Billy pointed me to -lc who has started a Guilford County based weblog named Little Consequence.  lc is clinically depressed, makes $8 and hour and has no health insurance.  Realizing that he needs psychiatric help, lc has turned to the County's Guilford Center for some assistance... but he says they keep losing his appointments so he hasn't seen his "shrink" for six months.  He is through with it...

"...I won’t be going back. The Guilford County Commissioners can find eight million dollars to build a professional baseball park ..., but they can’t afford to hire one more shrink to help out the two shrinks that can’t see all the psychos in a county of almost a million people..."

lc sounds genuine and some of his posts are personally disturbing to one who has experienced depression.  He provides no contact information and isn't set up to accept comments, but if he provided either I would offer him my phone number (273-2384) so that I could make some calls on his behalf.  Perhaps a certain poet can get it to him.

Note to -lc:  Keep blogging, it will do you and others more good than you may realize.

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 "Why not support something that's proeconomic development?" asked Councilman Robbie Perkins after the City Council voted 6-0 to override the staff and the recommendations of the Comprehensive Plan reports the N&R..  Last night's vote re-zoned 3 1/2 acres so that Pierce homes can build an office building on land that was specifically targeted for high density residential development in the now-irrelevant Comp Plan.

It is now apparent that the City of Greensboro is without a plan to guide our future growth.  More accurately, the City of Greensboro is bereft of any leadership that places any value on the thousands of hours of community-wide input from hundreds of citizens that was required to develop the now-shelved Comp Plan.  Last night the Council said, in effect... "Screw 'em, and the gullible horse they rode in on."

I predict that when there is a call for volunteers to become involved in any type of "citizen initiative" in the future, the community will letl the City know they have better ways to waste their time by saying "screw you too".  Who will be able to fault them?  The City Council has again proven that such initiatives are mere paper-wasting window dressing that only create the appearance of "inclusiveness". 

Greensboro's growth and politics have always been guided by developers.  This fox-running-the-hen-house policy landed Greensboro the number two spot on the urban sprawl index of American cities last year.  By their vote and their continued ignorance of the importance of citizen-led land use planning, our City Council has made it obvious that second place just isn't good enough.

ALL of the recently re-elected City Council members cited the passage of the 2003 Comp Plan as one of their major accomplishments during their successful bids to serve another 2-year term.  During their campaigns next year, one can only speculate as to how they will spin the fact that their votes on the Plan's implementation are diametrically opposed to the Plan's recommendations.  

As Councilman Perkins' statement and the 6-0 vote illustrates, our City Council has decided to continue supporting un-planned development over the quality-of-life recommendations formulated by the very people that helped get them elected.  What a farce.

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Greensboro City Manager Ed Kitchen has requested that many Parks & Rec. Department programs submit their new fee schedule for FY '04/'05.  This request stipulates that all athletics, arts and lake facilities carry a two tiered pricing schedule to reflect the recommendations of a 2003 report (PDF file) released by the City's Budget and Evaluation Department.

Greensboro residents - regular price.    Non-Greensboro residents - regular price plus 50% - 75%. 

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We've been hearing that the City of Greensboro is considering a $75.00 non-resident fee for patrons of the Greensboro Public Library (GPL) system.  This fee is being discussed because Guilford County residents make up 39% of GPL's patrons but County taxpayers only contributed 7% ($522,300) to the library system's total operating expenses last year.

This non-resident user fee sounds like a reasonable "pay-as-you-go" solution until you read this call to action from the City of Summerfield's governmental website....

If implemented, a (Library) user fee will result in: 

·        the loss of more than $600,000 in funding for the GPL

·        the loss of NCLIVE

·        the loss of Summer Reading materials

·        virtually no new books in the coming year 

If you read the whole thing you'll find that the city fathers of Summerfield have some compelling points that have not been reported in the local media that I have seen.

Summerfield urges their citizens to advocate for a higher level of County funding for Greensboro's Public Libraries.  They point out that more money is needed for GPL to better serve the citizens of both Greensboro and Guilford County now, and in the future.

Footnote: I originally posted this last late last night and it contained an error in what action Summerfield was recommending it's citizens to take. "X" came behind me and pointed out the mistake.

I need an editor and/or the resolve to never post anything after 11:00p.

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