A long-range transportation plan that received approval from the city council Monday night assumes that Charlotte will have two more rail-transit corridors up and running by 2025, which coupled with some long-delayed road-building projects will help the Charlotte region attain air-quality levels mandated by the federal government. One glaring problem with the plan, of course, […]
All it apparently takes to shave more than $250,000 off a government project is for a few dozen people to show up at some city council meetings and a few dozen more sending angry e-mails to elected officials and the media. At least that seems to be the case for a controversial sidewalk project that the […]
It’s difficult enough trying to hold members of the Charlotte City Council accountable when a majority of them occupy seats sprung from grossly gerrymandered districts that virtually guarantee their re-election every two years. The task would become all the more insurmountable with a move to four-year terms, a switch some councilmembers have advocated. Fortunately, that […]
Despite pouring tens of millions of dollars of public money into uptown to help fuel growth in the private sector, the wildly optimistic dreams and schemes that boosters touted for Center City have fallen woefully short of predictions. When the uptown lunch bunch was huddling over linen napkins and pewter goblets during the boom of […]
While the uptown paper of record was busy with headlines touting a marginal dip in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ dropout rate, which fell from 5.9 to 5 percent last year, a less flattering assessment of the situation flew under the radar: How many CMS students are actually making it through the system to graduate? Answer: Less than […]
The recent release from the Urban Ministry Center of a survey of the homeless in Charlotte yielded a dizzying array of numbers, some of which contracted themselves, some of which were based on best estimates, and all of which, by the Center’s own acknowledgement, were impossible to judge for accuracy. That said, out of Charlotte’s […]
With President Barack Obama demanding a straight up-or-down vote to ram home a horribly flawed, government-orchestrated healthcare reform package, a few examples floating around the ‘Net about how government has fared with other programs under its control should have folks running for cover and popping heartburn pills by the dozen. To wit: The U.S. Postal […]
Always-vigilant HouseGuest columnist Tom Ashcraft spotted Charlotte popping up in The Huffington Post, which riffed on a fascinating video featuring the Queen City. The stop-action paper animation film, produced by Rob Carter, plays out a futuristic version of Charlotte’s rise and fall. Carter’s critique of Charlotte as “one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, […]
Either as publisher of the uptown paper of record, or as co-chair of Charlotte Center City Partner’s 2020 Vision Plan. It’s bad enough that Caulkins is a member of the uptown lunch bunch’s board of directors; it is patently egregious that she’s co-chair of the Center City 2020 Vision Plan. Why? For starters, the county […]
It might not be an exact apples-to-apples comparison, but Mecklenburg Commissioner Bill James raises the interesting question of how it is that the governor of New York comes under fire for violating state ethics laws by snagging five free tickets to last year’s World Series opener, “but the Democrats on the Mecklenburg County Commission get […]
