It’s not that Tom Phillips won’t be missed when he leaves the Greensboro City Council later this year. After hearing from several members of the business comunity suffering from exponential increases in fees, Phillips (with strong support from Mike Barber) made the motion that the city rescind the increase in privilege license fees it passed last month. It turns out the council didn’t really know what it was doing when it passed the increase, and Phillips (who acknowedged that he voted for it) wisely suggested the council needs to find out exactly what they don’t know before they put it into place. What a concept.
The drive to raise privilege license fees was not only for the extra revenue, but supposedly to bring Greensboro up to “market value” in line with bigger cities such as Charlotte and Raleigh. But no one was really sure exactly what the standards for increasing the fees are in those cities. The suggestion came up that the larger fees are for big-box stores entering those markets, but no one was really sure.
For what it’s worth, council member and mayoral candidate Yvonne Jonson said she thought the increase in fees here in Greensboro would be directed toward big boxes when she voted for it last month. That may have been what she was thinking, but she sure didn’t say it out loud, at least to my recollection.
