Are you aware that Robbie Perkins is planning to spend almost $22 Million Dollars of Greensboro tax dollars to run water and sewer to a 2000 acre Megasite (industrial park) he's planning to build in Randolph County? He also wants you to help foot the bill for building his Megasite. And he doesn't have a single customer signed-up to move in. This is what Robbie Perkins is talking about when he talks about shovel ready development.
The mayor also doesn't talk about the fact that nationwide there are 180 empty megasites and 18 empty megasites in North Carolina all waiting for that one automobile plant. Edgecombe County did a study and determined it was a bad idea. Robbie has pushed for no such studies. And while the Mayor pushes for industrial parks way out in the boonies a recent City of Greensboro study predicts gasoline prices of $8 a gallon by 2020 and $15 a gallon by 2030. Perhaps the mayor will offer to drive us all to work way out there in the boonies?
Of course you already know about the mayor's $10 Million Dollars in PERSONAL debt, the loss of his downtown condo and having lost the $1.3 Million Dollar home his now x-wife and underage daughter live in in Irving Park but are you aware that Mayor Perkins is being investigated for securities and exchange fraud? I don't know what the outcome will be but I personally gave the State of North Carolina a shovel ready case:
On Friday, August 23, 2013 the Greensboro News & Record reported that according to Robbie Perkins’ attorney, Barbara Morgenstern, neither Perkins nor his wife had made a payment on their house since February 2012. That means Greensboro Mayor Robbie Perkins, who was at that time a board member of NewBridge Bancorp was already in default to the tune of $1.3 Million Dollars in loans to NewBridge Bancorp when on October 17, 2012, Robbie Perkins and Newbridge Bank released the following statement to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and Newbridge Bank Stockholders:
"ITEM 5.02. DEPARTURE OF DIRECTORS OR PRINCIPAL OFFICERS; APPOINTMENT OF PRINCIPAL OFFICERS.
(b) On October 16, 2012, Robert V. Perkins gave notice of his resignation from the Boards of Directors of NewBridge Bancorp (the “Company”) and NewBridge Bank (the “Bank”).
Mr. Perkins indicated that his decision to resign is due to increased family and business responsibilities, including his position as Mayor of the City of Greensboro, all of which have caused him to reduce his activities in other areas. Mr. Perkins’ decision to resign was not the result of any disagreement with the Company or its management.
The Boards of Directors of the Company and the Bank express their sincere appreciation for Mr. Perkins’ service to the Company and the Bank."
No mention of owing the bank $1.3 Million or potential losses to the bank's stockholders. His job at NewBridge. Like the statement said, "Mr. Perkins’ decision to resign was not the result of any disagreement with the Company or its management" but it was the result of $1.3 Million Dollars in loans in which Mayor Perkins had defaulted and neither Perkins nor the Board of Directors at NewBridge Bank was reporting the $1.3 Million Dollar loss to stockholders, not then, not later and not ever.
Lies by omission are still lies. Especially when it comes to the banking and securities business. As a matter of fact: those who continue reading will note the State of North Carolina agrees.
Chapter 78A of the North Carolina Securities Act:
"§ 78A-8. Sales and purchases.
It is unlawful for any person, in connection with the offer, sale or purchase of any security, directly or indirectly:
(1) To employ any device, scheme, or artifice to defraud,
(2) To make any untrue statement of a material fact or to omit to state a material fact necessary in order to make the statements made, in the light of the circumstances under which they are made, not misleading or,
(3) To engage in any act, practice, or course of business which operates or would operate as a fraud or deceit upon any person. (1973, c. 1380.)
§ 78A-9. Misleading filings.
It is unlawful for any person to make or cause to be made, in any document filed with the Administrator or in any proceeding under this Chapter, any statement which is, at the time and in the light of the circumstances under which it is made false or misleading in any material respect. (1973, c. 1380.)"
Perkins claimed he didn't have time for the bank. According to Federal filings, the job required roughly 40 hours a YEAR and paid $36,500 per year. That's getting very close to $1,000 an hour. How many people do you know who can't make time for $1,000 per hour for clean, honest work?
Last year, Perkins was quoted in the News & Record as saying that voters who disagreed with him are trolls. Apparently he doesn't care what you think.
Perhaps you've seen Robbie Perkins campaign signs in the street right-of-ways and medians all over the City-- especially in the poorer parts of town. Placing signs of any kind in right-of-ways and medians is against the law in Greensboro and across North Carolina. Think Mayor Perkins doesn't know that? He's been running for election every 2 years for the last 18 years. What Perkins does know is that in most local elections, he with the most yard signs wins. No, his supporters didn't put them there, he paid to have them put there.
According to the News & Record, Mayor Perkins' 2011 campaign costs almost $113,000 for a job that pays $14,500 a year. It took the Mayor almost 2 years to pay off his campaign debts finally getting caught up in the second half of 2012. He recently testified in court that he has just over $2000 in the bank. This is a man who makes a half a million dollars a year as a partner in one of the largest commercial real estate firms in the state.
The Mayor wasn't above a little hanky-panky in the deal to sell the city owned Bessemer Shopping Center to the Skip Alston investor group either. As part of a public information request I got from the city I found the following e-mail from Councilwoman Nancy Vaughan to City Manager, Denise Turner Roth:
"Denise, there was a CEEJ meeting Sunday afternoon to review another option for the Bessemer Center. The Mayor was the only councilmember privy to this information."
Why would Mayor Perkins hide an offer to buy city owned property from the rest of the Greensboro City Council? And why sell the property valued at $1.2 Million for $490,000 and give Skip and company $2 Million in free money to go with it? Perkins and the City claimed to have had the property appraised but when the city sent me the appraisal the first line the appraiser wrote was, "This is not an appraisal."
Are you aware of what a protest petition is? Simply put, a protest petition allows you and your neighbors to fight developers who seek to build projects that you and your neighbors don't want to be built in your neighborhood. TREBIC, the Triad Real Estate and Building Industry Coalition is the lobbying organization that has fought tooth and nail at the state level to end protest petitions state wide. Robbie Perkins is the founder of TREBIC and is very much involved in everything they do. As a matter of fact, the Mayor and other TREBIC members meet for a late lunch every Monday at Anton's on Battleground. Robbie Perkins once said,
“In a city like Greensboro, they are not going to waste their time doing a big, creative infill project that’s going to have to get seven votes on the City Council,”
Reality check: There has never been an instance in Greensboro or in any other city in North Carolina where protest petitions were successfully used to block even one big, creative infill project. But protest petitions have been used to block unimaginative strip malls to be someday filled with online gaming parlors, adult entertainment venues, storefront churches, pawn shops and run of the mill low rent housing projects. And I challenge anyone statewide to send me documentation to the contrary. (RecycleBill@gmail.com) Prove me wrong and I'll publish your findings on this website. I issued this same challenge months ago-- so far, no takers.
Ever heard of RUCO, the Rental Unit Certificate of Occupation program in Greensboro that proactively inspected rental properties and required landlords to obtain a certificate before renting them. It was a great success, got lots of dangerous firetraps repaired and saved hundreds of children from the deadly effects of asbestos, lead paint and black mold. Robbie Perkins and his friends at TREBIC successfully lobbied the State of North Carolina to block Greensboro from using RUCO. Slumlords have again become the norm in Greensboro. Now you know why you can't get your landlord to fix your house or apartment. According to A WFMY 2 report earlier this year, over 1000 people, most of them children, have become sick and went to the hospital in one year because of what would have been RUCO violations were RUCO still in effect.
On Oct 28, 2011, WFMY 2 quoted Perkins, "The whole discussion of the restaurant tax is absurd. "It's a non-event. It's something that was contrived and I think it was done purposefully, to impact this election." Perkins and others proposed a restaurant tax as one of the GPAC financing options in a meeting on September 25, 2012.
Did you know Mayor Perkins has been sued by both of his father-in-laws. Seems he has a problem paying back personal loans. The man's handshake means nothing, get it in writing, notarized and witnessed by a judge.
Back in July Mayor Perkins said, "We can't have fights breaking out among 300, 400 or 500 people breaking out in our downtown. That's not acceptable. We're going to do what we have to do to keep that from occurring,"
WFMY 2 reported: "Police arrested 11 people involved in three to five different fights."
If 500 people we fighting why were only 11 arrested? Are you also aware that the City of Greensboro invited 700 teenagers downtown that July night and only assigned 3 police officers to watch over them? Hundreds of teenagers, 3 police officers-- you do the math. 17 other non police adult volunteers were also said to be in and out throughout the night. In and out-- not there continuously. No matter how many times you divide it up the answer is still trouble. Let's not kid ourselves, we were all teenagers once. And how did the Mayor respond? He punished your children because the city screwed up.
Internal police documents show that the fights took place over a 4 hour period, most of them before 11:00 pm. So why wasn't the curfew set at say 7:00 pm? And why were they fighting? Greensboro and High Point Police had known for a year about an ongoing war between teenage street gangs in Greensboro and High Point but instead of doing something about the problem both departments allowed the situation to come to a head in downtown Greensboro. One of those police departments answers to Perkins.
Do you know what forum shopping is? Forum shopping refers to trying to move your bankruptcy case to another city so the people and companies you owe money to won't find out you're filing bankruptcy. If they don't find out then they can't show up in court and file claims against you to get the money they owe you. Sometimes people get away with forum shopping by hiring an out of town lawyer to handle their bankruptcy case. Greensboro Mayor Robbie Perkins was caught forum shopping not once but twice. He claimed he did it because he knew all the judges. It's customary for judges to decide when court proceedings should be moved to another city. Not only is it customary, it's the law.
A Greensboro News & Record online survey on April 9, 2013 indicated that 72.2% of respondents believed Mayor Robbie Perkins should resign from office. One would think his defeat is sure fire but rest assured, it's not. No one in Greensboro is better positioned to buy an election than Robbie Perkins.
For those of you who, like me, live in the eastern half of the city, Robbie is still pushing plans to build a road across the NC A&T University Farm. He's tenacious if nothing. So why does Robbie want to build a road no one wants? He's a developer. Once the road is built he can sell multimillion dollar corporate campuses on both sides of the road. And of course he'll use tax dollars to make them shovel ready.
For the last year I've been trying to get the city to tell me what the area inside the dotted lines at the intersection of McConnell Rd and Franklin Blvd are supposed to represent but no one from the city will discuss it with me. Google maps label it the Greensboro Sportsplex but we all know the Sportsplex is just off of East Cone Blvd. I mean, seriously, they won't even say it's a mistake. They just say nothing. Robbie knows.
Over the course of the last 2 years, Robbie Perkins has voted to give taxpayer dollars to every developer who has come before City Council. From the News and Record he cites his accomplishments as:
"The city hired a manager, worked out an agreement to move the Hayes Taylor YMCA to East Lee Street, hired a federal lobbyist who helped secure funding for the Honda Jet tarmac."
Most business owners would consider that to be about a week's work. So what is the net result of giving all this money away? According to the Food Research And Action Center, Greensboro is the 3rd hungriest city in America with 23% of our local population in need of more food. So what does Mayor Perkins do about it? He sets about to build a $60 plus Million Dollar taxpayer funded downtown performing arts center. I hope they plan to serve 3 meals a day there. Will we have to sing and dance for our supper?
In 2011, Mayor Perkins ran on a platform that included more time to hear from citizens at city council meetings, more jobs, sustainability and not creating divisive issues. What has he done for the last 2 years? He's worked to silence and intimidate citizens speaking at meetings, created no jobs, pushed unsustainable development and sprawl, and created the most divisive issue Greensboro has faced since the 1979 Klan-Nazi shootings-- the downtown performing arts center, a monument to Greensboro's elites. They even named it after one of Greensboro's elites.
Recently, Yes! Weekly reporter, Eric Ginsburg, reported that Mayor Perkins' current campaign manager, Tanya Wiley, has the ability to make thousands of dollars in political action committee contributions magically disappear without a trace. Birds of a feather perhaps?
And finally, if you're new here and you're still trying to figure me out, I'm the guy who first broke the stories about Mayor Robbie Perkins before the local main stream media finally woke up and published them. Folks in city hall know me as the Greensboro Tyrannicide. I can and will provide documentation of anything I've written to anyone who e-mails me at RecycleBill@gmail.com
