When politicians tell you it’s not about the money, you can usually bank on one certainty: it’s about the money. Take, for example, speed cameras. When they were rammed through the Queen City in 2005, politicians swore up one side and down the other that it wasn’t about money. It was about safety, we were […]
For the taxpayers, that is, which could be lurking right around the corner from the sounds of recent developments. Eastland Mall’s new owner, Boxer Property, originally threw down a Christmas 2011 marker for reopening the shuttered retail goliath as a Hispanic-themed marketplace, but is already backing off the date. Boxer bought the Eastland property for […]
Locked behind closed doors Tuesday night with tensions and tempers mounting, Mecklenburg County Manager Harry Jones had just finished explaining why he had pulled and released Commissioners Vice Chairman Jim Pendergraph’s personnel records from when the former sheriff retired in 2007, offering that Commissioner George Dunlap had requested the information last Thursday. The explanation drew […]
Mecklenburg County is on the hook for potentially having to shell out more than $25 million in so-called compensated absences – largely accrued vacation leave and sick time pay, stretching back to 2007 – due workers when they eventually leave county employment. Last year alone, 649 former county employees received a combined total of about […]
Mayor Anthony Foxx has assured that city finances and taxpayers won’t be pinched by bringing the Democratic National Convention to Charlotte next year. Mecklenburg County, though, might be a different story. “There’s likely to be some additional cost associated with our planning for the DNC,” County Manager Harry Jones related as part of a budget […]
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities Department could save everyone a whole lot of time and just concede that rates will increase every year for the foreseeable future, just like they have every year in the past. Drought? Doesn’t matter, rates will go up. Floods and typhoons? Rates will go up. Picture perfect weather? Guess what, your rates are […]
Adding fuel to the county payout fire, on the heels of revelations swirling around former Mental Health Director Grayce Crockett’s settlement, there’s this nugget dropped late last week. Turns out when Commissioner Jim Pendergraph, a Republican, retired as Mecklenburg Sheriff, he walked away with a little extra in his pocket – almost 150 hours of […]
Most homeowners got a major jolt in the mail this week when they received property revaluation notices from the county. The average single-family house or townhome increased about 15 percent since the county’s last capture the value campaign in 2003, according to the uptown paper. About 63 percent of homes saw their values increase, some skyrocketing […]
Forget about whether County Manager Harry Jones exceeded his authority in authorizing a resignation settlement of more than $60,000 to former Area Mental Health Director Grayce Crockett, without first informing county commissioners. It’s a convenient cover for a more troubling issue, specifically why was Jones so worried about Crockett possibly suing the county, as he […]
New York City this week outlawed smoking in parks. New York City is World Class. With 1 being not a chance and 10 a sure thing: over/under on whether our World Class uptown lunch bunch pushes for something similar here before the DNC rolls into town. Built-in waiver clause, natch, for Obama and delegates. I […]
