GovCo’s Uptown Land Bank; UPDATE: Meck Commish Cracks Down On Camping
Mecklenburg commissioners get a second crack tonight to pass a new ordinance that would prohibit camping and unauthorized use of county-owned land, which failed two weeks ago to get the unanimous support from the board it needed to be approved. This time around, it will only require a majority vote to be adopted.
What’s at stake? County staff prepared a map (follow link here) that shows the scope of government-owned property inside the uptown loop. Quite a bit of land, all part and parcel of GovCo’s long reach, and not one dime of it on the tax roles.
Largely in response to the Occupy movement and in preparation for the Democratic National Convention, the City of Charlotte has already approved its own set of ordinances to prohibit camping on city-owned parcels, which are outlined in green on the map. County-owned property, which would fall under the new ordinance up for a second reading at tonight’s board meeting, is outlined in blue; Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools property is outlined in red; library property in yellow; and Central Piedmont Community College in purple.
Thoughts?
UPDATE: Commissioners on Tuesday night unanimously approved the new no-camping ordinance. The dig quote of the night, from Commissioner Bill James who thanked Occupy Charlotte for highlighting a loophole in the existing county ordinance. “If they hadn’t done what they did,” James said of the months-long Occupy encampment in front of Old City Hall, “we wouldn’t have known there was a weakness in the law.”
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