Calling out Triad ‘regional organizations’

Excellent weekend reading on so-called regional organizations that spend taxpayers’ money to provide services to its member local governments.

Former Guilford County Planning Director Rob Benicini’s N&R column on the Piedmont Triad Partnership isn’t posted:

(P)rincipally, the organization had for years been an umbrella marketing organization for its member counties. In that role it had some reasonable successes, but the wide disparity between the urban center and the rural periphery ultimately made for an unworkable marketing message, and much of the marketing has been returned to the counties economic development operations.

Then there’s the Piedmont Triad Regional Council, formerly the Piedmont Triad Council of Governments. The Rhino’s Paul Clark covers PTRC’s plans to —-you guessed it— build a $4 million headquarters on some prime Kernersville land.

But that was only ‘Plan B.’ ‘Plan A’ was to buy a downtown Kville building owned by none other than C. Wayne McDonald, who recently sold Guilford County a downtown High Point building, the proceeds from which he’ll hopefully put toward his outstanding county tax bill.

Read both these pieces and you can’t help but wonder if either of these organizations should still be in existence.

New $20 million GTA facility—– no joke

No pun intended, but I hammered away at the City of Greensboro’s $20 million GTA headquarters and maintenance facility from the beginning.

Now the Rhino’s John Hammer hammers away, describing last week’s dedication as a combination of Saturday Night Live and Monty Python, with Mayor Robbie Perkins as the lead jokester.

If only this were a bad joke. The ultimate irony, of course, is everyone who attended the ceremony to pay homage to the wonderfulness of public transportation arrived by —you guessed it —-automobile.