Remember the earlier post about Gboro and Chattanooga, which has a city planner with power to veto inappropriate development.
Interesting because the Rhino’s John Hammer says the City Council needs to veto once and for all the Kirkwood neighborhood overlay:
Finally the supporters and staff talked about how much time staff had devoted to this project as if this were a good thing. Half of the neighborhood is not in favor of the NCO; where is the staff time for opponents? The staff didn’t organize a single meeting for opponents to the NCO, even when the opponents requested one. The staff did not do research for opponents of the NCO although, according to Schwartz, staff spent a good bit of time doing the research requested by those in favor.
The staff is supposed to work for all the citizens of Greensboro, not just those with a particular political opinion.
Hammer reported a couple of weeks ago that the NCO was shot down big-time by the Zoning Commission:
So the Kirkwood NCO has had two shots at the Zoning Commission and been unable to convince a single zoning commissioner that putting additional regulations on a large amount of property near traditional Kirkwood was a good idea.
After five years of working on the project, the Greensboro Planning and Community Development staff, with all the resources of the City of Greensboro at its disposal, was unable to win over one vote.
The Kirkwood NCO is all about jobs. This project was about preserving jobs for staff in the planning department who have had nothing to do since the bottom fell out of the housing market in 2008.
Meanwhile an NCO supporter takes council member Zack Matheny —a Kirkwood resident — to task for not standing for not supporting his constituents.
