Commissioner Paul Gibson won't play ball

UPDATE: Paul Gibson sent in a completed survey at 8:34 pm tonight (later the same day) and included an apology for having inaccurate information. A politician who can apologize or admit they made a mistake is rare in my experience, and I commend him for it. The original post is below.


Calling candidates to complete our voter guide is one of the less exciting parts of my job, but it's important nonetheless to provide readers with some basic information about the names that will appear on their ballots in the upcoming general election Nov. 6. Candidates usually greet our requests for a head shot and a completed survey with similar enthusiasm, but Guilford County Commissioner Paul Gibson was the exception.

I've interviewed Gibson before, and my editor Jordan Green told me we've endorsed him in the past. When I called Gibson last week, he was angry to say the least, accusing our publisher Charles Womack of donating to his opponent and saying the donation jeopardized the journalistic integrity of our paper. I couldn't get a word in edgewise and was baffled by the entire conversation.

It turns out that my publisher did not donate to Gibson's opponent in District 5, and didn't seem to know who Jeff Phillips was. When I called Gibson back today to tell him this, he insisted that someone from YES! Weekly did, and that he was almost certain it was Womack. So even though Jordan had already looked at the campaign finance reports I checked again, even going over reports from Don Wendelken, who Phillips beat in the Republican primary. No donation to either candidate from anyone affiliated with YES! Weekly was listed.

So I called Gibson again. He was just as short as in our previous conversations, insisting Charles donated to someone and that it was on par with the head of CBS donating $100,000 to a Republican PAC. The assertion of a right wing bias at YES! Weekly is probably just as funny to anyone who knows our paper as it is to our editorial staff (all of whom, by the way, are registered independent, including myself) because we are routinely accused by conservative candidates of being too left wing.

It turns out Charles donated to Tony Wilkins, a Republican who ran for County Commissioners in a different district than Gibson. Charles said Wilkins is an old friend, and I'll also note that he was probably the most centrist or left-leaning (Wilkins might reject that characterization) Republican in the primary race. Linda Kellerman, who won the Democratic primary for the same race, had announced that she was dropping out of the race.

The most confusing part of the entire interaction is that I was calling Gibson for a candidate survey, not an article. The most controversial question on the survey is probably the fact that we ask candidates their age — there is no space for positions, it is just background information on the candidates. Every candidate answers the same questions, and we print exactly what they give us. Bias is an impossibility unless we only included some candidates (and of course we include everything we get back).

Our publisher doesn't have anything to do with our elections coverage — and invite you to prove me wrong. I challenged Gibson to point to an example of biased elections reporting in our paper, and I extend the invitation to the public. We report the facts and usually represent candidates in their own words. Our goal is to give voters accurate information about candidates so they can decide, and while we occasionally weigh in on who we think deserves our vote, we keep the endorsements and opinions separate from the news content.

There is still time for Gibson to change his mind. I emailed him the survey anyway, pointing out that it was voters (and not us) who were hurt by the lack of information.

New jail celebrated with ribbon-cutting

Guilford County Commissioners and Sheriff BJ Barnes celebrated the completion of the new $115 million county jail with a ribbon-cutting Monday morning.

Read more about the event in Wednesday's paper.

Above, the US flag is raised as part of the ceremony, as Barnes watches from the podium (center) and Chairman Skip Alston and Commissioner Paul Gibson look on (at left).

Photo by Eric Ginsburg.

Kellerman not running for Guilford commissioner

Linda Kellerman, one of the two Democrats running for Guilford County Commissioner District 6, said she decided to stop running after a death in the family. Kellerman endorsed the other Democrat, Dan Miller for the seat.

Miller will face the winner of the Republican primary for the seat in November. Jeremy Williams, Hank Henning and Tony Wilkins will square off in the May 8 primary.

Miller was one of a handful of candidates, including Gladys Robinson and Marcus Brandon, who attended a march to the polls yesterday, which brought hundreds of students out for the first day of early voting.

Tony Wilkins files to run for District 6 County Commissioner

As the clock ran out on filing for a few remaining County Commissioner seats yesterday — a deadline which was extended due to a court proceedings which temporarily suspended the filing process as the NAACP challenged the legality of the commissioner redistricting — veteran conservative Tony Wilkins filed for District 6.

Wilkins will run against fellow Republicans Hank Henning and Jeremy Williams, but he wasn't the only candidate to file before the final deadline at 5 p.m. March 9. Democrats Dan Miller of Greensboro and Linda Kellerman of High Point both filed yesterday for District 6 as well, bringing the number of candidates from two on Thursday up to five.

In a press release, Wilkins emphasized his service as Executive Director of the Guilford County Republican Party for two years and the facts that he spent his entire life in the county and experience running a furniture business. "He pledges to work tirelessly for jobs, economic growth, and public safety," the release said.

There is no incumbent running for the new seat.

Also yesterday, Republican Noah Messick of Gibsonville filed for District 4 Commissioner, running against Republicans Jerry Branson of Julian and Douglas Williams of Greensboro, who filed two days prior. Incumbent Kirk Perkins is the only Democrat running for the seat.

As filing closed for the County Commissioner races, Democrat Ray Trapp was ensured victory in District 8, as no other candidates filed for the seat.

For more filing information, visit the Board of Election's filing list.

ACLU: County commission violating C4GC's free speech rights

ACLU of North Carolina Legal Director Katherine Lewis Parker expresses concerns about the constitutionality of the Guilford County Commission's proposed citizen multi-media presentation policy in a letter to the board today:

The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina Legal Foundation ("ACLU-NCLF")was contacted last week by Guilford County resident Jodi Riddleberger ("C4gc"). Ms. Riddleberger has requested our assistance in connection with a recent decision by the Guilford County Board of Commissioners ("the Board") to ban any and all multimedia presentations during prescribed public comment periods of Board meetings. After conducting an initial investigation, we have concerns that your Board is violating Ms. Riddleberger's rights under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Additional material after the jump:

Parker:

It appears that the county's actions with regard to Ms. Riddleberger, as well as the passage of the ban on multimedia presentations during public comment period constitute violations of the First Amendment. First, we believe that the general requirement that individuals can show videos only if approved and placed on the agenda is an unconstitutional prior restraint on speech. Further, Chairman Alston's specific comments and actions against Ms. Riddleberger suggest that these new rules, while they appear to be content neutral, are a thinly-veiled disguise for impermissible content discrimination, or even viewpoint discrimination....

The actions of the chairman in response to Ms. Riddleberger's request to be placed on the December 1st agenda, as well as the language in the new proposed policy, suggest that the chairman has unbridled discretion to make decisions about who and whater material can be placed on the meeting agendas. There appear to be no standards in place to guide the chairman's actions. That is impermissible under the First Amendment.

Further, the decision to deny Ms. Riddleberger's request to be placed on the December 1st agenda and to show a video that appeared to relate specifically to board business, while noting that a request by the library would be approved, demonstrates that the chairman is making these decisions at least based on the content, and maybe the viewpoint, of the message. Content-based discrimination triggers strict scrutiny review — even higher than that for content-neutral regulations as described above. Under strict scrutiny, a regulation must be necessary to serve a compelling governmental interest by the least restrictive means available.... It seems unlikely that the county can meet this very heavy burden. Further, "[i]n its practical operation," the board's action and proposed policy may "go[] even beyond mere content discrimination," which is patently unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

Guilford redistricting map: Meandering lines, party affiliation and voting history

Republicans put party registration before compactness and community cohesion in a new Guilford County Commission redistricting map rushed through the General Assembly this week.

“The county’s citizens would also be best served if the districts were balanced in regards to political parties as much as possible based on party registration, and the ratio for the county in the districts should have an equal number of Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, unaffiliateds, and even conservative voters — all based on the ratio of voters outside the voting rights districts in the county,” said Jeff Hyde, a founder of Conservatives for Guilford County, who ran unsuccessfully for NC Senate last year.

Hyde condemned a map submitted by Skip Alston, the commission’s Democratic chairman.

“Your current map stuffs, stacks and packs based on party affiliation and voting history,” he said. “This is the practice that the General Assembly wanted to discourage, and which is why they passed this bill.”

NC Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger responded to a complaint by Alston that he went back on his word by shepherding a bill through the Senate that took away the county commission’s power to draw its own map.

“The understanding I had was that they were going to draw competitive maps,” he said. “Unfortunately, what we saw as a result of that one map that Commissioner Alston had submitted was anything but competitive. There was discussion about a two-pronged process where they were still looking at the possibility of leaving the commission with 11 members.”

Berger said three Republican members of the county commission — Linda Shaw, Billy Yow and Mike Winstead — expressed concerns to him about the local redistricting process.

Berger said the purpose of the plan enacted by the General Assembly was to have “a situation where the maximum number of competitive districts were in place.”

Shaw described the plan somewhat differently yesterday.

“This is supposed to be five favoring Republicans and three favoring Democrats,” she said.

The three minority-majority districts are a lock for Democratic candidates. The remaining five districts are almost evenly split between in voter registration between the two parties. But judging by past history, Republican candidates would be favored to win.

The five districts would have consistently been carried by Republican candidates in the 2008 presidential, gubernatorial and US Senate elections, along with the 2010 US Senate election, with only two exceptions. District 5, which snakes up from downtown Greensboro up to Summerfield, would have been carried by Barack Obama in 2008 by a mere 50.0 percent. And Democrat Kay Hagan would carried all five districts in her 2008 US Senate campaign. But Hagan is an anomaly: 2008 was a year of pent-up Democratic mobilization, and as a Greensboro resident, Hagan enjoyed a home court advantage in Guilford County.

The map approved by the General Assembly features district lines that are even more contorted than those in the plan submitted by Alston.

“It’s almost like a bunch of snakes running around because it just meanders and meanders,” Commissioner Kay Cashion observed.

As a result it chops High Point up into three separate districts. The city is currently represented by two district commissioners.

Republican Commissioner Bill Bencini, who lives in High Point, is drawn into a district comprised of only 35.9 percent High Point voters. Another district in the western part of the county, which will be an open seat, has an electorate that is majority High Point voters. About 60 percent of the new District 1, a minority-majority district is in High Point.

Cashion is drawn into a district with Shaw that radiates out from UNCG out to Stokesdale in the county’s northwest corner. Democrats hold a slight edge in voter registration in the new District 3, but Republicans John McCain, Pat McCrory and Richard Burr would have carried the district respectively in the 2008 presidential election, 2008 gubernatorial election and 2010 US Senate election.

Berger blamed the Voting Rights Act for the tortured electoral lines evident in the map enacted by the General Assembly. But maps submitted to the county redistricting committee by the Guilford County Republican Party and by Keith Brown, a blogger who is active in the Republican Party, feature compact districts.

“I did and have seen that map, as well as other maps that have been available,” Berger said. “You know, I’m not saying that there’s only one way to do this. I do think the map adopted by the General Assembly is competitive. That’s the primary concern of those who called me. That was the primary focus of their attention. They wanted a situation where the quality of the candidate and the quality of the message would be the deciding factor for how elections turn out.”

Consistent with their rhetoric throughout the redistricting process, Democrats have charged that the Republicans are using race to maximize their partisan advantage. Sen. Don Vaughan, a Greensboro Democrat, echoed that complaint in remarks about the Guilford County Commission redistricting plan enacted by the General Assembly.

“It’s a pattern of segregation: Putting minority folks all into the same area for voting purposes,” he said. “It’s packing.”

In fact, the three minority-majority districts in the map adopted by the General Assembly share similar contours with other proposed plans, including some submitted by Democrats. The new map increases black voting age population in two of the districts only slightly in two districts: From 47.7 percent to 50.7 percent in the district represented by Davis, and from 63.7 percent to 64.3 percent in the district represented by Commissioner Carolyn Coleman. In a third district, represented by Alston, black voting age population decreases from 62.0 percent to 59.9 percent.

Considering that Guilford County is covered under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, the county attorney is required to submit the map to the US Justice Department for preclearance. Part of what the Justice Department will be scrutinizing is whether the plan is retrogressive, that is, whether it makes black voters worse off than before.

The process, if not the contents of the map, could present a challenge.

“Under the regulations governing Section 5, one of the required pieces of information is, what role did minorities play in the development of the plan and the enactment of it?” said Gerry Cohen, director of bill drafting for the Fiscal Research Division in Raleigh. “So that’s one of the things that the county attorney is going to have to submit. I would guess he or she will be checking with folks here or in Greensboro to find out if that happened.”

There was no public hearing on the map before the General Assembly approved it, and the bill that was enacted does not allow the Guilford County Commission to put the matter to a referendum by the voters.

Six plans to re-district the Guilford County Commission

As promised, I've produced six potential redistricting scenarios for the Guilford County Commission.

Based on analysis indicating that the Greensboro City Council could move one precinct and reduce the population variance for its district map, I received brief notoriety. Later, when the infamous Rakestraw plan was approved — before being rescinded — my plan helped establish that massive disruption and realignment was unnecessary, leading to questions about the motives behind moving a large number of precincts around. It seemed only natural, then, to try my hand at redrawing the county district map.

In comparison, redistricting at the county level is not simple. Compared to the city council map, whose population variance was within the 10 percent threshold, the population map for the county commission map is 28 percent. Also, there are nine districts in the county, compared to five in the city. The constituencies represented by the county commission include two cities, along with rural and urban areas. As with my Greensboro redistricting map, here I'm not advocating any particular plan. And, in contrast to redistricting at the city level, here almost every plan has qualities to recommend it and drawbacks.

Evaluate. Trumpet the plans you like. Slam the ones you don't. If you want to draw your own maps, I'll be glad to share my expertise.

Move afoot to reduce size of Guilford County Commission

UPDATE: At-large Commissioner Paul Gibson confirms that he does favor changing the size and structure of the county commission to a 6-2-1 system, in which six members would be elected from districts, three would be elected at-large and the chair would be chosen from among the three at-large members. He said he may not introduce a motion to make the change at tonight's commission meeting.

Gibson also said whoever draws the maps, he wants them to be released well in advance of any vote taken by the county commission so that they can be publicly vetted.

ORIGINAL POST: Some members of the Guilford County Commission are discussing the possibility of reducing the size of the board, but Chairman Skip Alston says he doesn’t think there’s support on the board, with constituents or with the US Department of Justice to make the change.

The board is currently comprised of 11 members. Nine are elected from districts and two are elected at large. The chair is elected by the board. The board currently has three majority-minority districts — two in Greensboro and one in High Point — to meet the requirements of the Voting Rights Act.

“I know there’s going to be an effort to reduce the size of the board,” said Linda Shaw, a Republican who represents District 3 and who serves on the county commission’s redistricting committee.

Billy Yow, a Republican who represents District 5 said he favors reducing the board to nine seats, with six district seats and three at-large seats. Yow said he also favors allowing only an at-large member to serve as chair. Under this scenario, two seats would be majority-minority districts.

Shaw said that Paul Gibson, a Democrat who holds one of the board’s two at-large seats, plans to make a motion to reduce the size of the board. Such a change would require action by the NC General Assembly and approval from the US Justice Department. Gibson could not be reached for comment.

The idea of reducing the size of the board was [link] floated last week by News & Record columnist Doug Clark, who advocates a system with five districts and four at-large members. Similar to the Greensboro City Council, this arrangement would allow voters to elect five out of nine members — in other words, more than half.

Clark argued that the current arrangement breeds unaccountability:

Individual voters have very little influence over the board. As a voter, you can only elect three out of 11 commissioners — one from your district and two at large. The other eight don’t answer to you, don’t have to care what you think.

Making that worse, the districts are gerrymandered to favor one party or the other. In general elections, consequently, the incumbents usually run without opposition.

Another argument, which is my own, is that there are so many districts and the boundary lines are so irregular, that most voters don’t know who represents them on the board, creating a steep hurdle for voter education.

Guilford has the largest legislative board of any county in North Carolina. The state’s most populous county, Mecklenburg, has nine commissioners. Wake, Forsyth and Cumberland each have seven. Durham, Buncombe and New Hanover have five.

“I imagine all of the Republicans would support [reducing the size of the board],” Shaw said. “That’s something we’ve been advocating for for years.

“If it passes, it would have to go to the General Assembly,” she added. “With Republicans in control of the General Assembly, I don’t think that would be a problem.”

Republican currently hold four out of five district seats on the board, while Democrats hold both at-large seats. With at-large member Gibson reportedly in support of reducing the size of the board, another vote would likely need to be recruited to gain a majority. Likely candidates for lobbying would be at-large Commissioner John Parks, District 4 Commissioner John Parks or District 6 Commissioner Kay Cashion — the three remaining white Democrats.

“I don’t think there’s support on the board to do it, I don’t think there’s support in the community to do it and I don’t think there’s support at the Justice Department to do it,” Alston said.

“It would not allow you to have three majority-minority districts,” he explained. “You would have two instead of three…. A minority would have no chance of getting elected at large. Anything that’s less than what we have now is retrogressive. The Department of Justice would not go for anything that reduces the number of minority districts.”

DEMOGRAPHY EXTRA: The non-white population in Guilford County is 43.0 percent, up from 35.5 percent a decade ago. Historically and currently, the largest minority group in Guilford County is African Americans, who comprise 32.5 percent of the population — up from 29.3 percent in 2000. As a percentage of total population, whites have declined from 64.1 percent to 57.0 percent over the past decade.

More relevant to the federal concern over protecting minority voting rights might be voter registration.

Non-whites, including Asians and Native Americans, make up 37.4 percent of the county’s electorate. Among the overall minority population, blacks hold exact parity on the voter rolls to their population as a percentage of registered voters — 32.5 percent. White are overrepresented on the voter rolls (62.6 percent), while non-black minorities are underrepresented (4.9 percent).

Redistricting... on to Guilford County

Following the Greensboro City Council redistricting fiasco, some question [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] has been raised about whether the Guilford County Commission is getting a free pass on this.

As a preliminary reporting step, I called Stephen Dew, the county's GIS manager, to find out if the 2010 Census has created a population variance between any of the commission's nine districts of 10 percent or more. If that's the case, the county would need to redistrict to meet a constitutional requirement of providing equal representation to the citizenry.

Dew said he was asked to investigate this very question by the city attorney earlier today. He'll likely have an answer in the next couple days.

Some might look at redistricting as an opportunity to right the wrongs of the past or to design districts that are more competitive. While those are both worth discussing, for me the primary consideration is whether it's necessary at all because redistricting disrupts existing relationships between constituents and their elected representatives.

Commissioners wrangle over location of detention facilities

Guilford County Commissioner Bruce Davis (center) is looking out for High Point's detention needs.

A discussion about Guilford County’s law enforcement budget in High Point yesterday turned into a parochial tussle over detention facilities. Specifically, County Manager Brenda Jones Fox’s proposal to shut down the prison farm set off the debate.

Commissioner Kirk Perkins, who represents the northeastern corner of the county in the vicinity of the farm, declared himself against the closure. At-large Commissioner Paul Gibson said at this time he would probably vote to keep the farm open. Commissioner Billy Yow, who represents the southeast corner of the county said he agrees with Perkins.

“I agree with Kirk that it’s the wrong time to close the prison farm,” Yow said, adding that the market is not favorable for selling real estate and when the time comes the property will be more marketable if it’s maintained as a working farm.”

Staking out the other side, Commissioner Bruce Davis said, “Today, I would vote to close the prison farm,” adding that using ankle bracelets and GPS tracking devices would save the county money because inmates can be monitored and supervised without paying for their housing and upkeep.

Maj. Debbie Montgomery, who heads the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office’s court services bureau, said the decision of whether inmates are sentenced to monitored supervision is up to judges and the sheriff’s office doesn’t have control over that.

Davis, whose district includes parts of High Point, disclosed that part of his concern is the county’s plan to decommission the High Point jail as a facility to house inmates and instead use it solely as an intake center. Montgomery said the contractor anticipates that the new jail in downtown Greensboro will be completed by the end of the year and the sheriff’s office expects to begin housing inmates there next March. The beds in the old Greensboro jail would eventually be contracted out to house federal inmates.

“If you’re going to have a jail in Greensboro, you got to have one in High Point,” Davis said.

Montgomery said the new jail will require a detention staff of 312, and the old jail in Greensboro will need 80 employees once it’s reoccupied by contract. Adding full staffing at the High Point and full staffing at the farm, the county’s detention network would require 506 employees.

“See, we’re creating jobs,” Yow said with a hint of irony.

In a budget year when increase in debt service, the cost of the new jail, withheld lottery funds and other state funding reductions have prompted Fox to recommend a tax increase the county is planning to spend more on law enforcement while cutting spending on public health and social services.

Davis assailed a report he said had been published by an unidentified media outlet that the prison farm generates roughly $1 million a year for the county.

Budget Director Michael Halford said after the meeting that operation of the farm costs the county a little more than $4 million. When revenue from goods and services and from roadside litter pickup by inmates is subtracted, the farm’s net cost is about $3.6 million, he added.

Montgomery and her colleagues at the sheriff’s office see a clear benefit to keeping the farm open.

“From our standpoint we think there is a benefit to the community,” Montgomery said. “You can’t put a dollar amount on the education al experience that inmates gain when they reintegrate into the community – the culinary, woodworking and customer service skills…. My staff wants to keep the prison farm open, and not just because they like working there.”

During the briefing, commissioners also elected to take no action on an invitation to join the new Piedmont Triad Council of Governments, which is scheduled to come into existence on July 1 as a merger of the old Piedmont Triad Council of Governments and the Northwest Piedmont Council of Governments. Guilford is the only county that has not signed on.

The merger would bring Guilford and Forsyth – the Triad’s two most populous counties – into the same regional network. Councils of government across the state provide technical assistance and regional planning services to local governments. As such, their services are more in demand by smaller governments. The commissioners are balking at a dues and voting structure that they believe places Guilford at a disadvantage as the regions most populous county. Their counterparts on the Greensboro City Council have expressed similar concerns.

Chairman Skip Alston said he would like to see the council of government bring back a resolution of intent pledging to implement a new dues structure. Yow said that considering the new council of government can’t take any action until the merger takes place, Guilford County should only ask for a resolution of intent to address concerns over dues and voting power. Alston, in turn, suggested that the new council of government be assembled, revise the dues structure and then invite Guilford County in.

Guilford commissioners acknowledge bond spending likely to require tax increase

Commissioner Billy Yow (right) makes a point as fellow commissioner Bruce Davis listens.

Guilford County Manager Brenda Jones Fox is proposing that the county maintain a flat debt service level in FY 2011, at $77.0 million. Over the next two years, the county’s debt service payments will make a “dramatic jump” to almost $100 million in FY 2012 and then just below $120 million in 2013, before gradually tapering off.

The county is going to have to tackle its debt to pay for its new jail and new schools. Guilford County voters approved a $412.3 million school bond and $114.6 million bond to build the new Guilford County Detention Center in May 2008. The bad news for the county is that tax revenues are expected to decrease by 1.4 percent next year, Fox said.

“When citizens voted for this debt, they voted to pay for it,” Democratic Commissioner Kirk Perkins said during a briefing yesteday. “That looks like a cliff we’re getting ready to ride off.”

Perkins asked Fox what to articulate her plan for when the county’s debt service payments jump by $40 million.

“The following year, maybe luck will be with us, and we can do some restructuring,” Fox replied.

The uncertain outlook prompted Perkins to utter the dreaded “T” word.

“Nobody likes taxes, but majority rules and the majority voted for this jail that’s $100 million, and these schools,” he said.

Chairman Skip Alston, a Democrat, was having none of it.

“Let me say this: The easiest way to solve that is to raise taxes,” he said. “If we were to kinda put a little elbow grease to it, put some brain power and think outside the box, there are other ways we can resolve that debt…. The sales taxes were down about $8 million this year. Hopefully, people will start spending. To say ‘raise taxes’ just because we’re looking at a $40 million [increase] next year I think is irresponsible…. ‘We should raise taxes about 10 cents’ – that’s the easy way out. That’s the way we’ve been doing it in the past. The same people we’re asking for that 10 cents are the same people who lost their jobs or had their homes foreclosed upon.”

Among both Democratic and Republican members of the commission, however, a consensus is emerging that a tax increase might be necessary, if not next year, then possibly the one after that.

“Every year we say, ‘Maybe we can avoid a tax increase,’” Democrat John Parks said. “There may be a situation where future boards, this is what they might have to contend with. It’s not a bright picture.”

Republican Billy Yow agreed: “When the time comes, there’s gonna be a tax increase. There’s nothing any of us can do about it. And people knows that day’s a-comin’. But it doesn’t have to be today.”

Perkins and Democrat Paul Gibson suggested two possible alternatives to increasing the property tax: respectively, a moratorium on issuing new bonds for schools and a quarter-cent sales tax.

Following the manager’s bleak debt service report, a delegation from Guilford County Schools asked the county commission to approve an allocation of $16.8 million to cover critical maintenance needs, and submitted a list of projects, including repairing the roof at Western Guilford High School, for the commission's review.

“Anytime we know that we introduce moisture into our classroom environment, subsequently we have an indoor air quality issue; it turns into mold and mildew,” Maintenance Director Gerald Greeson said.

“Every time it rains they don’t have to send in work orders," Greeson said, of Western Guilford High School. "Our staff, we mobilize to Western Guilford…. When we mobilized to Western Guilford for this last rain on Monday morning, we had a media center that had a leaking roof. We had to put buckets out. We had a large trash bin. A media center, as you know, is not a gymnasium. Inside, you’ve got books, you’ve got computers.”

Guilford County Schools is constrained from spending bond money on maintenance because it’s already been pledged for new construction projects. Alston said the choice before the commissioners is to decide whether to apply the $16.8 million towards paying down the bond debt – saving county taxpayers about $5 million – or allow the school system to spend it on maintenance.

Fox said the county currently does not have the money requested for maintenance, so “effectively it would be a tax increase.”

Even so, commissioners couldn’t bring themselves to say no to the schools. Among those who pledged support for the maintenance funds were Parks and Yow, along with Republicans Mike Winstead and Linda Shaw, the latter of whom has a grandson who attends Western Guilford High School.

Guilford commission signs off on open space effort

The effort to create an open-space corridor leading north from Greensboro's Lake Townsend to the Northern school complex (previous report here), comes together with a critical vote from the Guilford County Commission to approve the purchase of 250 acres from the Richardson family.

Type rest of the post here

Richardson-Morton tracts would build Guilford trail network

Guilford County open-space advocates hope the county commission will agree on Dec. 11 to spend $2.6 million to purchase a tract of wetlands north of Lake Townsend that is owned by Richardson family, heir to the Vicks VapoRub fortune. The state of North Carolina already has an adjacent tract owned by the Morton family under contract for purchase. The two properties would create a nature preserve with a trail linking Greensboro to the Northern schools complex, and by extension to the new Haw River State Park.

John Young (pictured here), chairman of the open space committee, is leading the charge. More in our Nov. 26 print edition.

Joseph Rahenkamp, Republican candidate for Guilford County Commission at-large

Joseph Rahenkamp nominally answered questions at a candidates forum at the Greensboro Historical Museum on May 1. Rahenkamp was the only candidate for an at-large Guilford County Commission seat in the Republican primary to attend, although Wendell Sawyer answered the same questions in writing. Along with Rahenkamp and Sawyer, former Ku Klux Klan exalted cyclops EH Hennis, Guilford County Planning Board Chairman Larry Proctor and Rudy Binder are also on the ballot.

The two candidates who win the most votes in the Republican primary will advance to the general election in November, where they will face Democratic incumbents Paul Gibson and John Parks.

Asked whether he favored the property tax or the sales tax as a means to raise revenue, Rahenkamp responded that more prize money should be paid out by the North Carolina lottery to increase ticket sales.

Rahenkamp: “I don’t approve of either one. You’re going to have to start working and getting smarter and make what money you got work out. If you go back and check, every year, there’s greater and greater monies coming in and raising the tax base. We’re going to have to start making it work out. People right now, a lot of them are losing their homes, losing their cars and losing their trucks…. You’re going to have to hold the line and get smarter. [This] is and it is not going to answer your question. Come back to raising this money with this school bond. You need to take this lottery, where they’re taking 50 percent right now for the schools, drop it back and put 10 percent in it, and by doing that… you’re going to have more people buying tickets, and it’s going to generate your revenue. It’s going to be more than it is right now.”

Note: About 35 percent of the proceeds from the North Carolina lottery go to the Education Lottery Fund at the Office of State Budget and Management, while at least 50 percent is paid out in prizes.

Rahenkamp did not respond to a question about whether he supports a proposed jail bond, except to say that he opposes raising taxes. He also did not respond to a second question about whether the county was adequately pursuing alternatives to incarceration such as funding drug treatment programs.

Rahenkamp: “I’m not for raising taxes for anything…. It comes right back to what I just said. People are hurting. They’re losing their homes. They don’t know how they’re going to make it. And I do not believe when someone is drowning you take and push ’em down…. We’re going to have to get smarter. That’s where it comes back with the school board we were just talking. Education… you’ve got to get smarter in all of your categories. You’d be surprised what you can do with stuff when you have to do it.”

Rahenkamp suggested he favors a lenient approach to illegal immigration, but did not answer a question about whether he thought it was a good idea for the Guilford County Sheriff’s Office to participate in federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s 287(g), which authorizes local law enforcement officers to enforce federal immigration law.

Rahenkamp: “Well, you’ve got a big problem there. You’ve got an awful lot of people in this country that are in here illegally, okay? What you’ve got to do is take the bull by the horns. They are in here. Let them start paying their way like everybody else. You’re not going to get away from it. You turn right around, you put them across the border, they’re gonna come right back in here, maybe come back in another way. Maybe they might not come to Guilford County; maybe they might come to LA County. Let ’em start paying their way like the rest of us.”