With everything going on in Greensboro, it’s easy to forget that the Winston-Salem City Council has a new look, though pretty much in name only:
In some ways, the local election was influenced by the national election last year. The campaigns of new Democratic council members D.D. Adams, Derwin Montgomery and James Taylor were to some degree inspired by the election of the first African-American president, who campaigned on a mantra of change.
And as the administration of Barack Obama poured billions of dollars into private industry against a tide of criticism, local opponents hammered away at the council’s approval of millions of dollars in financial backing for the Dell plant and the downtown baseball stadium.
As if we’re not way past chanting the ‘change’ mantra. Besides, it looks to me like the Journal’s expectations of the new council haven’t changed. The paper of record says while the “city, like the federal government, will continue to grapple with the questions raised by public-private partnerships,” Winston-Salem “must continue to summon the vision and courage to tackle them if it wants to compete in the new economy.”
Sounds like the same old ideas to me. Let’s also not forget that change didn’t occur where it was most needed —– at the top. Allen Joines is still the mayor.
