With half-cent sales tax revenue to run shiny choo-choos all over town plunging like a wounded duck, and likely triggering cuts to bus service and/or higher bus fares, now comes news that ridership for the $521-million Lynx Blue Line is on a steady decline. Transportation and transit guru David Hartgen has the data and Jeff […]
The House Report’s regularly scheduled feature on The Pete Kaliner Show is taking a brief hiatus tonight, March 10, because of prevailing wisdom. Teeth, that is. Kaliner’s having his wisdom teeth yanked and will be out of studio, although it’d probably attract pretty decent ratings if they broadcast the operation live. We wish Pete a […]
I’m pretty sure school board member Richard McElrath didn’t mean for it to come out that way, but a motion he made to amend an amendment to the district’s anti-bullying policy sure sounded that way. As originally proposed the revised language read: “All persons on CMS campuses or present at CMS-sponsored events are expected to […]
With little debate and virtually no fireworks, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education on Tuesday night approved some technical amendments to its existing anti-bullying policy that sparked community uproar when it was originally adopted in 2008. CMS already had rules on the book that prohibited bullying when it codified its stand as formal policy two years […]
If federal deficits are nightmares, Freddy Krueger is leading the parade for the one headed our way. According to the latest from the Congressional Budget Office, President Obama’s budget would add nearly $10 trillion – trillion, with a T – to the national debt over the next decade. Even more troubling, the CBO estimates that […]
A long-range transportation plan that received approval from the city council Monday night assumes that Charlotte will have two more rail-transit corridors up and running by 2025, which coupled with some long-delayed road-building projects will help the Charlotte region attain air-quality levels mandated by the federal government. One glaring problem with the plan, of course, […]
All it apparently takes to shave more than $250,000 off a government project is for a few dozen people to show up at some city council meetings and a few dozen more sending angry e-mails to elected officials and the media. At least that seems to be the case for a controversial sidewalk project that the […]
It’s difficult enough trying to hold members of the Charlotte City Council accountable when a majority of them occupy seats sprung from grossly gerrymandered districts that virtually guarantee their re-election every two years. The task would become all the more insurmountable with a move to four-year terms, a switch some councilmembers have advocated. Fortunately, that […]
Despite pouring tens of millions of dollars of public money into uptown to help fuel growth in the private sector, the wildly optimistic dreams and schemes that boosters touted for Center City have fallen woefully short of predictions. When the uptown lunch bunch was huddling over linen napkins and pewter goblets during the boom of […]
While the uptown paper of record was busy with headlines touting a marginal dip in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ dropout rate, which fell from 5.9 to 5 percent last year, a less flattering assessment of the situation flew under the radar: How many CMS students are actually making it through the system to graduate? Answer: Less than […]
