Alternate Headline: Raleigh’s Washington Monument Syndrome There’s no way the state can be threatening to pinkslip up to 5,300 teachers (CMS impact, 400 to 500) and scores of other classroom personnel because of budget constraints. I know this because the state is spending $10 million (Gov. Bev originally wanted $39M) to buy a bunch of nifty […]
The Charlotte-area unemployment rate shrank slightly in October, to 10.2 percent from 10.6 percent the previous month, while Mecklenburg County’s unemployment dipped to 9.8 percent from 9.9 percent, according to numbers released today by the NC Employment Security Commission. That sounds like good news until you dig into the numbers, at which point we turn […]
The braintrust behind the 2020 Center City Vision Plan wrapped its last community forum this week, prepping for a release next month of what promises to be a wish list of wild uptown spending. Still in play, apparently, the mind-numbingly expensive pipedream to cap I-277 with an open space promenade that will better connect uptown’s […]
Just another page in the ongoing saga of CMS. Violence erupted yesterday at Garinger High School, where 10 students were arrested for disorderly conduct after a rolling brawl broke out on the school’s campus – again. It’s the fourth time this year that police have been called to the school in response to melees. Recall […]
Maybe there’s hope yet for Mecklenburg County. For whatever it’s worth, and admittedly it’s not much, results from the “Kids Voting Mecklenburg” project show Republican Corey Thompson topping the at-large commissioners race. Thompson, a local tea party activist and first-time candidate, finished out of the running in actual election results, trailing top vote-getters Jennifer Roberts, Jim […]
Let’s see. How, oh how, could we possibly trim the projected $1.3 million shortfall over at the uptown racing museum? Let’s ask the three cheerleading chieftains supposedly in charge of driving tourism in the greater CharMeck region for some answers. Surely, with their combined salaries that approach nearly, well, what do you know, nearly $1 […]
City officials are again conceding, this time in writing, what all us ignorant cavemen knew way back during the half-cent sales tax repeal vote: Charlotte’s transit system is wholly unsustainable. So naturally, the braintrust behind the plan wants “new long term revenue sources for transit.” That’s government-speak for new taxes and/or fees and city officials […]
Republican Richard Burr rumbled to an easy victory last night, trouncing Democrat Elaine Marshall by a 56 to 43 percent margin to retain his US Senate seat. Although you’d never know if you had your eyes on Mecklenburg County, where Marshall took Burr to the woodshed, nearly flipping the statewide tally and capturing 52 percent […]
Board of Education Chairman Eric Davis says CMS doesn’t have anything to hide and will fully cooperate with the local NAACP’s request for an outside financial audit of the district, but won’t come off the hip to foot the bill. That burden, Davis said, should fall on the rabble-rousers calling for a review of CMS’ […]
If you’re looking for evidence of how incredibly screwed up and bass-ackward Mecklenburg County’s criminal justice system has become, search no further than today’s Meck Deck, where Jeff Taylor digs up the ugly disparity in bonds meted out by the same judge for the infamous pen-bomb mom ($50K) and an accused rapist ($5K). Wonderful.
