This week's IFYI report

Here is this week's IFYI report from the Greensboro city manager's office. The report is out a day early because Good Friday is tomorrow.

It includes information about the South Elm Street Redevelopment, meetings to gather input on the public-information request process, MWBE contracting and the city's legislative agenda with the NC General Assembly.

Greensboro blogging staple Ed Cone used to post these, and during his hiatus from updating his site, we plan to post the IFYI report here for folks to easily peruse when there is information or material in it that we think will be of public interest. If you want to read it every week in full, you can subscribe to the city manager's distribution list like we do.

Here's some pull out information if you don't want to read through it all yourself: 

-The plan for the South Elm Street Redevelopment project includes a 500 space parking deck and more than 210 apartments in phase one. 

-The project has an anticipated completion date of 2025 and appears to include a second 500 space parking deck in phase 3 followed by a 150 room hotel.

-The total anticipated investment for the project is $81.7 million, including $11 million of public funds.

-The city will host two meetings about public records, one aimed at journalists and bloggers and the other at the general public, on April 8-9.

-The city is looking at a Small Business Enterprise Program aimed at increasing contracting opportunities for minority and women owned businesses through several potential methods.

-A state senate bill could create a $16.8 million budget shortfall for the city if passed — the goal of the legislation is to decrease taxes. 

-There are several other legislative items of relevance highlighted in the document, including a House Bill 299 entitled "Law Enforcement Fairness Act" that would create a "quasi-judicial board for each municipality to review dismissals and grievances by law enforcement officers."

Protest petition included in city's legislative agenda

The Greensboro City Council takes a vote on its legislative program tonight. Against the expectations of many of its proponents, the program includes a request that the NC General Assembly restore the protest petition requiring a super-majority of 75 percent of council members to approve a rezoning when a sufficient number of neighbors register their opposition. The provision was taken away from Greensboro residents by the the state legislature in 1971.

Here are a couple other choice items:

• "Notice for public hearings has long been provided through publication in newspapers of general circulation. In the 21st Century, effective means for providing notice are now available that are considerably less expensive to the local governments that must provide them. The city will seek legislation to authorize municipalities to use the option of electronic means to provide public notice for certain public hearings."

• "The city will support local legislation amending the city charter to provide that the Greensboro city attorney be appointed by and report to the city council as its legal advisor."

• "The city will support local legislation to amend the city charter to provide that the chief of the Greensboro Police Department be appointed by and report to the city council as its employee."

UPDATE, Dec. 2, 9:22 p.m.: Council voted by acclamation tonight to postpone consideration of the protest petition until January at the request of Mayor Yvonne Johnson, and then later voted unanimously to continue the entire legislative program until its Jan. 21 meeting.

After the first vote, Triad Real Estate & Building Industries Coalition President Marlene Sanford, along with Henry Isaacson and Marc Isaacson — a father and son legal team who argue many rezoning cases before council — stood up to leave. Before the meeting, the Isaacsons were greeted by District 3 Councilman Zack Matheny and District 5 Councilwoman Trudy Wade.

Just before the beginning of the meeting a protest petition supporter called me to predict that council would approve the legislative program after removing the item expressing support for restoring the protest petition. Mayor Johnson said she had been indundated with e-mails concerning the protest petition, and thought it best to have discussion about the pros and cons of restoring it before taking a vote.

Protest petitions and citizen initiative petitions: Greenboro council to Guilford delegation

The Greensboro City Council votes Tuesday on its legislative agenda. Notably missing from the list is any request for the restoration of the protest petition. That may be because the groundswell of support for reform caught the council off guard. And by all accounts, the Guilford delegation is already committed to overturning Greensboro's exemption, so the council's opinion probably doesn't count. For more information on the protest petition, read this.

Not that city government is indifferent to matters of land development and political influence. The memo created by Acting City Attorney Becky Jo Peterson-Buie for council members pledges that staff "will closely monitor" any amendments to ethics and lobbying laws. "It is expected that the proposed amendments will apply the concepts of the new [state] ethics and lobbying law to local government officials."

Rep. Pricey Harrison, the same Democratic legislator who has promised to introduce legislation to restore the protest petition, has indicated she will sponsor a bill to extend to local officials the same ethics rules passed for state legislators in 2006.

“I have seen members of these governing boards vote on issues that they would have had to recuse themselves from if bound by the same laws,” she told me last month. “[The Heart of the Triad proposal] seems to be a prime example, conceived of by and for development interests with very little citizen input.”

Speaking of the swath of rural land between the Triad's three major cities, the legislative agenda contains an item backing funding support to "enable the success of the Heart of the Triad... to create a mixed-used development area that maximizes job creation and preserves the natural area."

Two other items on the legislative agenda are noteworthy.

Anti-gang legislation: "The city will support legislation which includes the suppression, intervention and prevention of criminal street gangs and which provides new tools and funding for the same." The memo does not specify whether the city supports enhanced sentencing for youth offenders. Last summer, former Mayor Keith Holliday came out in favor of such legislation, which stalled in the NC Senate Appropriations Committee co-chaired by US Senate candidate Kay Hagan.

And following a fraught running debate over a proposed citywide minimum wage hike, the legal department met with the Greensboro Minimum Wage Committee to discuss the citizen initiative provision in the city ordinance. Out of that comes this resolution in the council's request to state lawmakers: "The city will support a change in the city's voter count requirements with respect to initiatives, referenda and recalls, and support a change requiring public hearings on initiative and referenda issues."

Exactly what change in the city's voter count requirements is proposed is unclear. As someone who is sympathetic to the cause of raising the city's minimum wage, I can't imagine how the current ordinance requiring that a petition's signatures equal 25 percent of the municipal turnout in the last election could be much clearer. And what does it mean to "support a change requiring public hearings on initiative and referenda issues"? Hearings for any petition no matter how many signatures have been gathered? If not, then how many signatures? And that gets us back to the same old question about sufficiency.