Greensboro city council arguments keep public speakers from podium

said Mayor Nancy Vaughan three hours and 48 minutes into the May 2 meeting of Greensboro City Council, when she announced the town hall portion of the agenda.

It was more than a few.

When the meeting began at 5:30 p.m., the Katie Dorsett Council Chamber was full, with an overflow crowd that spilled out onto the second-floor landing and resulted in having to wait outside. Seventy-seven members of the public signed up to speak, more than three times as many at any town hall meeting in the last five years.

Only 23 actually made it to the podium. One who did, Del Stone of the WorkingClass and Houseless Organizing Alliance (WHOA), called the lengthy digressions by council members “functionally a filibuster.”

Two hours into the meeting, Vaughan called “a 10 minute recess” while she conferred with those signed up to speak at the public hearing for “Ordinance Amending the Greensboro Land Development Ordinance in Relation to Short Term Rentals.” This would have been the culmination of the ongoing debate about the city’s proposed regulations on Airbnbs, which several neighborhood associations argue are actually deregulations that will raise long-term rent by making short-term rentals more common.

After the break, which actually lasted 24 minutes, Vaughan announced those speakers had agreed to return on May 23. But over half of the remaining 57 who signed up to speak on other matters walked out dur- ing digressive arguments between council members.

What Vaughan criticized as an o -topic debate began 40 minutes into the meeting, with a resolution “to authorize a commitment of $2,500,000 to Green Light Development LLC for a multifamily a ordable housing development project.”

The proposal by Green Light is to build a 52-unit multifamily development at 515 Kallamdale Road, with 24 units targeted for those under 30 percent of the average median income (AMI), 17 units for those under 50 percent AMI, and 11 units for those under 60 percent AMI.

District 1’s Sharon Hightower questioned the process by which these developers were chosen. She then invited three Black developers to the podium and asked them to introduce themselves to council, stating that they had been “left out of the conversation.”

While other reporting has cited Hightower as the reason for council taking more than three hours to get to the town hall portion of the meeting, more time was spent in digressions by District 3’s Zack Matheny, who argued that funds city sta recommended be granted solely to Green Light should be divided among it and two white-owned firms that submitted proposals.

“I don’t support giving all three the money,” replied Hightower. “One of these developers called every one of us today. The Black developers don’t know to call everybody and advocate. To me, you’re turning this not only political but discriminatory.”

Matheny continued pressing this matter even after Neighborhood Development Director Michelle Kennedy said dividing the funding among the three competing proposals would make none of them viable, as whichever proposal council approved would require all of the available $2.5 million.

“Okay, I lost that one,” said Matheny after city attorney Chuck Watts supported Hightower’s contention that Matheny’s motion had died. “But as for it being political, we are political, that’s our body, we are a policy-making body, period.”

The District 3 representative launched into a lengthy defense against alleged claims that he attempts to micromanage City Manager Taiwo Jaiyeoba.

“Mr. Manager, I get in a lot of trouble for trying to micromanage, but what I’m trying to do is be strategic to help you and others like you get over the finish line.”

Matheny then, as he has in the past, criticized city sta for not getting information to council sooner. “We should have all the information to us as fast as possible prior to us having to vote on two and a half million dollars. To me, that is not strategic.”

He renewed his criticism of Jaiyeoba an hour later when he rebuked the city manager during a discussion of the second item on the general agenda, “Resolution Opposing HB 470.”

House Bill 470 would require Greensboro and Winston-Salem (and no other North Carolina cities) to fund individual Civil Service Boards to hear appeals from city employees who have been fired, demoted, or denied promotions or raises, and determine if those actions by the WinstonSalem and Greensboro city managers were justified. Currently, the only avenue of appeal for such employees is to write the City Manager. The bill’s primary sponsors are Rep. Jon Hardister, R-Guilford, Je Zenger, R-Forsyth, and Kyle Hall, R-Stokes.

On May 2, both Winston-Salem and Greensboro city councils voted to approve resolutions condemning the bill as legislative overreach. The Winston-Salem vote was unanimous, but in Greensboro, was five to three.

Matheny devoted the bulk of his comments to City Manager Jaiyeoba for allegedly not giving council enough advance warning about it.

“Over the last couple of months, we have provided weekly updates,” said Jaiyeoba.

“You alerted the chiefs [of police and the fire department], you didn’t alert us!” said Matheny.

Matheny grilled Jaiyeoba for eight minutes, until at the three-hour point of the meeting, District 2’s Goldie Wells interrupted him. “No need to be getting on the city manager about when we heard,” said Wells, her voice rising in apparent annoyance. “We all can read! I’m going to vote for the resolution [against the bill]. There’s no need fussing about when we learned.”

Council discussed the bill for 38 minutes before Hightower, at-large representative Marikay Abuzuaiter, Mayor pro tem Yvonne Johnson, Wells and District 4’s Nancy Ho man voted to oppose it and Matheny, Thurm, and Vaughan voted not to oppose it.

Marcus Cox, executive board member of Professional Firefighters of Greensboro, and UE Local 150 Greensboro chapter member Bryce Carter, spoke in support of the bill.

“Once again, the city workers have asked Council to listen to their concerns,” said WHOA’s Del Stone, “and once again, city council has wasted hours of time exposing their own ignorance about basic budget issues to the point that it’s functionally a filibuster. If a worker is terminated, the only recourse is to write a letter to the city manager.”

Hightower, the council member most vehemently opposed to the bill, was unmoved.

“Nobody in the audience who is for it, other than the city workers, have really talked to me. But there are people who have opposed it, and they have talked to me as well. I support our city workers. There’s nobody that sees this face that knows I’ve not been behind them 100 percent. I understand that the system is not perfect and there are some things we need to fix. But should union members speak for non-union members? I don’t think so. I think this bill was done in the dark. The unintended consequences will be that you will usurp the city manager’s authority. We are a manager council form of government and if you change our charter from that, you take away his power to do anything.”

Hightower acknowledged “when people get fired, they need people to advocate for them,” but said, “this bill is not going to fix that.” She restated her opposition to having union representatives on the proposed board. “Do they have HR knowledge, policy knowledge, legal knowledge? You’re putting that in the hands of novice people. At this time, I am going to oppose it”

Abuzuaiter agreed, stating, “this bill changes the charter of the city of Greensboro,” and questioned whether it was constitutional. She also read aloud a letter in opposition to it from the Greensboro Police O cer’s Association.

The five to three vote, like the evening’s earlier unanimous one, was made without the presence of at-large representative Hugh Holston, who was absent. It was at four hours and 17 minutes into the meeting that the podium was opened to speakers on non-agenda issues. On social media, there had been speculation and hope that many speak against the proposed prepared-food tax that Vaughan discussed last year in emails with Matt Brown, managing director of both the Coliseum and the Tanger Center.

In their correspondence, Vaughan and Brown discussed funding both the Tanger Center and Coliseum with a 1 percent tax on restaurant sales and agreed that, with the help of the state legislature, the tax could be levied without a referendum. But if anyone who signed up to speak intended to address that subject, they were among the many that left in the first fours and fifteen minutes of the meeting. !

IAN MCDOWELL is the author of two published novels, numerous anthologized short stories, and a whole lot of nonfiction and journalism, some of which he’s proud of and none of which he’s ashamed of.