Human relations commission to weigh in on landfill

Greensboro Human Relations Commissioner Marikay Abuzuaiter spoke at Laughlin Memorial United Methodist Church last night.

The Greensboro Human Relations Commission will submit a resolution related to the White Street Landfill tomorrow ahead of a city council vote to seek a private company to operate a permitted portion of the landfill. This will be the third request for proposals for solid waste issued by the city in as many years.

“I think we’ve turned the corner on this,” Commissioner Michael Roberto said, speaking at a community meeting at Laughlin Memorial United Methodist Church in northeast Greensboro last night. “There may be people who have doubts, but I think the political will here, the moral rectitude of this fight has made the difference here. The fact that they have pulled out this RFP is an act of desperation.”

Roberto and fellow commissioner Marikay Abuzuaiter said they expect their chair, Abdel Nuriddin, to make the presentation.

“When we read that resolution tomorrow night – when Dr. Nuriddin reads that resolution – here is a human relations commission saying to the city council: No, you can’t do this,” Roberto said.

“Commissioner Roberto and I fought long and hard for this,” said Abuzuaiter, who was one of a number of candidates for city council at the meeting. “It took six months. There were many, many times when he and I got thrown under the bus.”

After the meeting, Abuzuaiter said it had been difficult to get a resolution before council, but declined to discuss its contents.

Several speakers urged people to go to the polls to vote out four members of council that have pursued reopening the landfill: Mayor Bill Knight, at-large Councilman Danny Thompson, District 4 Councilwoman Mary Rakestraw and District 5 Councilwoman Trudy Wade. The primary takes place in October.

“We are nonpartisan, but if we don’t see a change in the four people that we have on council right now, we’re going to continue to see the same thing in 2011, 2012 and 2013,” said James Burroughs III, the executive director of Democracy at Home, a voter mobilization group. “And as a reminder, we had some of the highest turnout in 2008. We thought maybe we’d reached the mark with the election of our first African-American president. But then, in 2009, Yvonne Johnson lost by a little more than 900 votes – our first black mayor.”

Ralph Johnson, a member of Concerned Citizens of Northeast Greensboro, said Thompson should be held accountable for pushing to reopen the landfill after stating that he was not interested in doing so during his 2009 campaign.

Speakers expressed astonishment at the notion that council members have received significant encouragement from constituents to reopen the landfill.

“The citizens are opposed to it across racial lines, across generational lines,” said John Rich, who lives in Rakestraw’s district. “Everybody knows that if we want to move forward in race relations, this is not the way to do it. If you want to put a big dump within a major beltway, it’s just outrageous. You talk about the economics of it – I know a little bit about economics. I’ve worked in finance for 35 years, and I can tell you when you are able to grow your tax base, that exceeds what it costs to put gas in trucks to take the waste elsewhere.”