The Rhino’s John Hammer on Tuesday night’s Greensboro City Council meeting, during which pretty much nothing was accomplished:
The Greensboro City Council didn’t do much at its meeting on Tuesday, July 21, but that is to be expected. City Council meetings run by Mayor Yvonne Johnson are more like group therapy sessions than a time to take action.
…..Group therapy doesn’t follow an agenda or parliamentary procedure, and neither do the City Council meetings. The City Council met for the first time in almost a month on Tuesday, July 21, and judging from the agenda – with 51 items – there was a lot to do, but the council didn’t get much done other than passing the consent agenda without discussion.
Sometimes I feel like Greensboro’s leaders— not to mention its mainstream media —– is indeed engaging us in one big group therapy session, which is why the temptation to mock something deemed an ‘International Site of Conscience’ was just too great.
Problem is there are some serious politics operating at the group therapy sessions, as Hammer notes the racial politcs Mayor Johnson played with two zoning cases from opposite sides of the city:
The mayor, who constantly amends the agenda, said she was going to take the Phillips Avenue item first because she didn’t want those people to have to wait. Which was nice for the people concerned with Phillips Avenue, but it meant that those concerned with the Vanstory rezoning had to wait longer, and at least one speaker had to leave before the Vanstory Street rezoning was heard.
If the reverse had been done, then the Pulpit Forum would be marching in front of city hall this week, but it is the way things are handled by Johnson.
Mayor Johnson —- as did other City Council candidates — took advantage of free TV time by having a couple of her campaign workers —- we probably wouldn’t know this if Hammer hadn’t pointed it out — speak about the need for bus stop shelters, which evidently is an election issue.
