On the heels of city officials recently voting to fork over $1.4 million to bail out libraries and prevent the wholesale shuttering of branch locations, the Charlotte City Council on Monday night extended another dose of largess when it approved an agreement that will save a handful of county jobs. The council authorized City Manager […]
Faced with an $800-million shortfall in its operating budget and a state unemployment rate that tops 10 percent, the N.C. Senate on Monday night voted 46-0 to approve $542 million in construction bonds for a variety of projects scattered throughout the UNC system. Some of the big-ticket items up for grabs: a $45-million football complex […]
Former Mayor Pro Tem Susan Burgess was the consummate political animal, somebody who could work a vote count and know exactly what concessions needed to be made or demanded to achieve a desired result. I mean that as a compliment. Burgess, who is battling terminal cancer, resigned her seat on council last week with an […]
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 […]
One day after Mecklenburg commissioners ballooned the county manager’s recommended budget, gambling that an improved economy would produce stable sales tax collections next year, the stock market plunged to a new four-month low on the release of a lethargic and disappointing national jobs report, while local snackmaker Lance Inc. announced it had reduced its workforce […]
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 […]
