Apologies for the splotchy posting lately. I took a brief trip —–last one of the year —— and a technical glitch cut the lights out yesterday. Getting up to speed:
*The N&R says a Guilford County deputy’s Tasering of a Ragsdale student was “probably” justified, but then says that school board members Deena Hayes and Amos Quick “would be wise to set up some sort of formal process any time a Taser is used on a student.”
*Billy Prim’s already moving dirt over at the taxpayer-funded downtown stadium, just a day barely beating the Winston-Salem City Council’s deadline to secure private financing. The Winston-Salem Journal’s Scott Sexton analyzes the two messy divorces that put a hurt on Prim’s pocket book.
*Ed Cone says at-large Greensboro City Council candidate Ryan Shell ‘disrespected’ current council member Sandra Anderson Groat during a recent encounter, during which the firing of former City Manager Mitchell Johnson was discussed. Here’s what jumped out at me when reading Shell’s recollection of the encounter:
This is scary, but I knew you were going to ask that! I can’t remember what I said verbatim, but I said something like, “I really think this process has been handled wrong. In my opinion it is important to set goals and objectives for employees. If the goals are not met it is easier to take the appropriate action needed. A lot of this decision seems to be based on emotion and if there were clear performance facts that could be cited the process would be easier to execute.” Again, I might be off a word here or there, but that is the gist of what I said. The conversation ended shortly after I responded.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but that was the N&R’s assessment of the situation when defending Johnson —– that council needed to set concrete goals for the city manager instead of just firing him, no matter how poorly (an understatement) Johnson handled the Wray affair. Just thought I’d point that out.
