Mecklenburg County Manager Harry Jones says he won’t be recommending raises this year for county employees, but is keeping the possibility of a fat bonus for himself on the table. And isn’t that exactly the kinds of inspiring news you want to be reading, if you’re a county employee burning the candle at both ends […]
The Charlotte City Council and the Mecklenburg Board of County Commissioners in 2007 jointly approved what was touted as an ambitious plan to end and prevent homelessness in 10 years. That was three years ago and, to date, the plan has accomplished little, except for now laying the groundwork to form a new community-based leadership […]
So libraries, parks, social services and schools are facing massive cuts and layoffs and the braintrust in the county manager’s office decides it’s a good idea to blow close to $3,000 buying five new Apple iPads. Wonderful. The official line – shocker here – is that spending more will ultimately save more, in this case […]
A handful of Democrat county commissioners are pushing to hike a special law enforcement district tax paid by residents living in the county’s unincorporated areas, despite the county manager’s recommendation to avoid the tax increase and pull money from other parts of the budget to pay for the service. Since 1996 residents in the county’s […]
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 […]
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 […]
The first of what could be a slew of fee increases to come down the county’s pike received tacit approval from Mecklenburg commissioners last week, when they green lighted a proposal from the county’s code enforcement department to hike building inspection and permit fees 4.7 percent across the board, along with targeted increases of up […]
In a scheduling feat of what can at best be called cruel irony, Mecklenburg Commissioners Chairperson Jennifer Roberts is slated to deliver her State of the County address on Thursday, April 15. Tax Day. Insert knife, twist, pour on salt. Here’s a primer on some buzzwords you can expect to hear from our Democrat-in-Chief: “painful” – […]
