The ‘right people in Greensboro’

TriadWatch provides video of the interesting little debate between Greensboro City Council members Danny Thompson and Zack Matheny over the proposed Google deal and the “right people” to grease the skids.

Keith Brown notes in the comments that Matheny “was chomping at the bit to talk about who are the right people in Greensboro.” I give Matheny credit for calling out the ‘usual suspects,’ and I also give him credit for at least asking questions before the infamous Dec. 15 vote approving federal recovery zone bonds. Still, think about the taxpayer-funded aquatic center and you realize that Matheny evidently believes Greensboro Coliseum director Matt Brown is of the “right people” in Greensboro, and that comforts me not.

John Hammer reports “that by ordinance the city charges $1.75 a foot for use of the right-of-way, and if the city waived the fee for Google there is little doubt the city would be sued by some of the other users of the right-of-way, such as Duke Energy and Bell South.”

Now back to Dec. 15, the same meeting that sparked Textgate, when Robbie Perkins was e-mailing high-powered developer Roy Carroll as the council discussed the lawsuit the city was involved with Carroll against fellow high-powered developer Marty Kotis.

Following the debate, Matheny requested that City Manager Rashad Young work to keep the city out of such legal troubles in the future. Good luck with that — cities invite legal troubles, and the Google deal sure looks like it’s litigation waiting to happen — if it goes down. You know the city wants it to go down.

A job! A job!

If yesterday’s N&R front-pager perfectly illustrates that the so-called federal stimulus is a total joke:

And there was that bright spot in the job arena over at Housing Greensboro.

The burgeoning nonprofit has received more than $100,000 in stimulus funds to put toward renovations on local homes.

Although much of the work will be done by volunteers, the increased workload means director (director Gene) Brown will need a new person to fill out his staff of four full-time, one part-time and two Americorps staff members.

“It’s almost like it’s providing dual benefits,” Brown said. “It’s creating a job and in our case … we’re serving those in the community with these home repairs.”

While Housing Greensboro is a nonprofit organization, JLF president John Hood turns his attention to the main benefactor of federal stimulus money —– government. Hood maintains —– gasp — that North Carolina has too many public employees and that —-another gasp —- those employees who provide government’s core functions would benefit from a radical streamlining. Compensation and benefits would improve, and there’s much needed reform on the latter issue, considering the fact that “North Carolina has promised current public employees about $30 billion in health benefits when they retire that the state has made no preparations whatsoever to finance.”

Hood identifies Forsyth County Rep. Dale Folwell as the lone lawmaker who wants to address that problem.