget - with no cuts from this year's budget - requires a property tax rate increase of 3.95 cents per $100 valuation.

In the 2007-08 budget, taxes for the owner of a $200,000 home went up about $60. Based on Halford's first estimate, that homeowner would pay another $79 on the property tax bill in 2008-09.

FYI, the 2008-09 budget planning is still in its early stages, Halford said. Guilford commissioners will approve the budget sometime this summer, after the bond votes.

What do you think of that potential property tax rate increase, though?

Also, are there any things that you want to know about when it comes to the bond referenda?

Bond packages include $412 million for school construction, $45 million for Eastern Guilford High School, a $114 million jail, $79.5 million for GTCC or $20 million for parks and recreation.

Cross-posted from Decision 2008.

Two challengers in two different Guilford County Commissioner races now have an official web presence.

Democrat Greg Woodard, District 8 candidate.

Republican Rick Wallace, District 5 candidate.

I was out following State Sen. Kay Hagan on the campaign trail today, as she waged her end of the U.S. Senate Democratic primary. My main purpose was to do the reporting for an upcoming campaign profile, but I did have a chance to ask her take on the protest petition push. (I didn't have a chance to catch up with her when I reported out that blog post and story a week or so ago.)

Hagan will serve in her state senate seat through year, which means she'll have a say over legislation during the short session. That's important because if the city's protest petition exemption is to be repealed, the 10 Guilford County legislators would need to be united.

"I have read about it in the newspaper ... But I haven't studied the issues and don't know how many other cities are like that," Hagan said. "And I don't know the history behind it either. This just came up."

She seemed interested but wanted to know more about it before committing to a position.

Guilford County Commissioners are holding a work session tomorrow to hear presentations on open space, an efficiency program and a few other things
at 3 p.m. in the Old County Courthouse, 301 West Market St.

How to handle open space has been a question lately for the board. Earlier this year, they turned down plans to purchase an easement on a working farm. One reason for the down vote, some commissioners said, was that the public couldn't access the land.

Then, in their March 6 meeting, the board approved the purchase of open space in two tracts of land. The public could eventually get to those places, though. One tract is located next to two public schools, and another adjoins existing open land the county bought in 2007.

During those discussions, some commissioners have asked whether public money should be used to protect open space and debated on how it should be spent.

The efficiency study is based on a request from the board to County Manager David McNeill. Commissioners asked the staff to make a list of consultants to review county employees and find places where the county could consolidate jobs within departments or combine them with other jurisdictions.

There could be no new taxes for Guilford County taxpayers this year, after county commissioners asked for a 2008-09 budget proposal with no property tax rate increase in a Tuesday work session.

The zero-tax budget may not be what the board adopts this summer, but it is a step toward two goals most politicians agree on: efficient government and no new taxes.

The marching orders for County Manager David McNeill came at the end of a discussion on hiring consultants for a county efficiency study. Along with the zero-tax increase budget, they asked McNeill to form a panel to advise the county on places to streamline the bureaucracy.

McNeill will also submit his recommended budget to the board on May 15, which he does each year.

Early projections from Michael Halford, Guilford County director of budget management, show the county's property tax rate rising this year if the county services stay at the same rate.

In the 2007-08 budget, taxes for the owner of a $200,000 home went up about $60. Based on Halford's first estimate, that homeowner would pay another $79 on the property tax bill in 2008-09.

"If you want a zero-tax increase budget then say, 'This is what you have to cut out, this is what we will eliminate'," Commissioner Skip Alston said to McNeill.

It's still not clear how much appetite Greensboro City Council has to open up what could be a contentious debate about possibly reopening the White Street Landfill to garbage.

Councilman Mike Barber has raised the idea of reopening the facility, noting the expense of the current system of hauling the trash more than 70 miles away. Councilwoman Trudy Wade said she'd at least be interested in seeing the numbers, though, and on Friday, Councilwoman Mary Rakestraw said she would be as well.

"I would be willing to look at ... the numbers. That's all I'm willing to commit to at this point," Rakestraw said. "I think we at least owe it to the taxpayers to look at this issue."

Councilman Zack Matheny said Friday that he's always willing to look at any numbers dealing with the city's finances, but said he is not inclined to reverse the previous decision to stop sending garbage to the landfill.

"We don't need to divide our city any more than it's already divided," he said.

Mayor Yvonne Johnson and council members Robbie Perkins and Goldie Wells had previously said they are not interested in revisiting the decision.

Council members T. Dianne Bellamy-Small and Sandra Anderson Groat could not be reached for comment Friday.

Did you get tickets to see Barack Obama at the War Memorial Auditorium? Congratulations! You are among the lucky 2,000 to snatch them up.

Folks who didn't get them are pretty sore. The city council and staff have received messages from folks about the Obama visit. Some begged for spare tickets. Others scolded that the auditorium is just too small for the number of people who would like to see him.

It's worth noting that the city didn't plan the event, it is merely accommodating the campaign.

But do keep those fingers crossed, Obama boosters. Maybe he will return to the Triad before the May primary.

For those who may have missed it, click here for today's print column.

And for those saying to yourselves, "Gee, wasn't Scoop running on Tuesdays?" well, yes, we were. But now we're back to Monday.

Have something you'd like to see Scoop'd? Upcoming events, odd political doings and extra helpings of snark are all welcome. Click on the comments link or e-mail us at one of the links on the top-right hand side of the page.