Revisions that the city council approved Monday night to a program that provides loans to small businesses sparked debate about whether the initiative was more focused on social engineering and exerting government control over the private sector, than on creating new jobs for a community battered by high unemployment. With the approved program revisions in […]
Eliminating middle school athletics has become a nearly perennial threat used by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools to help rally support for more local funding come budget season. Usually it works and somehow a last-minute, Hail Mary pass comes through to save sports, along with band, arts, and music programs. But this year, with CMS facing upwards of […]
Wet t-shirts are all that’s missing from the wanton binge-spending spree our Democrat-controlled board of commissioners has blazed under the leadership of Chairperson Jennifer Roberts. There’s simply no other way to put it, which is what made Roberts’s retort at this week’s commissioners’ meeting, that Democrats weren’t wholly responsible for the financial mess in which […]
Words have meaning, especially when you’re talking about libraries. So how about rewording an uptown paper of record poll, posted in response to news that the county is closing 12 libraries and cutting 148 jobs because of budget cuts. The poll predictably asks: Would you be willing to pay higher taxes to keep libraries open? […]
As we predicted, there’s movement afoot at CMS to tweak and/or consolidate at least some of the school system’s district offices that currently anchor so-called learning communities scattered across the county. Confirmation of such came about by pure happenstance: I recently found myself sitting beside a top-ranking member of CMS’ executive staff and overheard him […]
In an email sent over the weekend to all 11 members of the Charlotte City Council, Mayor Anthony Foxx warned his colleagues to not sexually harass city staff. The letter makes no reference to either who might be doing the alleged harassing, or who is being harassed. Even with a $70,000-a-year spokesperson, Foxx is declining […]
Mecklenburg County commissioners will have to wield a double-edge sword as they carve their way through the budget process. First they need to trim about $20 million in cuts from the current-year budget to bring it in line with tumbling revenues; then turn around and plan for hacking up to $95 million in targeted cuts […]
The Board of Education learned Tuesday afternoon that Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools would need to fork over $6.3 million from its current-year budget to help close an estimated $20-million shortfall in the county’s current-year budget. And that was the good news, compared to what followed: Board members were told that County Manager Harry Jones would be pitching […]
The findings of a citizens’ Water Solutions Task Force released this week reveal that a lot of folk in Cornelius apparently enjoy long showers and really green lawns; that Charlotte’s utilities department has problems with defective meter readers; that the city has for years been raiding the utilities treasure chest to pay for capital projects […]
There’s been ambiguous talk popping up in media reports concerning possible moves by CMS to do something with its learning community outposts, those pricey offices scattered around the district that debuted as CMS’ answer to decentralization. By most counts the district offices have been a flop, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars and doing […]
