When it wasn’t staying busy Tuesday night driving the final nails into the reduction-in-force coffins of nearly 540 teachers and upwards of 1,000 total personnel, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education took time to yap and nip at its own heels. Several board members voiced skepticism and concern over a wide-ranging review of the district that’s […]
Interesting article from Politico – “Robert Gates may get lift from tea parties” – that ties to the argument of shrinking the federal government by changing foreign policy, from Philip Giraldi’s column that we posted over the weekend. From Politico: As Defense Secretary Robert Gates takes on General Electric, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and other “powerful […]
When Commissioner Bill James, a white Republican, tried to cut $200,000 from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ budget and give it to the Veterans Service Office as part of last week’s straw votes, Commissioner George Dunlap, a black Democrat, went off the deep end, exploding with a race-baiting diatribe laced with egregious distortions and flat-out nonsense. “I was […]
One day after Mecklenburg commissioners ballooned the county manager’s recommended budget, gambling that an improved economy would produce stable sales tax collections next year, the stock market plunged to a new four-month low on the release of a lethargic and disappointing national jobs report, while local snackmaker Lance Inc. announced it had reduced its workforce […]
A Democrat majority of the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners on Thursday night conjured millions of dollars from thin air to bolster funding for county programs and services without having to hike property taxes in an election year. Flush with a sack full of phantom money, the board then proceeded to embark on a dizzying […]
Rifling through the city’s budget, a couple numbers stick out like peacocks in a sparrow’s nest: Mecklenburg County’s $2.9 million contribution to the uptown cultural arts facilities and the $11 million the county is slated to fork over to provide an uptown park for a development planned in First Ward, along with leveraging about $8 […]
The NC House, that is. Meck Deck directs our attention to the John Locke Foundation’s Locker Room, where Becki Gray dissects a House budget that is rife with one-time funding for recurring obligations, stuffed with $50 million in new corporate giveaways, and sets the stage for a $3 billion shortfall next year.
There’s an old cliche when it comes to tweaking government budgets: If you want to add something, you need to cut something. Mecklenburg Commissioner Bill James is taking it to heart. James wants to increase funding for the Veteran’s Service Office, which is targeted to lose half its $1 million budget and seven of 14 […]
With Mecklenburg County drowning in debt and struggling to plug an $81-million budget gap, the City of Charlotte’s spending plan has managed to fly under the radar virtually unnoticed, despite being chock full of questionable expenditures that could stand a spotlight. Take, for example, the $602,000 that the city manager’s recommended budget allocates for so-called […]
As Mecklenburg County commissioners sift through the rubble of the county manager’s recommended budget, looking for places to tap cuts that could help save teachers’ jobs, there’s one data set that ought to jump screaming off the page. As of last December, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools had amassed an astounding 109 Central Administration positions that cost the […]
