Search for new Guilford County mgr begins…..

Illegally, reports the Rhino:

The Guilford County Board of Commissioners may not have had the courage necessary to second a motion to fire Guilford County Manager Brenda Jones Fox at the Thursday, June 21 meeting, but the commissioners did have the courage –in an illegal closed session, that is – to hire a headhunter to start looking for Fox’s replacement.

Several sources in that closed session said that the board – after Fox and Assistant County Manager Sharisse Fuller were asked to leave the room – decided to hire the firm of Young & Associates.

The bigger question Scott Yost probes is —now that we know there’s no political will to fire Fox —- whether or not the board should mess with this at all, given it will have a vastly different makeup after the election. Commissioner Mike Winstead –who would not second fellow Commissioner Kirk Perkins motion to fire Fox —says the “majority of the board may be the same people,” but any board without Billy Yow and Skip Alston is most definitely not the same board.

While Commissioner Paul Gibson thinks it was good idea t bring on a headhunter, he also stated he did not want Fox training her successor.

W-S 500k incentive deal

Winston-Salem City Council’s finance committee will discuss an incentive package worth $500,000 for a nationwide collection agency that would employ 2,000 people with an average salary of just over $41,000.

Here’s the rub —the company went bankrupt in the late ’90s amidst allegations of criminal wrongdoing. Company president Bill Bartmann was acquitted by a federal jury, but co-founder Jay Jones pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge and served five years in prison.

After Commercial Financial Services closed, Bartmann traveled the country, sharing his story of how he created his success and dealt with challenges.

When asked if he was concerned about any stigma associated with the CFS name, Bartmann said, “No, I am not. And if I were, I would not have called this CFS II. I would have called it Bill and Kathy’s Collection Co. or some other anonymous name, and I probably would have moved out of Tulsa.”

Council member Robert Clark said he “favors using caution’ when considering an incentive package for CFS II. So should any other city considering a incentive package because –you guessed it —Bartmann is shopping around, with Greensboro, High Point and Charlotte also on the list.

Monkey still at large

The monkey who escaped from Wake Forest University’s research facility is still at large.

Over a week now animal control officers have been searching for her.