News-Record.com

For those of you who may be asking, "Where are Greensboro's 363 billboards?" Inside Scoop has the answer thanks to the city's Planning Department.(Click here to download a more detailed .pdf file)

A few caveats: GIS whiz Katie Herring said the map is based on some old data and shows approximately 60 signs that may no longer exist. She said planning staffers planned to update their information in the near future, as the City Council contemplates more restrictions on billboards.
On that subject, billboard supporters, including Fairway Outdoor's local manager, Dan O'Shea, have pointed out that council member Robbie Perkins, a leading billboard critic, himself benefits from outdoor advertising. They are referring to commercial real estate brokerage NAI Maxwell, whose president is Perkins. The company's "For Lease" and "For Sale" signs are posted outside dozens of properties around the Triad.
When asked about the criticism, Perkins said there's one difference between billboards and his company's "For Sale" signs. "When the building gets sold, my signs come down," Perkins said. He also sends this picture of a fellow real estate company's sign in the shadow of a Fairway billboard.

The agenda for next week's Greensboro City Council meeting is out. Council members will be asked to appropriate money to bridge a million-dollar shortfall in the Greensboro Coliseum's finances.
Also up is a repeat of a zoning case first heard by the council earlier this year.
From our April 21 report:

"...the council turned down a separate request by Centex Homes to bring 48 acres near the interchange of Interstate 40 and Young's Mill Road into the city limits.
Centex wanted the city to annex the land so it could build 132 homes between an older neighborhood and the highway...several council members agreed that the homes would be built too close together compared to the surrounding neighborhoods.
The council voted 6-3 to reject the development, with council members Robbie Perkins, Don Vaughan and Sandy Carmany supporting the plan."

David Hoggard wonders why some of Greensboro's recently milled streets are turning our Chevys' seats into vibrating massage chairs. In a July 12 memo to council members, Deputy City Manager Mitchell Johnson attributes the problem to an aggressive schedule for the contractor hired to repave the streets.

In the memo, Johnson explains the three-step process for putting down new blacktop. First crews mill down the edges of the road near the curb. Then the crew raises the manhole covers and then they put down the new layer of asphalt.

In previous years, the city gave construction crews 30 days between when they ground down the road to when it should be finished. But to save money this year, the city allowed the contractor to do most of the milling all at once as long as the job was done within 30 days of the manhole risers going in.

What happened is that grinding went really quickly but the crews are taking a while to catch up with the rest of the work. Johnson pegged the savings to the city at $300,000 but conceded that the public might think things are awry.

"In reviewing the overall success of this year's process we did not adequately communicate the impact of our new process effectively thus leaving our citizens with the impression that we were well behind schedule since it was plain to see that much of the already milled streets were more that 30 days in process," Johnson wrote.

On a related note, the Greensboro Department of Transportation has a handy map showing downtown's new two-way streets and when they plan to finish the projects. Lindsay, Bellemeade, Davie and McGee streets are first on the list and are projected to be converted to two-way this fall.

This morning, we reported on a "community relations project" that Mayor Keith Holliday plans to unveil next Monday at the Greensboro Historical Museum. But city staffers involved in the project are being very tight-lipped about what the project will entail, saying that Holliday is insisting on keeping it secret until Monday's announcement. All they have provided so far is this short press release.

Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project spokeswoman Joya Wesley added that her group was invited to attend Monday's announcement and said she doesn't think Holliday is trying to preempt their work.

Update:(9/10/04) More on the mayor's community relations project here. Also online is a video produced about Rochester's project.

Walking through Phil McDonald Plaza outside the Guilford County Courthouse today, I witnessed a security guard waving a metal detector wand over the bed of petunias. He told me it's a favorite place for visitors of the courthouse to stash their drug paraphernalia and weapons when they realize the contraband will be confiscated at the security checkpoint. Enough guns, knives and drugs have been hidden amongst the flora that the security guards do a regular sweep.

So for anyone planning a visit to the courthouse, leave your goodies at home if you're keen on keeping them.

Nobody likes a nosy neighbor, but the folks next door will never know that you can find out how much their house is worth and how much they paid for it.

Thanks to your local governments, you can find out tax values for your house, your neighbors' digs or that house with the "For Sale" sign that you've been eyeing. All from the comfort of your computer.

It seems that the long-delayed opening of Greensboro's indoor public tennis facility has been delayed again. This time, the courts at the Simkins Indoor Sports Pavilion have too much of an outside flavor. Ann Rolke explains in an email to council members:

"As I understand it, there are so many leaks in the metal roof at Simkins that the courts are unusable when it rains. This is RIDICULOUS!!!!"

Here's what we didn't have time or space to include in the paper(unposted) from last night's council meeting:

For folks in Latham Park, the sight of sewage shooting up out of manholes is an all-too common sight when a moderate to heavy rain comes around. Almost year ago, the city agreed to upgrade the sewer pipes running along Buffalo Creek at a cost of $42 million. At the time, state environmental officials were threatening to crack down on the city if it didn't volunteer to fix the problem. The project is now well under way. More from the city's Water Resources Department:

"Residents in the Latham Park area are invited to attend a public meeting to discuss the North Buffalo Creek stream restoration project scheduled to begin in 2007. The meeting will inform residents about construction impacts in Latham Park, solicit public input on the stream restoration design, and review the proposed route of a new sewer line. In order to address sewer overflows in the Latham Park and Lake Daniel Park areas, the stream restoration is part of the comprehensive North Buffalo Sanitary Sewer Project approved by the Greensboro City Council in 2003. As part of the project, more than nine miles of pipe and the construction of three new sewer pump stations will be added to City utility infrastructure."

This morning, we had a story about the Greensboro Transit Authority raising rates for some disabled users of the SCAT van system. Basically, folks who want to get picked up or dropped off more than three-quarters of a mile from a regular bus line have to pay twice the normal amount for a monthly pass. This map shows the areas that are within that federally-mandated buffer.

If you want to read more about red-light cameras, you can read the city-sponsored study or the executive summary.

The city-sponsored study comes to different conclusions than a wider study of accidents at intersections done by A&T researchers. You can get that one here.

And if you're really curious about the city's call for architects to come up with plans to fix up War Memorial Stadium, you can read the Request For Proposals here.

Tuesday night's city council meeting ran a bit late for our presses to catch up, so here's some of what you didn't read in today's paper. (If you want to read along, the agenda is online here.);

(Actual e-mail from city government)

From: Lindemeyer, Nancy

Sent: Thursday, October 07, 2004 4:16 PM

To: Johnson, Mitchell

Subject: Fox 8 News

Mitchell, Fox 8 Assignment Editor Robert Murray found the billboard information on their web site and apologized for the incorrect information. He will remove it immediately. Fox 8 sent a photojournalist, Eddie Hughes, to the Council meeting and he thought that Item #7 (annexation issue) concerned the Urban Loop (can't explain why). They will put the correct information about Item 7 up, but it really doesn't have to do with billboards.

Here's what they had:

Greensboro Urban Loop billboards

The Greensboro City Council has voted unanimously to allow billboards along Greensboro's Urban Loop. The vote will now allow advertisers to put billboards up along the loop, which is the new interstate that will one day circle Greensboro. In November of 2002, the city voted to create a scenic corridor banning billboards along the Urban Loop. But this vote means the scenic corridor is no longer a reality.

Nancy Lindemeyer, Communications Manager

Organizational Development & Communications

City of Greensboro

P.O. Box 3136, Greensboro, NC 27402

Phone: 336.373.2105 Fax: 336.373.4656

http://www.greensboro-nc.gov

Both the Greensboro City Council and the Guilford County Board of Commissioners will be meeting next week.

From WMFY late last week, we learned that renovations to War Memorial stadium "will most likely be funded with bond money."

The report, filed by Frank Mickens, expressed this news with a sense of certitude that surprised us and residents in the nearby Aycock neighborhood. We knew that a bond referendum was a possible way to pay for the repairs to the historic structure, but the city council hasn't yet discussed any specifics, pending the results of an architectural study that would tell them what needs to be done and how much it will cost.

Mickens' source for the story, Deputy City Manager Mitch Johnson, said this morning that he never implied that a bond referendum is likely, only that it is a possibility. He said that neither the council nor City Manager Ed Kitchen has instructed the staff to prepare for a bond offering. But he did say that borrowing money with voter say-so would be an option if the council voted to go that route.

"Obviously, if we're talking about a significant amount of money, it would require a bond referendum," Johnson said.

One of the key factors, he said, was whether the economy recovered by the fall of 2006, the earliest that a referendum could be organized. The city has a lot of needs, but if the economy is bad, bond votes might have to be delayed.

"We know there's things that the community would want to do, but can the commmunity support it? That's the question," he said.

When Inside Scoop called Mickens for his side of the story, the WFMY reporter said that Johnson told him Friday that a bond vote is the "most likely" scenario by which the repairs are paid for. Mickens suggested that Johnson may be backing down from that assessment after catching flak from folks in the city.

"He's changing his story," Mickens said.

Meanwhile, council member Sandy Carmany responded to a blog post by Aycocker David Hoggard saying a bond referendum was only a possibility not a certainty.

(More on yard signs from our Meredith Barkley)

Charles and Mary Elizabeth Irvin thought all the political signs in their West Market Street yard - 28 of them at last count - were a public service. They felt the signs helped voters begin to recognize names they'll find on the long Nov. 2 ballot.

To the city of Greensboro and one anonymous caller, though, there were way too many of them. In response to the caller's complaint, city zoning enforcement officers sent the Irvin's a certified letter last week and paid them a visit earlier this week.

The Irvins' signs, they say, are violating a city ordinance which prohibits more than six political signs per yard.

Mary Elizabeth Irvin didn't know about the ordinance. But she has a definite opinion of it.

"I feel like when you buy property you own it from hell to heaven and I don't think you have a right to tell me what I can do with it, as long as I'm not hurting anybody, and those signs aren't hurting anybody," she said. "They're taking my property rights away and also my freedom of speech."

Since all her signs - except one - are for Republican candidates, she figures a die hard Democrat must have been the complaintant.

While the Irvins are the only homeowners cited so far for too many signs, several property owners have gotten letters because their signs are too big. They can't more than six square feet and more than six feet high.

But the biggest problem, city zoning officials say, are the signs that have gone up in public right-of-ways all over town.

"They end up trashing up the landscape," said Bill Ruska, the city's zoning administrator. "It's a headache."

Every now and then zoning officers go through an area and confiscate those in right of ways.

Property owners can be fined $50 and up for not complying with an order to take signs down. But as a practical matter it is unlikely a homeowner cited this close to the election would be fined.

For one thing few, if any, ever have been. For another, they could appeal to the city Board of Adjustment, and the earliest meeting they could get on the agenda would be late November. Once appealed, the zoning department could do nothing until then.

This morning, we hear from Joya Wesley of the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project that there are a bunch of events planned to mark the 25th anniversary of the shootout at Morningside Homes that killed five people taking part in a protest march. The highest profile event is a march on Saturday, Nov. 13 from the site of the 1979 shooting to the downtown government plaza.

Here's the full press release.

Every few weeks, we like to share what folks are writing in to their council members. Here's a selection of the e-mail for the past two weeks or so:

The Greensboro City Council is usually a pretty reserved bunch, especially compared to the other governmental body across Phil McDonald Plaza. About the only time there's a spirited discussion is after all of the agenda items are done and it comes to the "items from council" portion. That's the time everyone can distribute darts and laurels.

Starting off, Council member Yvonne Johnson asked why the city didn't vote to move Halloween back a day so it wouldn't be observed on a Sunday.

Mayor Keith Holliday and Council member Tom Phillips argued that it wasn't the city role to dictate when a holiday is celebrated. City Attorney Linda Miles agreed.

"I don't think in all fairness you can control when children go trick-or-treating," she said.

The longest and the most informative discussion came from Phillips, who usually has plenty of constructive criticism. Tom cleared up some misunderstandings about the city's rental inspection ordinance and asked about the re-deteriorating stretch of Randleman Road near I-40.
But the most frank discussion came as Phillips and others on the council let it be known that they didn't like being left in the dark about the merger of the Chamber of Commerce, Action Greensboro and the Greensboro Economic Development Partnership. The city gives money to two of the three groups, and the mayor and the city manager serve on some of their boards. But it seemed that few on the council other than Holliday knew about the merger until it was a done deal and reported in the media.

Phillips: "That's the history in Greensboro. A small group of people decide something and don't tell anyone."

Johnson: "We just felt blindsided."

Council Member Sandy Carmany said she had reservations about the makeup of the board, pointing out that there was nobody from "my side of town" on the group's executive committee.

Holliday apologized for not letting the council in on the impending merger and suggested a get together with the heads of the new Greensboro Partnership before the council's next meeting. It's at 5 p.m. in the ground-level conference room on Nov. 16 if you're interested in going.

Back in September, we reported about a "community relations project" being launched by Mayor Keith Holliday. Holliday gave an update to council members in the form of a memo (posted here) that sums up the progress of pairing folks for the seminars and updates the financing.

Holliday said that after council member Tom Phillips raised questions about the city contributing $30,000 for the project, he decided to ask private donors to bear the entire cost of hiring the Rochester, N.Y. consultant to facilitate the program. So far, Holliday said $194,000 of the $319,000 cost had been raised.

But he defended the usefulness of the program, dubbed the "Greensboro Bicentennial Mosaic Partnership Project."

"There were some initial concerns by a few people regarding duplications of efforts but when the concept and details were more fully explained, I believe most people concerned realized the value of reaching individuals within our community that probably would not be exposed to race relationship building as a matter of course in their daily lives."

Project co-director Pat Boswell said a committee has almost finished inviting the 180 folks to be a part of the program, and the first orientation meeting will be Nov. 18.

Inside Scoop will post a listing of the participants as soon as it is finalized.

Full disclosure: My boss, Editor John Robinson, has been invited (he blogs about it here), and his boss, Publisher Robin Saul, is on the project's advisory committee. Neither have any involvement in our writing about the program.

A couple of things that didn't make it in time for our story (unposted) this morning on the city council:

...and find out if the city's leaf crews have gotten around to your humble dwelling to suck up your extra leaves. At this city-run site, you can type in your address and find out whether the city has come through your neighborhood yet for one of the two remaining rounds of pickup this season.

For instance, type in 1403 Pebble Drive, home of Mayor Keith Holliday, and you'll find that crews are working in his area of the city, but they haven't gotten to his street yet.

The architects are lining up for a crack at fixing up War Memorial Stadium, now that the Greensboro Bats/Grasshoppers are moving into their new digs. Back in October, the city asked local firms whether they would like to design the renovation. Three design teams are competing for the contract:

Space and time constraints keep us from detailing all of the things that go on during a city council meeting. So here's what we couldn't slip into the story:

In Sunday's story on the city's race relations project, we promised more information on the Scoop Blog. It's a day late, but here's a list of the 144 city leaders that have pledged to meet up and talk about race relations over the next year. The table has first and last names, and their title or affiliation if we could determine one:

I've gotten a few calls and emails today about Tuesday's story, "Complex remains standing for now," some of which suggest taking tougher action against landowners that callers say are responsible for blight in the city.
Some of those suggested a creative approach that I am certain is not within the power of the city. Arnold Rogers writes, "make Mr. Agapion and his daughter move into these properties and live. Problems would probably get taken care of real damn fast."
The city is pledging to put more pressure on landlords, including filing suit against those who rent out homes that have been condemned.
So what do you think about substandard housing and the approach the city should take? Is an aggressive campaign in order, or are property owners well within their right to do largely what they want with their own homes?
Please leave us your thoughts by clicking the comments link below.

(A note about commenting: Some people who have seldom commented on weblogs and message boards might think there's a lot of complications to actually leaving your thoughts. Here at the Inside Scoop, it's really easy. You don't have to register, you don't have to give us your e-mail address if you don't want to and you actually don't have to put your full name, though it does help. Tell us what you think on this and any other post. We want to hear it.)

There wasn't much space to explain this in the paper (sorry, unposted), but there was a bit more to the move of Greensboro Community Television from the old Central Library annex on Greene Street to the city's Cultural Center.

Tuesday night, the city council was asked to approve a GCTV's lease in the Cultural Center. GCTV is getting booted from their old space to make room for Elon University's law school.

But it quickly turned into a discussion about the merits of the public access channel, which is funded by a surcharge on the cable bills of city residents. Tom Phillips started out by saying that the channel's programming was "awful" and questioned why the space wasn't given to other arts organizations. Don Vaughan, an attorney, questioned whether GCTV fit the legal requirements to be given space in the center.

Although the council eventually voted 6-2 to approve the lease (Phillips and Vaughan voted no), the message from the council was that when the contract with Time Warner Cable expires in three years, there will be no more funding for GCTV.

"You're not going to get any money out of this council in 3 years unless you dramatically change the programming that you've got," Robbie Perkins said.

We'll have more on this to come.

Two items from our memos department:

Former at-large candidate David Hoggard joined the press table last night to blog a city council meeting live. David quickly figured out what many reporters know about covering meetings: It's not easy to write an interesting story on the fly about discussions that are often terribly wonky.

But he does include a short item detailing a conversation he had with Council member Yvonne Johnson, who has long been seen as a future mayoral candidate. According to David, Johnson says she hasn't been able to get an answer out of Keith Holliday whether he intends to run again.

Holliday told me in an interview in December that he will make a decision by February or March.

David also reveals that Council member Tom Phillips will be starting his own weblog by weeks end. Ed Cone says that political pair Don and Nancy Vaughan plan a joint blog that will start up at the end of the month. They are joining Yvonne Johnson, who has had sporadic postings at her blog since November. We'll get you links to the new blogs when they go live.

Boiling down five hours of staff briefings and council discussions into a short story means that everything of note doesn't make it into the soybean extract on pressed wood pulp edition of the News & Record. The print edition talked about mixed-use developments and the trash transfer station, but they also covered...

City employees will start getting more vacation and sick time starting next month, according to a memo sent out by City Manager Ed Kitchen. He details it here, but the change basically increases the number of leave hours accrued per month to bring Greensboro in line with other governments.
Kitchen also proposes giving health and dental benefits to city council members for the first time. He estimates the benefits would cost about $37,000 per year if all the council members take part.
Kitchen said he is implementing the citywide vacation change starting Feb. 1, but he left it up to the council to vote on giving themselves additional perquisites.

At his new blog, Greensboro council member Tom Phillips said that after hearing from SCAT users, he'd support keeping an unlimited ride pass as an option for disabled users of the SCAT van system. He says in his post...

"What I have begun to realize and I believe other Council members have too, is that many of these people who are using SCAT a lot are simply trying to remain active and not give in to their disability. Even though most cities don't offer it, doing away with the unlimited monthly pass would make it prohibitive for these citizens to continue to live the lifestyle they have become accustomed to. I do believe our rate is too low and would recommend that it be increased to $45 per month."

Last Friday, Scoop blog wrote about the proposal to give health and dental benefits to council members for the first time. Yesterday, City Manager Ed Kitchen wrote a follow-up memo (.pdf) proposing that council members who already have insurance from other sources be allowed to take the cash value of the coverage as a "supplement" to their regular pay.
The proposal will have to be approved by the council, and a vote is scheduled for Jan. 18.
There's also bonus material in that memo for those particularly interested in changes to the city's comprehensive land-use plan.
UPDATE: Here's a look (Excel spreadsheet) at what other North Carolina cities pay their elected officials, courtesy of Greensboro's Human Resources Department.

It's often mentioned, usually in letters to the editor, that Greensboro's property tax rate is "among the highest in the state."

Is this the case?

The answer is that it depends on your definition of "among." The city's rate of $.5675 per $100 assessed value plus the county's $.6184 means that a property owner shells out 1.1859 percent of the value of their home every year in taxes.
As far as large cities go, Greensboro is just about in the middle of the pack. The city-imposed tax is higher than average, but the lower than average county tax evens it out. Here's the total tax rate (city plus county) for large N.C. cities:

On Tuesday, we may get the first outlines of a citywide bond referendum in 2006 to pay for big construction projects. You may remember the last round of voter-approved borrowing in 2000, which brought you the East Market Street redevelopment, new fire and police stations and libraries and road improvements.

It's unclear how big 2006's referendum could be, but City Manager Ed Kitchen laid out some possible items:

Whether it's for your current neighborhood or for one you're interested in buying a house in, Scoop's got one more way to find out what's really going on.

Already, John Q. Public can go online to find out the tax values and sale prices for their neighbors homes. But let's say you're buying a house on the 200 block of S. Mendenhall St. and you want to make sure your future neighbors don't leave junk cars in the yard or let their houses deteriorate.

All you have to do is go to the City of Greensboro's online Code Enforcement database and type in the name of the street and the first numeral of the street address.

For Mendenhall, you'll find that in August of last year, 211 S. Mendenhall had a problem with trash piling up in the yard. City inspectors ordered it cleaned up and it was completed a week later. The next month, the same property was inspected and ordered vacated for numerous building code violations. As of Dec. 28, the property has not been repaired.

Whether you still want to buy a house on that block is your call, but at least you'll know. The service also comes in handy for apartment renters, who can look up what problems have been found by inspectors in their building. And if there's a condemned house in your neighborhood, you can check up to see whether the owner is making any progress to fix it up.

Try it out on your street and see if anything catches you by surprise.

Whatever happened to all those great things we were promised in 2000? Remember that $137 million in borrowing Greensboro voters approved for road projects, libraries, police, fire, and neighborhood redevelopment?

Well Scoop's got your update, with a list of all the projects promised and how much has been spent so far. Two new libraries: Check. Carolyn Allen Park: Check. Greensboro Sportsplex: Check. Zoo at the Natural Science Center: Ehh, not so much.

I've also got detailed information on individual projects mentioned on the list, but it's too long to post all of it at once. If anybody wants to know more about a specific project, let me know in the comments below and I'll put it out there.

Remember this?

A group of Greensboro businessmen led by Bill Black and Don Brady have yet to make a $200,000 payment to the city it promised as a part of the city's management of the team.
The Generals Brigade, a limited-liability corporation, was formed a year ago by Brady and Black to lease the Generals' franchise rights from the team's original owner, Greensboro attorney Art Donaldson. The company then turned the team over to the Greensboro Coliseum and agreed in a contract to pay the city $200,000 to help cover the team's expenses.
The city-owned coliseum operated the team, paying all the team's bills and collecting ticket and advertising revenue.
The city lost $259,000 operating the team partly because the Generals Brigade never followed through on the payment.

There's been some lively discussion about the twilight years of the St. James II apartment complex on South Eugene Street. Our Margaret Banks wrote about the ailing complex in the Sunday edition, eliciting commentary on David Hoggard's blog.

Hoggard supports the contention of St. James' nonprofit managers that city leaders pushed the complex into the abyss or at least sat on their hands while crack dealers did the same. Remember that the apartments are adjacent to a site that was once pitched as the location for a new minor-league baseball stadium.

The directors of the Christian Counseling & Wellness Group, Donald and Sarah Graham, spelled out those accusations in their response to a city audit of the apartments' operation in 2004, which we have scanned and made available online in its entirety. In the audit report (click here to read the PDF) Internal Audit Director Len Lucas noting that the apartments' rehab work had been unexplainably stalled.

In response, the Grahams write (click here to read) "Are we sending up smoke screens and making excuses for the lack of progress toward completing the renovation project of St. James Homes II? The answer is absolutely not. This project has not moved forward because 'we have been redlined.'"

They continue: "We realize the sensitivity of this issue and the danger of rubbing certain individuals the wrong way, but we did not come this far to just give up all the battle that we have already fought. It is so sad to have so many people tell us that we can not save these apartments when the "establishment" - meaning city leaders and Down Town Greensboro, Inc. - wants them destroyed for their own personal agenda. We have had people call the city leaders the "Greensboro Mafia."

Lucas responds (click to read here): "I appreciate your candid responses, however there are still issues outstanding that do not appear to have a solution or plan of commitments in place to rectify."

"We appreciate both of your efforts to provide affordable housing in Greensboro. Unfortunately, it does not appear that St. James Homes II is a feasible project at this time," Lucas wrote.

City Council member Tom Phillips also responds to Hoggard's post, writing that "If this is a conspiracy, please explain it to me. Some people find it easier to blame others for their failures than to accept responsibility for themselves."

This morning, our Margaret Banks writes about Republican County Commissioner Linda Shaw's contact with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development leading up to the agency's withdrawal of $900,000 in grants to fix up the St. James II apartment complex.

On Sunday, we wrote about the two managers of St. James II and their accusations that the city's establishment brought about the demise of the low-income apartments on Eugene Street. In a letter to the city (read here), Donald and Sarah Graham allege that the "Greensboro Mafia," namely "city leaders and Down Town Greensboro, Inc.(sic)" wanted the apartments to fail so they could be bulldozed.

While not on the City Council's agenda for tonight, St. James and Commissioner Skip Alston's remark that the city staff is "racist" may be a topic of discussion among council members at the end of the meeting.

If you're following the once-heated debate over the "Battleground Oaks" shopping center, you might have to wait a little longer to get a decision.

On Monday, the zoning commission recommended in favor of (story here) a 103 acre plan for a shopping center, apartments and condos at the corner of Battleground Avenue and Old Battleground Road. The city council was supposed to make that decision final on March 1, but the developer has asked to push that hearing back to March 15 because several of the key folks in the development are going to be out of town. The council typically approves developers' requests to continue items.

Remember that this development set off a big debate as it was the "test case" for how much weight would be given to the city's comprehensive land use plan. Now that the developers have tweaked their plan, there appears to be a lot less opposition this time around.

Update: One of the opponents of the development, Ted Eaves, writes to the city council saying that there are still plenty of folks that don't want the shopping center and apartments:

"Although I was unable to stay for the debate on the development yesterday at the Zoning Commission meeting, I want to assure you that I am still strongly opposed to this development being placed in this location. And my opinion is shared by many of the residents of these neighborhoods. The turnout at the zoning commission meeting does not reflect our feelings, rather it is a reflection of the meeting time and the lengthy battle that this has turned into."

Among the emails sent to the city council recently was this message from Natalie Koeplinger, whose sidewalk has been the recipient of, shall we say, presents from a neighborhood canine.

"I was told that their is no ordinance against not cleaning up after your pet. I think the time has come for a local ordinance requiring pet owners to clean up after their pet, if we don't have one. Most owners in my neighborhood carry doggy doo bags, however there are those priviledged few who want to share. It is also becomming a nuissance in the parks as well, where it seems like the dogs are the only ones who get to use it. Can you please pass an ordinance to make it a fineable offense for not cleaning up after your pet?"

After confirming that, in fact, there was no excrement edict, Council member Tom Phillips only suggested that what's good for Fido should also apply to Garfield.

"I'll only vote for that if we require cat owners to clean up after their cats and walk them on a leash," he wrote.

We'll pick up after this later.

You can read more about it in Wednesday's paper (link here), but the city council seemed receptive this morning to the idea of spending $750,000 to pay for "streetscape" improvements around Action Greensboro's Center City Park. The money would come from the 2000 transportation bond, where it was originally designated for improvements to Church Street. While the council generally doesn't vote in these morning briefing sessions, they directed their staff to move ahead with plans to retool that money for the park.

So what does $750,000 get you? Check out this summary here: 11,500 square feet of brick sidewalks, 15 raised tree planters at $12,000 each, 18 streetlights at $10,000 a pop and other miscellany.

In the same meeting, Budget Director Larry Davis passed out this chart comparing what Greensboro spends on certain things like parks and police to other North Carolina cities. Council member Robbie Perkins pointed out that Greensboro spends a lot more on parks per person ($88.24) than Durham does ($28.87).

"The difference between 88 and 28 is a lot," he said.

Don Vaughan shot back, "Yeah. But look at Durham."

Near the end of Tuesday's City Council meeting (Update:Read the full story here), council member Florence Gatten read a lengthy written statement (read the PDF here) in which she defended the city's handling of the St. James Homes II housing complex and said that to her knowledge, there is no evidence that points to racism on the part of the city's housing staff.

While his name was not spoken during the meeting, Gatten was responding to charges made by County Commissioner Melvin "Skip" Alston that the city refused to work with the managers of St. James because they were black and that the city staff is "racist." (Read the original story here, or a transcript of Alston repeating his comments last week here)

"Generalized, vague, non-specific charges of racism are non-productive, divisive and serve to create a climate of distrust," Gatten said in the statement.

"If there are things that need to be addressed, let us do so in the proper venues rather than broad brush strokes that cast aspersions on the city's award winning staff. Even if a citizen doesn't have specifics but just feels that the staff has a racist attitude, let's talk about it."

Immediately after Gatten read the statement, Council member Claudette Burroughs-White responded that people have a right to their perception that racism is going on. She said that she hopes the city won't "kick this under the rug and not realize that we do have a problem with distrust and racism in this community."

Click here to listen to a short, two-minute dialogue between Burroughs-White and council member Tom Phillips about Alston's charges (.mp3, 628k).

With the other fireworks Tuesday night, I nearly forgot about a motion made by council member Tom Phillips that was unanimously passed by the council.

In short, the motion asked that all grants or loans more than $10,000 awarded by groups distributing city money be approved by the city council before any checks are cut. This would cover facade grants given by Downtown Greensboro Inc., grants and loans from the Greensboro Housing Partnership and development projects approved by the East Market Street Development Corp.

"If it's city dollars, the City Council needs to make the final decision on it," Phillips said.

Mayor Keith Holliday immediately cast his support: "If I'm going to be held accountable for it, whether it be through public scrutiny or whatever, I want to have the last word on it also."

Sounding less enthused was Claudette Burroughs-White, who said it appeared that East Market was the real target of the increased scrutiny. Without mentioning any names, she said "there are personalities