"Many business owners are advocating for 2 hours of free parking downtown. We would love your input. Would you come Downtown more often if the first 2 hours of parking were free?"And yesterday Yes-Weekly Editor Jeffrey Sykes wrote in Watch whose money you pick up:
"What the fuck is up with Greensboro’s political leadership, if there is any? Charlotte, Raleigh and even sleepy ole Winston-Salem, which once lost its major flagship corporate headquarters because F. Ross Johnson found it too ‘bucolic,’ have eclipsed Greensboro in terms of forward progress. You really think the Downtown Greenway and the unimaginative box rising from the brownfields on South Elm Street are “transformative downtown projects” on par with the Wake Forest Innovation Quarter? I’m sorry, let me get up off the floor where I was rolling around laughing at you.
Wait, really, let me gather myself.
This is almost as good as the city council member who secretes his emails to the Rhino Times editor the day before publication in order to manufacture a front-page story. A prime example was last week when Mike Barber’s email to the city manager and fellow members of the Greensboro City Council made it’s way into the pages of the Rhino. Barber was unhappy that certain city staffers have a bad reputation in the development community. “Clear the deck for the developers!” was Barber’s rallying cry, as if developers in Greensboro don’t have carte blanche on a daily basis. I emailed Barber asking if he’d share his email with me, but I have yet to have a response from him in five days"
And in his post, Say Yes. Jeff Martin writes:
"Let’s assume the city manager is dealing with this particular malefactor, but what of the reputation he has single-handedly established for Greensboro? And what is our Xanax-gobbling mayor prepared to do about it? Barber’s email is ample evidence of his lack of confidence in her ability. It looks like there are cracks developing in the country club cabal. At this rate and knowing what’s coming, it’s a good bet the mayor won’t complete her term before going to rehab."
So I decided to drive downtown and snap a photograph of one of six parking spaces directly beside the City of Greensboro Melvin Municipal Building in the parking lot on the corner of Washington and Eugene,next to the County Courthouse that are exclusively reserved free of charge for developers. Every other space in the entire City owned parking lot has a parking meter, You may click on the photograph to enlarge it.
No other group in this city is given free parking downtown. Now tell us again, Councilman Barber, who runs the City of Greensboro? It certainly isn't the Greensboro City Council who have all knowingly allowed themselves to become puppets to a handful of Greensboro's developer elites and are prostituting our city for anything they can get.
