The last city council meeting and other things

Sorry for my silence lately -- I had all the preparations for Thanksgiving to do plus some babysitting with not-so-little-anymore Garrett,


then picked up a lousy head cold that has kept me down for the past couple of days. I'm feeling much better now so will try to catch up on some long-neglected blogging.

There were a number of significant decisions made at last Tuesday night's city council meeting, and I will recap some of them here.

* City manager's evaluation: When each councilmember's independent written evaluation of City Manager Mitchell Johnson was tallied, there was agreement that his performance rating was above average. Every person was satisfied with his performance this past year, and the only disagreement was over the actual amount of the pay raise he had earned, resulting in the 7-2 vote for a 3% increase.

* McKnight Mill Road zoning case: The city council had delayed this case for 60 days in order to give the applicant an opportunity to respond to concerns we had expressed about potential undesirable uses that could negatively affect adjacent residences. Unfortunately, he failed to alleviate those concerns, and the request was denied.

* Annexations: After adopting revised service reports and exempting a few residents who had not received appropriate notification of the potential annexation, all the annexations were approved unanimously to take effect on June 30, 2008. A few citizens showed up wanting to speak and oppose the action, but it turned out these people were not being affected in this city-initiated action. Their cases will be processed early next year during a round of voluntary annexations due to requests they signed when they hooked onto city water and sewer service.

* Delay in city council district changes: We delayed the consideration of changes to city council district boundaries caused by the annexations until the January 15, 2008 meeting to allow for public input into the matter. Some citizens apparently did not understand the need to shift some district boundaries, some charging that it was a political ploy of some sort, while others are concerned about the High Point Road corridor "getting lost in the shuffle." I received the following response from the GIS manager when I inquired about other options:

The challenge in this redistricting effort is to shift population from what will become the largest district (District 4) to the smallest district (District 1). The fewest voters are disturbed by shifting population through District 5.

I originally prepared four different scenarios. One of these was eliminated because, while it could accommodate the combined City initiated annexation plus petition annexation population, pulling out the petition annexation population (as will be required for the Department of Justice submission) pushed the population balance outside of the allowable limits.

Of the remaining three scenarios, all three included the move of precinct G56 from District 5 to District 1. We focused on this precinct because:

-- The move could be accomplished without splitting a neighborhood (Rolling Roads);
-- The resulting districts are more compact; and,
-- There was minimal impact on the majority-minority population makeup of District 1.

It will be interesting to see if alternate options pop up in January.

* Heart of the Triad Resolution: We unanimously adopted the revised resolution in support of the Heart of the Triad concept. The new council will appoint a representative to serve on the newly-formed Strategic Planning Committee (and it cannot be me since I will no longer be a councilmember).

* Rotary Club Carousel Project: The city council endorsed the downtown carousel being donated by the Rotary Clubs although final details have not yet been worked out about maintenance and upkeep.

* Marketing Initiative: The city council agreed to join the Piedmont Triad Partnership, High Point, and Winston-Salem in contributing $30,000 each to "wrap" one of the new Skybus planes with the Piedmont Triad logo and advertise this area everywhere that plane flies.

* Funding for the International Civil Rights Museum: The city council voted 5-4 on a NON-BINDING resolution to direct the Housing and Community Development staff to include a $250,000 allocation of federal CDBG funds to the International Civil Rights Museum for the three years beginning in the 2008-09 budget. The source of the funds would be a small reduction in the amount allocated for a future phase of the Willow Oaks redevelopment project which has not yet been started. Future councils have the ability to reverse that direction in each of the next three budget cycles.

Greensboro has traditionally spent its CDBG on affordable housing programs, but many other cities routinely use some of their CDBG funding on downtown redevelopment projects (for which the Museum qualifies). When Councilmember Tom Phillips made the motion NOT to use city property tax money for this purpose (which I voted for), he cited CDBG funding as a possible future source which I said at the time I could support. My vote Tuesday evening was consistent with what I had said I could support.

* Public Information Request discussion: There was discussion of the unwieldy public information request that is likely to take many months to prepare and expend a lot of expensive staff resources to fulfill, including reassigning a reference librarian to oversee the task. For example, the Project Homestead materials include every individual loan that was made to purchasers of Homestead properties, and staff will have to redact those individuals' personal financial information from the documents. Nonetheless, the city will comply, as evidenced by this memo from City Manager Mitchell Johnson:

From: Johnson, Mitchell Sent:

Thursday, November 15, 2007 5:47 PM

To: Department Heads; CMO; City Council

Subject: Public Information Request Help

We have received our broadest request to date for public records, from local attorney Sam Spagnola and two gentlemen who have blog sites, Roch Smith and Dr. Joseph Guarino. The requests concern the Police Department investigations and Project Homestead. The request itself is four pages long and extremely comprehensive.

The sheer mass of the document request would significantly impact Legal and Public Affairs if they were tasked with all of the work. So that we might do the best job possible pulling this all together I asked Sandy Neerman if we might have the benefit of a librarian who would have the technical background for this sort of project. To my great delight she has agreed to assign Frank Barefoot, reference librarian, to work with us on a temporary basis to compile and catalog the information. Many of you know Frank and I can think of no one who could do a better job at this. Frank will be working half days in the Public Affairs Department’s plaza level offices in the MMOB. Over the next days and probably weeks, Frank will be contacting you.

While we are able to identify most employees who would have documents on these topics, we do not want to overlook anyone who was involved and has relevant documents. In order to be sure that we comply fully with these detailed requests, we are advising all departments and all Council members of the requests and asking that you forward this notice to your division heads, as well.

-- Please do not give Frank your original documents. Make copies.

-- Keep track of how many copies you made and staff time used to find and copy documents (who did the work and how long they spent). Provide this information to Cindy Briggs in Public Affairs when you have finished compiling the material.

-- If you have already provided documents to the CMO, Legal, or Public Affairs in response to previous requests, do not make additional copies until you talk to Frank and compare what you have with what he already has. He will be contacting you.

-- If you are absolutely certain that there are no documents in your department related to Project Homestead or the Police investigation, please send an e-mail to Frank to that effect.

-- Please be thorough in your examination of your files. Look in your electronic as well as hard copy files. This includes the computer hard drives not just the organizational storage (the “U” drive).

-- When you deliver documents to Frank in Public Affairs, please be sure to identify them with your name and department name in case we have questions.

Frank will be working mostly half days in Public Affairs. You may send clearly marked non-confidential materials to him there or deliver them to him or to Cindy Briggs. Frank can be reached at his listed phone number and e-mail address at either location during the day.

Thank you for your cooperation and prompt attention to these requests.

For the record, I have already delivered my shoebox full of materials to Mr. Barefoot.

* Retirement of City Attorney Linda Miles: I offer my congratulations to Linda Miles who has announced her well-deserved retirement from the city on November 30. Linda has had a distinguished career and has been working since she was age 14 . Now it's time to relax and enjoy her friends and family. She will return on a contract basis in January for up to six months until a new city attorney is identified and oriented.