Sal Leone: "I ask for stuff I don't need"

Just in case Greensboro city staffers are already over their case of the Mondays (or are excited about a Tuesday off from city council meetings) here's a gem from Sal Leone that might make their head spin.


This didn't fit into our District 5 city council election article coming out tomorrow for a few reasons (namely because of space), but it still merits publication.

In his candidate interview last week, Leone brought up the issue of public-information requests and said: "I ask for stuff I don't need just to keep them working."

Leone, who will face Tony Wilkins and Alex Seymour in the Oct. 8 primary race, added that he did it to keep people guessing about what he was up to on his campaign.

On Aug. 2, we reported that Leone had 13 open information requests with the city. For example, here's an excerpt from a staff report about open public-information requests:

The list is included in the city's weekly "Items For Your Information" report in part because the city struggles to keep up with the massive amount and size of requests from people (myself included). 

Leone ran at-large for Greensboro City Council in 2011. Read more about Leone's candid candidacy, Seymour and Wilkins in tomorrow's YES! Weekly.

Filing for Greensboro City Council election begins

Filing began today at noon for the upcoming Greensboro City Council election, and already several candidates have filed to run.

Sal Leone, a perennial candidate in past elections who has alternated his party affiliation, and former councilman Mike Barber filed to run at large (meaning citywide, for those of you who don't follow local politics).

District 3 Councilman Zack Matheny filed to run for reelection, the first sitting council member to file this time around. Matheny represents part of downtown and northern Greensboro and is a strong proponent of the teen curfew.

District 2 challenger Jamal Fox and mayoral candidate George Hartzman filed today as well. Both attended the council's emergency meeting about the teen curfew on Wednesday morning and have been at numerous other council meetings, particularly Hartzman who has become a well-known and regular critic of council's decisions and what he says is a lack of transparency.

Other candidates, like Tony Wilkins who was appointed to serve as Trudy Wade's fill in for District 5, have announced their intention to run, but this is the complete list of those who have filed (as of 5 p.m. on Friday). We'll have in depth coverage of the election races coming soon. Until then, you can read more about Mike Barber here and Sal Leone here.

UPDATE (July 9, 5 p.m.): Mayor Pro Tem Yvonne Johnson, Chris Lawyer and Jean Brown also filed to run at large. Tigress McDaniel filed in District 1 and Wendell Roth is challenging Matheny in District 3. Nancy Hoffmann, incumbent, and former Mayor Bill Knight are both running for District 4. Nobody has signed up for District 5 yet.

A&T vote inspires fiery city council campaigning

Sal Leone, an at-large candidate for Greensboro City Council, speaks from the well.

About a hundred conservatively dressed, most female students filed into a NC A&T University auditorium to address questions to candidates for Greensboro City Council last night during a forum hosted by the Alpha Mu Chapter of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. on Wednesday evening.

At the end of the program Cherrell Brown, chair of the sorority’s political awareness and involvement committee, asked how many of the college students were registered to vote. Virtually every hand went up, prompting applause from council members.

“Myth debunked,” Brown said. “Students are registered to vote.”

The university is located in District 2, and the three candidates for the seat – taking nothing for granted in the run-up to what is traditionally a low-turnout primary – engaged in a spirited debate to try to win the students’ vote. Challenger C. Bradley Hunt II, himself a student at A&T, and incumbent Jim Kee, an alum who serves on the university’s board of visitors, delivered particularly contentious challenges to one another’s character and record of leadership.

Kee discusses his ability to work with conservative council members on matters of common interest such as bringing a grocery store to east Greensboro. Hunt took advantage of the opening to attack.

“There are certain issues in the city that are not worth a compromise,” Hunt said. “When you talk about a landfill that’s going in your backyard, in a backyard where there’s 85 percent African Americans – environmental racism – when you have to deal with the stench and the rodents, the trucks going back and forth in your neighborhoods, we don’t need to compromise on those situations.

“Councilman Kee was willing to negotiate a landfill for economic development,” the challenger continued. “That’s not right. Not in District 2. If you elect me, I’ll give you a voice. I will tell them, ‘No, that’s wrong,’ and I will say it to the top of the Melvin Municipal Building. And let everyone in Greensboro know that it’s wrong. So no, my style of leadership is a fighter, and not a compromiser.”

Kee struck back.

“This young man here is distorting the facts,” he said. “And if you’ve got people that are running for city council that are going to lie to you before they get on council, imagine what they are going to do after they get on city council.”

The incumbent pulled out a June 2001 copy of the News & Record showing him addressing city council on the White Street Landfill.

“I was a community activist fighting to close the landfill,” Kee said. “You know, I was pretty angry then. As a matter of fact, a group that I helped form called Concerned Citizens of Northeast Greensboro is the organization that [got the landfill closed in 2006].”

Kee went on to say that he believed when he got elected and still believes that waste-to-energy technology is a viable alternative to landfilling.

“You call it a compromise,” Kee said. “But let me tell you about waste to energy. Waste to energy is a new technology that [converts trash] to electricity or diesel fuel. And it creates green jobs for Aggies, jobs that pay $50,000 or more. Now, my suggestion was that we form a public-private partnership with a company, the city of Greensboro and North Carolina A&T because A&T can acquire those $30- and $50 million energy grants that President Obama has put out so we can research alternative energy.”

Yvonne Johnson, an at-large candidate, reminded the audience that she had served on the council that made the decision to close the landfill in 2001. Mayoral candidates Robbie Perkins and Tom Phillips, and at-large candidate Nancy Vaughan were also part of that vote. Johnson said the Golden Leaf Foundation, on whose board she serves, gave A&T upwards of a million to research waste-to-energy technology.

“We need to go to waste to energy, but we don’t need to open the landfill to do that,” Johnson said. “We can do that someplace else. We can do it at the transfer station. And so the only thing I am hoping will happen with that landfill one day is that we will have the technology from North Carolina A&T State University to mine that landfill, environmentally safely mine it, and take all that crap out of it.”

Dianne Bellamy-Small, the incumbent in the District 1 race, was in rare form and good spirits. Challenger Donnell “DJ” Hardy, in contrast, took a subdued, low-key approach.

“There’s an African proverb that says, ‘The lion’s story will never be told as long as the hunter is telling it,’” Bellamy-Small said. “My leadership style is one of get it done. You’ve got to have someone on the council who is a grassroots-er, who gets out here in the community and who can very articulately talk about what’s happening. That’s me.”

The incumbent representative used an anecdote about her negotiations with Honda Aircraft Co. to illustrate her commitment to ensuring that people of color and women receive equal access to jobs.

“Every time a new business comes to us and wants an incentive, I ask, particularly when they talk about engineering jobs and that kind of stuff, I say, ‘Have you been over to A&T?’” Bellamy-Small recounted. “They’ll kind of fumble around…. ‘Well-uh-well-uh.’ ‘Have you been over to A&T? We’ve got engineering graduates over there.’ You saw on the paper how HondaJet – we’re waiting on them. When HondaJet came before us, I always ask, ‘How many minorities? How many women? And will you hire ex-offenders?’ The last time, HondaJet said, ‘Yes, we’ll hire them.’ You know how many they hired? Forty out of 550. You do the math. When they came this time, I said, ‘Something’s wrong with this picture.’ They said, ‘We’ll deal with it.’ So they thought behind closed doors they tried to answer my question. I asked in public, and the man said, ‘Oh, we talked about that in private.’ ‘Yeah, and I brought it up in public.’”

One of the students asked candidates how they planned to work with universities to bring jobs to Greensboro.

Robbie Perkins, one of two mayoral candidates who showed up at the forum, leaped form his seat.

“This is one of the great opportunities that we have in our city,” he said. “We’ve got 35,000 college students in our city and we need to keep more of them here, and the only way we’re going to keep them is create jobs. Now, one of the four critical clusters that has been identified by the business community is the nanotech-engineering cluster with the joint venture between A&T and UNCG over on East Lee Street. You’ve got a $21 million building that’s open, and we’ve got a $58.8 million building that should open in the next few weeks. And that’s going to be one of the leading sources of tech jobs in this region.”

Perkins went on to outline his vision for expanding the roadway network to create opportunities for economic growth in the area of the nanoscience campus.

“Now, I don’t think that that’s a big enough area over there to accommodate what I see as a large-growth industry,” Perkins said. “Councilwoman Dianne Bellamy-Small and I have been working for the last several years on the TAC, which is the Transportation Advisory Committee, that basically works on roads in this area. And we think it’s imperative that there’s a new road that’s going to run from that nanotech center north where that stop light hits Lee Street. And if you run it right, you can run it all the way to Penry Road where GTCC has their campus. And if you really want to expand the vision, you expand the vision from a 75-acre park that the university owns and that the nanotech buildings are being built on, you take everything from the east of that road out to our belt loop around the city, and you make that the research park of the future.”

Kee said he supports Perkins’ road proposal, but he would go a step further and extend the road to Cone Boulevard. That has been a politically sensitive initiative, considering that the proposed road would go past the White Street Landfill, and make reopening the landfill more politically palatable by relieving heavy truck traffic from residential neighborhoods. Greensboro voters supported a bond for the project, but the city has yet to issue the debt to finance the Cone Boulevard extension.

Bellamy-Small said she supports the strategy of creating jobs through nanoscience research, but argued the city needs to take a broad-based approach.

“There is no other kind of economic generator in Greensboro at this time that provides the kind of jobs, whether it’s part time,” she said. “I’m over at the coliseum. I was over at the aquatic center today swimming with the little children. We hire A&T students. We hire UNCG students. Yeah, the nanotechnology center is very important, but if you can get a part-time job or a full-time job, or if you can work the ACC, those are the kind of things that do put some money in your pocket.”

Hardy championed a more entrepreneurial approach.

“Portland, Oregon is what I would to model Greensboro after if I have the chance,” he said. “They go and find companies that are two and three big – two and three people in garage – who have a business plan and have something that can work and hire thousands. Out of 20 that they might fund, 15 of them might crash and burn. It’s those five that make it through that will make thousands of jobs.”

Kee went on the offensive against both of his challengers in the District 2 race on the topic of job creation. Kee criticized opponent Dan Fischer for his reservations about the Greensboro Coliseum’s operating deficit, arguing that the coliseum’s economic impact translates to a 100 to one return on the investment. Kee also ridiculed a statement by Hunt at a previous candidate forum acknowledging acknowledging that, in contrast to Kee, Hunt is not a business person.

“You don’t want a council person who’s not business astute,” Kee said.

Hunt hit back.

“You also don’t want a developer as a council member because this creates a conflict of interest,” he said. “Any time that you put development and business over people, it’s when you’re willing to compromise the White Street Landfill. No, I’m not a developer; I don’t think Councilman Kee is either.

“A&T has been around since 1891 and I haven’t seen too much or any economic development for students,” Hunt added. “If you elect me, one of your own, I will see to it that we get jobs.”

Several candidates responded to a question about how they see council working with college students.

“I just created the first ever internship program, where interns from A&T and Bennett College will intern for the city council, get paid for it, get experience, and have something to put on their resume,” Kee said. “That program just started – wasn’t it October 1st, Robbie? Robbie Perkins and I are funding the program.”

Jim Lewis, an activist with Conservatives for Guilford County had questioned whether the program was appropriate at a city council meeting the previous evening. Discussion about the program revealed that, in fact, the funding is coming out of council members’ travel budgets. District 5 Councilwoman Trudy Wade, part of the council’s conservative coalition, said that she, Mayor Bill Knight, at-large Councilman Danny Thompson, District 3 Councilman Zack Matheny and District 4 Councilwoman Mary Rakestraw, returned their share of the travel budget to the general fund, and that the money was reallocated to purchase reflective vests for community watch volunteers.

Tom Phillips, who is also running for mayor, went on the attack against Perkins, who is considered likely to make it through the primary with incumbent Bill Knight. Knight and two other mayoral candidates, Bradford Cone and Chris Phillips, did not attend the forum.

“I believe it’s going to require leadership coming in from outside the current council, because it’s become so divisive,” Tom Phillips said. “But unless you have a massive change on the council – and historically that has not happened; it may happen this time, but historically it hasn’t – unless we have a massive change, we’re going to have several people on the council who will not work with Robbie. So we’re going to have two more years of bickering.

“I also am retiring December 31st,” Phillips continued. “I can’t have any conflicts of interest on zoning cases, things of that nature. Mr. Perkins, being in the development industry, can’t help but have conflicts of interest, whether they’re real or perceived. Those are two the main differences between myself and my good friend, Robbie.”

After declaring his intention to withdraw from the race earlier in the day, at-large candidate Sal Leone resurfaced at the forum. The candidate went on the attack against conservative incumbents and their political philosophy, holding the floor for almost six minutes.

Leone charged that at-large Councilman Danny Thompson broke a promise to residents of east Greensboro when he said during the 2009 campaign that he was not in favor of reopening the White Street Landfill. The line of attack echoed a spirited statement by another at-large candidate, Marikay Abuzuaiter, a week earlier.

“He said he implemented a curfew, which is anti-conservative,” Thompson said. “But he took credit for it because it looked good. More lies. He’s not here because he can’t defend lies. What’s he going to say to you? He didn’t go to the Interactive Resource Center. Know why? There are poor people there. They don’t care. He’s not here because the conservatives think you won’t vote. That’s what they’re counting on. Bennett College, UNCG, A&T, GTCC – you guys have the power, and they know it.”

Sal Leone reverses decision and stays in race

Sal Leone, a candidate for Greensboro City Council at large, told reporters earlier today that he planned to withdraw from the race, saying he was discouraged after learning that he had not received YES! Weekly's endorsement.

He described himself as "devastated" and "defeated" in a phone call to YES! Weekly placed, he said, while he was on the way to the Guilford County Board of Elections to make his withdrawal official. The candidate's decision was covered in the News & Record.

But Leone showed up tonight at a candidate forum at NC A&T University and said despite his earlier announcement he was still in the race. He made a spirited attack on conservative incumbents, accusing them of lying and breaking campaign promises. Leone said the reason none of the conservatives showed up at the forum, which was attended by upwards of 100 sorority members, is because they were counting on students at the historically black university to not vote.

More to come...

Wade, Knight make no apologies for landfill position

C4GC candidates forum, a set on Flickr.

Conservative incumbents Trudy Wade and Bill Knight made their first public appearances in a lively City Council election campaign before a friendly audience at the International Civil Rights Center and Museum during a forum hosted by Conservatives for Guilford County last night.

The host organization asked candidates to address the White Street Landfill, along with the issues of fiscal responsibility and job creation, and the District 5 councilwoman took to the first issue in particular with zeal.

“The problem with the landfill is our trash is costing us millions of dollars,” she said. “There were conservative members of council that decided we needed to look at this issue for the people of Greensboro – all the people of Greensboro. Is there a way we could save money and with that money do things for economic development such as put in infrastructure, do things we really need in this city? Are we getting the best bang for our buck with paying all that money to transport our trash, which is our responsibility, not our responsibility to go stick it in somebody else’s backyard – our responsibility as citizens that we should take care of our own trash.

“So yes, it’s a hot item; it was emotional,” she continued. “But let’s think about it a minute: Four of us – actually five, but one conservative member could no longer vote on the matter and had to recuse himself – took on this challenge: Let’s talk about White Street. Let’s see if there’s something we can do.”

District 3 Councilman Zack Matheny had been recused because of a conflict of interest with Gate City Waste Services, a vendor that was pre-selected to operate the landfill before withdrawing its bid. Matheny has not indicated publicly which way he would have voted on the question of whether to reopen the landfill.

Wade went on to dispute the cost-savings estimated by city staff and an outside consultant for reopening the landfill. Wade contended reopening the landfill would save the city $8 million per year, as opposed to $3.1 million.

“We can play with numbers all we want, but the way you get [the low] number is you add the closure cost in over a period of seven years,” she said. Wade’s math assumes that the city will have to pay closure costs for the White Street Landfill whether it’s reopened or not, but the city has maintained permitting and operational capabilities at the landfill since it stopped accepting municipal solid waste in 2006 and staff has put forth no plans to decommission it.

“It took brave people to bring this issue up,” Wade said, drawing applause. “There’s been people on the council for years. You’ve heard some candidates tonight and city council representatives that said, ‘I’ve been on the council 12 years, 16 years.’ Well, we don’t have a plan for solid waste, and they’ve been there for that amount of time because they didn’t tackle the situation.”

Mayor Bill Knight appeared to be dispirited by a recent reversal that took place when the interim city attorney ruled that Mayor Pro Tem Nancy Vaughan could vote on the landfill, but made no apologies for his handling of the matter.

“We’re faced with trying to find a way to stop the hemorrhaging of millions of dollars each year; that was not the case just five years ago,” Knight said. “We did have a solution at hand, but it’s too late now to turn back the clock on that. I’ve seen nearby communities – Winston-Salem and Raleigh, for instance – with landfills very similar to ours that have gone forward to significant economic development without the problems that we have here or have had in Greensboro. Economically, we are behind on this issue.”

The mayor proposed a study committee to take up the issue in the next term.

The program included two follow-up questions for mayoral candidates. The group did not give the incumbent candidate a free pass, despite their shared conservative philosophy. The moderator asked Knight to address criticism that the council has not demonstrated transparency under his leadership.

“I believe this council has been quite open,” Knight said. “We have a number of discussions. We have long agendas. Everything is discussed openly in open council meeting. We do have closed sessions for certain sensitive matters, but we do not engage in what used to be called small-group meetings.”

Chris Phillips, a self-described conservative candidate who has worked with Conservatives for Guilford County in the past, backed away from a previous position of conditional support for reopening the landfill.

“To keep the peace in Greensboro I would say keep it closed for right now,” he said.

“Saving money, if the White Street Landfill is the best option, I’d say, ‘Let’s do that,’” the candidate added. “But what we need to do also is the city of Greensboro needs to prove to the people in the area that it is the best option – that there is no foul odor…. As an African American, I can say that I have struggled with asthma, I have struggled with bronchitis, so any children that live in that area, we need to make sure that they feel safe, that there are no health hazards.”

The moderator noted that Phillips has gone on record as saying that he’s a regular user of Greensboro mass transit. Contending that city buses are underutilized during non-peak hours, the moderator went on to ask the candidate what changes could be made to make the system more efficient.

“In riding the buses every day, as I do, I understand what Greensboro’s residents who ride the buses go through every day,” Phillips said. “I think that we need to make sure there’s a safety net in place for the transit system so the money is used for that purpose. Another solution, I would say, we could have for the low ridership and the cost of diesel fuel, let’s have fuel-efficient cars, or let’s have shuttle vans that can go to these areas and pick up people. One of the things that I face is that if I miss the bus sometimes I have to catch a cab. And catching a taxi has become more and more expensive. So we need to make sure that there’s an effective bus system in Greensboro to pick up the riders who need those bus routes.”

The 45-year-old candidate noted that he is not married and has no children, adding, “those are some desires that I do have one day.” He told the audience that he graduated from UNCG with a bachelor’s degree in journalism.

“I thought that when I graduated the world was going to be my oyster, so to speak,” he said. “I thought: I’m smart, and I’m going to get a job, and I’m going to live happily ever after. And please don’t get me wrong: I thank God for HH Gregg, and I thank God for my job, but there are other gifts, other dreams that I would like to put in place, and I know a lot of other college students who feel the same way that I do.”

The forum presented a test for mayoral candidate Robbie Perkins, a longtime councilman who is favored to win by many political observers. Although he is a registered Republican, Perkins is distrusted by many conservatives because of his alignment with the council’s progressive faction.

Perkins looked extremely composed, betraying only the slightest hint of nervousness as he answered a question about his vote to close the landfill a decade previously.

“The solution to the issue that we looked at in 2003 was similar to what we looked at today,” he said. “Your worst-case scenario, as a public official, is that you have no solution for your garbage. The assumptions made that you could keep White Street open and expand it were problematic then, as they are today. We’ve all heard about the issues involved in section 4 and section 5 of White Street and how that’s going to require rezoning, that’s going to require additional permitting. Those issues were up in the air in 2003 as well. What we were looking at is retaining our unused capacity, using that as a way to negotiate against the haulers, for them to give us a fair price.”

The candidate also answered a question about public subsidies for the Greensboro Coliseum with ease.

“I look at the billion dollars of tourism business in Guilford County as a huge community asset,” he said. “And the centerpiece of that business is the Greensboro Coliseum. So the million and a half dollars that we are giving the coliseum out of the general fund each year is a small part of the many millions that we bring in through that facility to the benefit of all of our citizens. I contend that the tourism business, the hotel business, and the restaurant business would not be close to the same in our city without the coliseum driving that business.”

One of the questions posed to mayoral candidate Tom Phillips, a former councilman who is also a registered Republican, related to the candidate’s long experience as a director of the Piedmont Triad Regional Water Authority, which is responsible for bringing the Randleman Reservoir online to supply the water needs of Greensboro and neighboring municipalities. The moderator asked Phillips if the projected needs for water were inflated and whether citizens could expect a rate cut as a result of the new supply.

Phillips responded that if the city’s projected water needs had been inflated, it was because of the decline of the textile industry – once a major user. If the new water supply lasted for more than 50 years, as projected, Phillips said he doesn’t consider that a problem. He offered no relief on rates.

“You have expenses, and you never know what environmental rules will come along to require us to spend money,” Phillips said. “I really don’t see rates going down from here.”

Bradford Cone, the only Democrat on the mayoral slate, put forward a flat recitation of positions antithetical to conservative agenda. He said the landfill issue should not have been brought up by council and is unnecessarily dividing the city. And he said the city should invest in infrastructure to create jobs, and spend money in the short term to achieve long-term savings.

“I would also reinstate the moment of silence,” he added, “as the prayer, for anyone who’s not Christian would feel they’re less welcome and less a part of the community.”

Mary Rakestraw, a member of the conservative faction who is seeking reelection to her seat as the District 4 representative, pushed back against the notion that the process was rigged to favor Gate City Waste Industries.

“Now, some people have said that the RFPs that were sent out were written specifically for one server,” Rakestraw said, adding that after staff developed the request for proposals, council members made only “four or five minor changes” before the document was posted.

Rakestraw noted that studies about health impact of the landfill have come back inconclusive, and remarked that the landfill was currently “a moot point.”

Only one of two challengers in the District 4 race, Tony Collins, showed up for the forum. Collins said there was a need for new blood, but did not take a stand on either side of the landfill debate.

The three candidates competing to represent District 2, where the landfill is located, waded into hostile territory.

Incumbent Jim Kee geared his remarks somewhat to a conservative perspective on cost savings.

“It’s a bad economic idea because you’re looking at a short-term gain of four and a half years, and once the landfill is filled the profits that we would have earned would have evaporated when we went back to the open market, which we would have to do,” Kee said.

Challenger C. Bradley Hunt II made no apologies for his stance against reopening the landfill.

“We have to come together to understand that the White Street Landfill should not be opened in Greensboro,” he said. “I feel that no amount of savings is worth the quality of life for the residents that live near the landfill. To me, that conversation should not have ever come up, and I will do everything that I can to keep the White Street Landfill closed.”

Dan Fischer challenged audience members to who employ people in Greensboro.

“We need to start paying a living wage to everybody who walks through our doors when we’re hiring,” he said.

Jorge Cornell, who is challenging Wade for the District 5 seat, cut a striking contrast amidst the nattily dressed and politically conservative crowd. Cornell’s introduction did not include any mention of his role as leader of the North Carolina Latin Kings, a group considered to be a street gang by the Greensboro Police Department and other law enforcement agencies. All the same, the candidate and audience appeared to be in separate psychic universes.

Cornell gamely pitched himself on a bootstrapping theme, noting that he plans to launch a temporary labor agency.

“I’m proud to say that our doors will be opened in January, and it’s a joint effort with the Beloved Community Center, which has built in a training center,” the candidate said. “Which is going to help a lot of brothers and sisters that are homeless, brothers and sisters that got felonies, those that are considered marginalized in our community. The reason why I think this is important is that these brothers and sisters need to know that they still are community and we need to let them know by giving them that second chance in life because everybody deserves a second chance in life.”

In his closing remarks, Cornell echoed Frederick Douglass, who was quoted in a mass e-mail sent out by Conservatives for Guilford County to publicize the event: “In a composite nation like ours, as before the law, there should be no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no white, no black, but common country, common citizenship, equal rights and a common destiny.”

Cornell said, “We need to get away from this two-class citizenship, okay? We really do. We’re all one people. And I think that’s really important, because the only way we’re going to make change in this community is if we come together as one. As long as we sit here on this side and we have people sit on this side, we’re never going to make change. It’s been like this for awhile. As long as we stay divided, they shall conquer. And when I say that, I’m talking about us conquering ourselves.”

At-large candidate Chris Lawyer, a self-described conservative offered some general comments about fiscal responsibility, but made no mention of the landfill.

Jean Austin Brown, another conservative in the at-large race, exhibited difficulty articulating a position on the landfill, making equivocating statements about public input process and the merits of recycling.

“Nobody has the answer to the landfill,” she said. “I don’t think so. I’ve listened to everything. I’ve read everything I can about the landfill. I don’t think anybody has the answer yet. But I’m open to suggestions. Even when I’m on city council I would not be against town-hall meetings if all possible participants were there to voice their concerns, whether it’s yes or no. But I’m not for listening to just a bunch of folks who are angry and who are not willing to listen and to try to do something about this.”

Austin said, “When you say recycling, it’s probably like putting a Bandaid on cancer.”

Then she added, “I would be all for more recycling.”

Moderators Algenon Cash and Kevin Daniels gave remarks about the connection between conservativism and civil rights, but the real more resonant statements about the setting came from candidates.

“Earlier this week… the letters ‘KKK’ were spray-painted on one of my yard signs,” said Mayor Bill Knight, who graduated from Greensboro High School in 1957, the year before it accepted its first black student. “And what I took this to mean was hate. I can’t interpret it any other way but hate. Being where we are here I find it rather meaningful where we are. And this center symbolizes injustice and struggle.”

Sal Leone, an at-large candidate who drew a boo from the audience when he mentioned he was a Yankees fan, brought an unpopular message on the landfill.

“The future of Greensboro is in the east; we have no place else to go,” he said. “We need economic development. Landfills do not bring a lot of jobs. We need to develop the east. It will bring economic development, jobs, corporations, which bring money, taxes, revenue. It’s what we need.”

Then he drew back to a historical period that Daniels had referenced as the dawn of American civil rights.

“With the city council divided as they are, Abraham Lincoln said it the best: ‘A house divided cannot stand,’” Leone said. “And we all know what happened in 1860. That’s what’s happening here now. We’re in a crisis. We’re in big trouble.”

Candidate profile: Sal Leone

Sal Leone is sitting in front of Tate Street Coffee studying a white three-ring binder when I ride up on my bike. The contents include Greensboro’s 2025 Connections Comprehensive Plan, newspaper article printouts and information about his opponents in the at-large race for city council.

He carries the three-ring binder in and periodically thumbs through it to reference something, but speaks about policy issues, principles of representation extemporaneously and personal experiences with passion and conviction. With a police investigator’s knack for detail, he periodically references details such as the reporter’s work on a college newspaper in the Bronx to demonstrate that he’s done his homework all the way around.

Recent events animate him the most.

“That landfill is becoming a stinky issue,” he says. “I think it’s tearing people up. One thing I can’t stand is out-of-control council meetings. When the human relations commission came before the council, it looked like a battle royale instead of a place where intelligent people discuss things in an adult manner.”

Like Jim Kee and Dan Fischer, respectively the incumbent and a challenger in the District 2 race, Leone believes the council ignored a third alternative to burying household waste at White Street and trucking it out of the county -- that being using advanced technology.

“It’s wrong to put a dump in someone’s backyard,” he says. “Have you ever rode behind a garbage truck and smelled someone’s household waste? It’s smelly. It’s really not that hard. A city’s always going to lose money. Quality of life is most important.”

Leone appears to have no personal associations with any of the existing political factions in the city.

His parents came to New York City as immigrants from Sicily in the late 1960s. He says his father died in 1978, and his mother worked at McDonald’s to support the family. Con Edison turned off the power at one time. And Sal sold lemonade at the age of 8 at the corner of Astoria Boulevard and 80th Street in Queens to motorists lined up to buy gas during the shortage of 1979.

He met his future wife online. She wasn’t interested in moving to New York City, so he came to North Carolina.

“I took a chance,” he says. “I dumped everything I knew. I gave up a $80,000-$90,000 job. You know what I did? It’s humbling. I stocked groceries. I was 30 years old. I had no job. That caused a lot of friction at home. I said, ‘Give it time.’”

Leone works for the city of Thomasville as a police officer. They call him “Sal” or “New Yorker” there.

“I’m open to everybody: out-of-staters, in-staters. I know what it’s like to come from someplace else. It’s hard. That’s why I’m so open to people. I know what it’s like to work for minimum wage. I know what it's like to work a shitty job.”

He flips in the three-ring binder to candidate pages and points to several who have not returned questionnaires or who answered questions equivocally. He points out that he returned his questionnaire in one day.

“If you don’t know the answers now, you’re hiding something,” he says. “I’ve been in law enforcement too long. If you don’t know the answer right now, you’re hiding something. It’s yes or no. There’s no ‘I’m not sure’ or ‘I’ll have to get back to you on that.’”

He chides fellow at-large candidate Cyndy Hayworth responding for to a question about the city’s Rental Unit Certificate of Occupancy program by saying, “Because RUCO has already been eliminated, what is the point of looking backwards to determine if it was effective or no? We need to spend our time looking forward.”

“I believe in always looking back because if you don’t you won’t be able to find out where you need to go,” Leone says. “If you don’t know your history, you don’t know where you’re going.”

He also says it’s unfortunate that two members of the current council, Mayor Pro Tem Nancy Vaughan and District 3 Councilman Zack Matheny, are disqualified from voting on the landfill because of conflicts of interest.

“Those two are enough to tip the balance,” Leone says. “We’ll never know. The four votes to reopen the White Street landfill are less than 50 percent of the council.

“I don’t need everybody to like me,” he adds. “I’m not going to sell out. I’m not one of these suit-and-tie business people that have all these connections.”

On the issues, his views are hard to pigeonhole as either conservative or progressive.

On the downtown greenway, Leone says, “That’s one I really like. When people start seeing nice stuff and taking pride, it will develop further.”

He advocates privatizing the Greensboro Coliseum.

“You’ve got something hemorrhaging so bad it doesn’t make any sense to keep pouring money into it,” he says. “The poor people who fund it through their taxes can’t afford to go.”

He’s no fan of the aquatic center, which was financed with bonds approved by voters in 2008 and then fast-tracked by council the following year.

“You’re not going to sell me on paying for a pool instead of putting food in a poor kid’s mouth,” Leone says. “I’m sorry, that’s a want, not a need. We need beds for the homeless.”

Philosophically, he’s wary of leaving too much decision-making up to the city manager and staff.

“I want to know what’s going on,” Leone says. “I don’t need to know day to day. But when it affects the masses, I want to know. Then, when the house of cards comes down, ‘I didn’t know?’ No…. We all go down together. Or we all succeed together.”

Leone says as a council member he would reach out to a number of groups he believes have not had an adequate voice in municipal politics. Starting with police officers.

“I want to do ride-alongs,” Leone says. "I want to know what they’re thinking. A lot of council members get their information from the top. I think that’s a mistake. The top person is always going to tell you what he thinks you want to hear. Patton supported his men, and look what they did for him. I want to know what equipment they need. A happy cop is a productive cop. A productive cop goes out there and looks for crime. An unhappy cop is a lazy, complacent cop.”

Council has also not listened closely enough to the African-American community, he says.

“I think they’ve been ignore,” Leone says. “I think they’ve been hurt. It looks bad. It may not be deliberate. I want to talk to them. I want to ask them what the problem is.”

Leone says he is sponsoring a friend to obtain citizenship. He wants to give the international community in Greensboro a greater political voice, specifically mentioning Arabs and Asians. As with other groups, he says he would start by going out of his way to talk to people in the international community and find out what their concerns are.

He favors increasing funding for programs to help the homeless.

“If you get people in treatment programs, you solve a secondary problem – crime,” he says. “If crime goes down, then you save money on police. Otherwise, you end up helping the haves and you end up with a lot of have-nots – the masses. If you fix the social issues, the rest will fall into place.”