Ballantyne, NC – The hot topics for the September 3rd breakfast meeting were the Charlotte Housing Authority, the salary for the city manager and the taxi controversy. Charlotte City Council’s meeting date has been altered due to Labor Day. The next city meeting will not be on a Monday, per usual, but on Tuesday, September 7th, 2010. This particular meeting is an airport themed meeting and therefore will be at the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport. All city council member’s did receive a large binder that includes directions to this airport. The city council will soon hold eight public meetings to discuss water and sewer studies. The two public meetings in the Ballantyne Area are both at the South County Public Library. The first meeting is September 16th at 6:00 pm and the next is November 3rd also at 6:00 pm. The city will be also holding more public meetings on the street car soon. These will be concerning the $5.5 million spent on the engineering study for the first phase of the new street car. The first two public meetings will be held at Johnson C. Smith University. These will be on September 28th and 30th. The third meeting will be at the government center on October 5th.
The Charlotte Housing Authority (C.H.A.) is an independent agency of the State of North Carolina. The Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority is a division of the federal government. The C.H.A. has seven board members. The C.H.A. has chosen to put a resident of public housing on the board of C.H.A. One senior staff member wanted to chose which resident would be on the board. Some council members are not comfortable with senior staff choosing this resident. Lucille Pucket was chosen to be this member of the Charlotte Housing Authority Board. She recently was evicted due to drug trade charges. This week, Tara Servatius interviewed Ms. Pucket on her radio show. Ms. Pucket has thirteen children. Ms. Pucket is originally from South Carolina and she has been living in Charlotte for four years. There is some controversy surrounding Ms. Pucket and whether or not she should continue on this board.
Will the prosecution choose to appeal the verdict in the Montgomery trial? The City of Charlotte has been chosen as a “Walk Friendly Community” and is a test community for pedestrian safety. Does City Manager Curt Walton make enough money? His current salary is $210,000. Harry Jones, the county manager, makes $283,000 plus his generous benefits. Are these salaries comparable to C.E.O. packages? Should they be comparable?
The taxi drivers are upset with the city on two levels They are upset with how taxi’s are regulated at the Charlotte Airport. Also they are upset because the City of Charlotte gives the taxi license to the taxi company but not the driver. This city does not have a ‘medallion’ system to license drivers. Several taxi drivers have equated this last ordinance to ‘slavery’. Taxi‘s must not be any older than five years old according to a city ordinance. All taxi companies must own a minimum of 30 taxi cabs.
Right now D.S.S. does pay taxi cabs to linger in order to provide transportation for them. The city does not allow limousines to linger currently. This “loophole” in the lingering law allows hotels the option to contract with one or more limousine companies. Another city ordinance is concerning taxi companies that are located outside of the city. One destination by just such a taxi is allowed but not two or more destinations. Also an out of town taxi is not allowed, once inside Charlotte, to pick up another fare. The original goal of these ordinances by the city were to improve the taxi cab industry.
Currently the ordinances for taxi’s are very complex. The locational policy was discussed recently. City Council Members Michael Barnes and Patrick Cannon were talking about this policy. Michael Barnes is the district 4 representative. District 4 has the second lowest number of subsidized housing of any district in Charlotte. Other concerns are about group homes and design standards. The Chamber of Commerce President, Bob Morgan, was recently talking to the city council about the D.N.C. coming to Charlotte. Four cities are finalists. These are the cities:
St. Louis, Missouri.
2. Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Cleveland, Ohio.
Charlotte, North Carolina.
Will the D.N.C. fail to chose St. Louis since they said no to “Obamacare”? Will the D.N.C. chose a city with a large union presence?
Tim Morgan, C.M.S. Board, also answered a few questions. A five year old kindergarten student recently was ‘lost’ for a short period of time on the way home from the first day of class. This student is at Ballantyne Elementary. The child was on the bus and when the driver was finished the route he called the child’s name but the child did not answer. The bus driver failed to ‘walk the bus’ and did not thoroughly look for the child. Later, another staff member did check the bus for students and found the five year old laying down in the back of the bus. No harm came to the child as a result of this incident.
Another incident involves Osvaldo Sombo. Sombo was a star football player at Butler High School. He has been charged with raping another Butler student. He was allowed to play the first football game of the season which happened after his arrest. C.M.S. has a computer system to check arrests but since this arrest of Sombo was during the summer there was a delay. The letter was sent ‘snail mail’ to Butler High. C.M.S. now has a new system to respond in a timely fashion to student arrests. The new policy dictates that a special person will check police records of arrests everyday. The new policy now states that if arrested then the student would be ‘pulled’ immediately and sent to Bank Street School as a ‘triage’ method. Then C.M.S. will make a final decision about what is best for the student after the student is at Bank Street School.
A third incident involves South Mecklenburg High School. An A.P. Teacher at South Mecklenburg High School was recently arrested. He was taking pictures ‘up the skirts of women’ at a local grocery store. The ‘already in place’ policy is to remove the teacher from the classroom immediately. This teacher was immediately removed from the classroom and another teacher will be instructing the A.P. Students.
Susan J. Spaulding
Public Policy Writer
Ballantyne Scoop
