Right now Greensboro’s proposed bond referendum sits at $178 million. It’s not on the ballot yet but odds are it will be considering—as Rhino editor John Hammer puts it, City Council members “have their pet projects, and if they don’t vote for their fellow councilmembers pet projects then theirs may not get the votes it needs to pass.”
Hammer provides a brief history of bond referendums passed in recent years, and —you guessed it— there is still $60 million in unspent money sitting around somewhere. Furthermore, only to council members—Mike Barber and Yvonne Johnson–were on the council when the 2006 bond passed, and they have not served consecutive terms since that time.
Think about it—2006 was only 10 years ago, but in many ways it was a much different time—- before the economic meltdown, before Obama, before the infiltration of radical Islam into the United States, before social media began dictating how we get our information. All that has a trickle down effect on cities, and as we wind down the disastrous Obama years with either Hillary or Trump taking the helm, you have to wonder what the next 10 years will look like as the city ponders putting hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money on the ballot.
And as Hammer also notes, things don’t always turn out as expected:
One thing the City Council promised in 2006 was a skateboard park. If you had kids that were into skateboarding in 2006 and voted for that bond so they would have somewhere to go where they wouldn’t be yelled at and told to move on, those kids are most likely not still under your roof and may have kids of their own, but the skate park has yet to be built. However, it is worth noting that the money hasn’t been spent on anything else and the skate park is supposed to be built in Latham Park, a location chosen by the current City Council, not the ones in office in 2006.
Then we have the Greensboro Aquatic Center (GAC). The bonds that were used to pay much of the cost of that facility were listed under the broad parks and recreation bond heading and were, according to the advertising, going to be used for a community pool.
The GAC is run by the Greensboro Coliseum and has had a great deal of success attracting regional and national swimming meets, but it is not a community pool run by the Parks and Recreation Department, which is what people were told they were voting for.
The reason the bonds were listed under parks and recreation is because the voters of Greensboro almost always pass parks and recreation bonds and rarely pass Coliseum bonds.
There was never any intent to build a community pool. That bond money was always intended for an aquatic center, which the voters of Greensboro had already rejected. Rather than risk rejection again, the City Council decided to try deception, and it worked.
In other words, ‘you don’t always get what you vote for.’ Surprise.
