Not content with pulling a $9.5-million rabbit out of the hat to bolster county revenue projections, county commissioners on Tuesday night worked some more money magic when they trimmed County Manager Harry Jones’ total pay package and simultaneously tossed him a nearly $27,000 pay hike. Commissioners nixed Jones’ performance bonus from future total compensation packages, […]
As attendance projections for the vaunted NASCAR Hall of Fame crash and burn from original estimates, falling some 35 percent off the mark, none other than the Wall Street Journal picks up on the massive debt Charlotte has absorbed from the racing venture, lumping it in with a load of other pricey boondoggles from around […]
Most folks these days know Pete Kaliner as the nine-to-midnight talker on WBT 1110-AM. People with a little longer memory know that Kaliner was also one of the best frontline news reporters to cover a beat in Char-Meck. Which is why it’s no surprise that he dug up this gem on city, county and school […]
Charlotte’s contentious rules on where to locate so-called affordable housing would see subtle but significant changes under a new policy that the city council’s Housing and Neighborhood Development (HAND) committee unanimously approved Tuesday afternoon. The proposed policy would scuttle existing criteria that define areas where the location of subsidized, multi-family housing developments is prohibited, permitted, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
