Earlier in the week I speculated what the Rhino’s John Hammer would say about the supposed dispute between conservative members of the Greensboro City Council and city staff.

Hammer weighs in this week. Bottom line is a fact I’ve been driving home for quite some time: another council bucked former Environmental Services Director Jeryl Covington’s recommendation that the city not close the White Street landfill:

Covington fought as hard as she could to keep the White Street Landfill open back in 2001. When the council asked for a recommendation on closing the landfill, Covington arranged for experts from all over the state to come and explain to the City Council how foolhardy it would be to close it. The out-of-town experts said things that Covington could not have said and kept her job.

The council decided to close the landfill despite the strong recommendations of Covington, consultants and outside experts against it. Those in favor of not using the landfill now say that the City Council should listen to the staff, but if the City Council had listened to the staff at all, it would have never closed the landfill.

As for former Water Resources Director Allan Williams, a source tells Hammer the beginning of the end was when Trudy Wade was elected to the council. Why? Because the “council finally got a member who could read a balance sheet and figure out what was going on in the water department.”