If the N&R is going to host weblogs by their own writers, Ed Cone has some great suggestions for making them appealing and profitable.

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Former Guilford County manager Roger Cotten has gone to work for D. H. Griffin, a locally owned but national-in-scope demolition company.

Guilford County is currently under a contract that Cotton negotiated in 2002 with Griffin to demolish all of the buildings that used to house Guilford 's DSS Department.  This demolition is part of the "land swap agreement" with DGR, LLC for the new baseball stadium.

One of the least favorable (to the taxpayers) stipulations of that contract was that we had to pay over $387,000 to Griffin to have our own buildings demolished to make the deal work.  This demolition amount was what caused the Old Burlington Headquarters to have "negative value" during that phase of the baseball debates.  That $387,000 should have been paid by the purchasing party, not the selling party (us) in my humble opinion.

If Cotton is in a negotiating role in his new position with D.H. Griffin, hopefully he will serve them better in similar situations than he did for us in that instance.

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Mayor ProTem Yvonne Johnson speaks for herself and other City Council members about Project Homestead via a letter to the editor in today's N&R.

"...Had we known about the credit cards and other questionable expenses that we now know of, we would have stopped all monies and investigated Project Homestead....  The fact is, I did not know and I do not believe other council members knew either."

"...I want you to know where I stand on this issue because I am accountable to you."

I know Councilwoman Johnson pretty well, she is a woman of great integrity so I believe her when she says that she and others on the Council "did not know".  From what I hear, many citizens of Greensboro are convinced that the Council should have known, however.

The challenge that our City Council is faced with is convincing their constituancy that they are committed to being pro-active in their leadership role.  Being reactive has not served them very well.

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I'm going to have to start a new blogroll called "Aycock Bloggers".  There's me and frograbbitmonkey here on Cypress Street, and now RecordHospital by Michael Petipas over on Park Avenue.  Michael is an attorney who has a passion for Punk Rock and other alternative music and hosts a late night/early morning radio show about same on Guilford College's WGFS (90.9 FM).

I know Michael to be a well informed Connecticut import who holds many opinions on local and national issues in addition to his expertise on matters Punk.  Hopefully he can be persuaded to not only keep us up on the alternative music scene but also offer some thoughts on other topics as time goes on.

One of his posts relates a message from the owner of local independent record store Gate City Noise (cool site).  It's a long message but the gist of it says that unless some more folks start supporting him he will be forced to close down... soon.

I'm not a vinyl kinda guy, and alternative music never grabbed my attention nor my dollars, but if you are into either or both go by 401 Tate Street near UNCG and help the guy out.

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