In the midst of two global wars on terror, Mecklenburg County is considering budget cuts that would completely eliminate funding for its Veterans Service Office, forcing the agency to shutter its doors and potentially leaving thousands of benefit claims filed by local veterans lost in a maze of bureaucratic red tape. “It couldn’t come at […]
Tuesday’s primary election yielded an abysmally low 7.3 percent voter turnout in Mecklenburg County, but spirits were soaring high at election night party headquarters for Corey Thompson, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools teacher who had just aced his first big-time political exam. Thompson ran third in the GOP at-large commissioners race, behind top vote-getters Jim Pendergraph and […]
Don’t get me wrong: I like sports, even ones that require grown men to wear goofy-looking clothes and chase after a little white ball with a club. But it says something about our culture when the Quail Hollow Championship produces attendance numbers better than those projected for a pivotal Primary Election. There’s a lot at […]
In an emotionally-charged decision Monday night, the Charlotte City Council voted 6 to 3 against censuring one of its own members for allegedly sexually harassing city staff. The vote came after Councilmember Warren Turner defended himself against findings reported last week by an attorney the city had hired to investigate the harassment claim, which concluded […]
Less than 24 hours before the primary election to retain his seat as a state representative, the North Carolina State Bar suspended the law license of Nick Mackey. Yes, that Nick Mackey; the one who nearly hustled and conned his way into being named Mecklenburg County sheriff in 2008, until the results of a special […]
What else has Warren Turner done? Don’t know. Don’t know for even close to certain if he’s done what’s been alleged, but the fact that the list is growing is not a good sign. Turner, the District 3 rep on Charlotte City Council, was named as the councilmember that at least four city staffers accused […]
Mecklenburg County employees who thought their jobs were safe from the budget axe got a rude awakening this week, when County Manager Harry Jones distributed a revised schedule for department reduction-in-force plans. The original timeline called for Jones’s executive team to have the potential layoffs approved by the end of April. That apparently has been […]
So I’m in the kitchen washing some dishes yesterday and the TV’s on and I hear that some guy named Bacots had been hired as superintendent of Durham Public Schools. Wash another dish. Heard the name again. Bacots? Couldn’t be, I thought. So I go into the living room and there he is on the […]
A majority of school board members seemed receptive to a pay-to-play proposal pitched Tuesday night to save middle school sports, while discussion was curbed over applying a similar fee-based structure for transportation services. The notion of having students pay for bus rides to and from school was floated by board member Trent Merchant, tangential to […]
From teachers and their assistants to students and their parents, people lined up Tuesday night to blast the Board of Education and Superintendent Peter Gorman over proposed budget cuts that could lead to what many speakers called unacceptable and disastrous consequences in classrooms next year. Faced with a potential budget shortfall that could top $75 […]
