Birthday cake, that is. Recognizing that Mecklenburg County employees have gone two years without merit-pay raises, County Manager Harry Jones today delivered a surprise to help boost moral: an additional day of paid vacation for all county employees on their birthdays. The gesture won’t have any budgetary impact, said County Budget Director Hyong Yi, because […]
What federal officials are calling a “technical error” could potentially slam the brakes on the city’s plan to extend the Lynx Blue Line to UNC-Charlotte. Local officials had applied for $40 million in federal money to fund the final piece of an engineering/design study required for the $1-billion light-rail extension project. Last week a U.S. […]
One of the bigger questions left hanging from the termination letter that the N.C. Department of Correction issued to Councilmember Warren Turner, who was fired this week from his job as a state probation officer, isn’t whether the action was justified, but rather why it hadn’t been taken earlier, or whether it would have been […]
Put it at three. Assuming, of course, the N.C. Department of Correction doesn’t backtrack on its decision to fire Councilmember Warren Turner from his job as a state probation officer, which Turner’s lawyers say he will appeal. DOC officials cited no specific reason for their decision to fire Turner, at least not for public consumption, […]
In for a pound; or upwards of $125K in this case. Local leaders are already in steep denial and full obfuscation mode with assurances that the city’s attempt to lure the Democratic National Convention to the Queen City won’t require local tax dollars to bait the hook. Then turning right around with the next breath […]
Not sure what else you can call Charlotte’s continued mad lust for all things rail transit, other than flat-out crazy, although misguided, irresponsible and irrational pop to mind pretty quick. Not content with hitting the federal government up for $25 million to help build a $37 million streetcar line that will stretch all of 1.5 […]
Stories about local politicos taking half-day walking tours of soup kitchens and emergency shelters always make me cringe. Claims that the experience is somehow supposed to give them a better appreciation for the challenges facing the homeless echo as either disingenuous or delusional. In this case, it’s city and county leaders hiking along with Mecklenburg […]
After barely escaping official censure in May from his colleagues on the Charlotte City Council, stemming from an investigation into whether he had sexually harassed city staffers, Warren Turner on Monday was fired from his job as a probation officer with the N.C. Department of Corrections. Secretary of Correction Alvin Keller said in a statement […]
It started with a simple request during a recent Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners meeting, when Chairman Jennifer Roberts asked her colleagues to approve a change to the minutes from the board’s June 15 meeting, which commissioners were preparing to adopt. As originally recorded, the minutes noted that the board had approved a five-year service […]
The City of Charlotte managed to land about $57 million in its scramble for federal stimulus money, but one request from the utilities department got flushed down the toilet. Literally. Local officials had applied to the state, which administered distribution of the federal stimulus funds, for about $750,00 to pay for a toilet replacement program. […]
