Interesting start. 

I said hello to City Attorney Blair Carr and asked her if she thought it would be any problem for me to blog the Council meeting.  She said there should be no problem as long as there is room at the three person press desk. "But if the media needs the seats and hook-ups you'd have to move.", she said as my hackles sat straight up.

Why?  "Because they are reserved for the media"  The media? As defined by who? "The City."

I mean, are there certain credentials I need to obtain?  "No."  So what defines 'the media'?  "We do."

Two of the seats were taken up by the Rhino's John Hammer and Alan Bulluck and the N&R's Williams had the third.  Since Alan didn't require a telephone line, John graciously asked him to sit behind the press desk so I could have access to the modem hook-up.  So I'm in.. for now.  If another 'real' media person requires one of these seat, there might be fisticuffs. 

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I just wiped out my play-by-play entries about tonight's Council session because I went back and read them and found my take to be quite boring and disjointed.  The guys to either side of me are very good at covering any big stories that might happen here so anything I might have say is inadequate by my standards.  So I'm not going to do this like I envisioned.

I find that attempting to write about events as they happen is an ineffective way to add to blog.  I can't concentrate on what is being said, nor can I concentrate on what I am trying to say.  Political stream of consciousness live-blogging will take some practice.   It is much better, I think, to take it all in... take notes... reflect on what transpired... and then write about what I think I can add to the story.

Anyway... I would have voted to adopt the water-for-billboards (N&R) resolution.  I think that if a county property owner wants to play in the City, they should have to abide by the city's rules.  An easy decision for me.  The measure failed on a 4 to 5 vote, so the powerful teaming up of TREBIC and the billboard pushers to oppose the measure was an effective strategy.  (See what I mean about disjointed?  Most people have no idea what I just said)

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In councilmembers comments toward the end of the meeting, Tom Phillips is raising the concern that the city has no way to know if a property is a rental propertry or not.  His thinking goes that there is no way for the city to issue a rental occupancy certficate if the city can't determine what needs to be inspected under the RUCO ordinance.

My observation.  There is no way the city will ever know about all of the rental properties because sometimes people just decide to rent out their houses and move to the beach.  Why would we even want to try to keep up - it just seems like such a waste of stretched city resources.  Why don't we just rescind RUCO as being unenforcable from a practical standpoint and concentrate on the really substandard rental housing and leave everyone else alone.

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I just went outside during the Council's recess with Mayor Pro Tem Johnson.  She said she has directed that her weblog's comments are to be enabled in order to better facilitate conversations.

I then asked her if she was going to run for Mayor this year.  She has always said that she will only run if Mayor Keith Holliday decides to not run for a third term.  She said, "I can't get Keith to give me an answer, but my feeling is that he is going to run again."

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I had an interesting conversation with Council members Sandy Carmany and Tom Phillips after the meeting adjourned.

Tom will be starting his weblog by week's end and has been working with a prominent local blogger to get it launched, but he had other things to offer as well. 

I suppose I knew on some level that every correspondence generated by or sent to an elected official that concerns the public's business becomes the property of the public.  Of course anything that Tom or others might write on a weblog is very public and would easily satisfy the law.  The problem comes with any e-mail that someone might send to him 'in the background'.  There will be no such thing as 'off the record' with an elected official's blog.  So every email that someone might send to Tom via blog link will go into his City Council inbox.

I wondered if that was why councilwoman Yvonne Johnson's blog administrator kept insisting that her blog was a 'personal' entity.   Tom said that was now a moot point because she made a post about City Council business today.  So from here on out... all correspondence sent to or from her blog is public information.

Sandy has been reading this blog since I first started in '03 and sees the value of the medium  She says she would like to attend the proposed teach-in but really doesn't see how she would find the time to actually keep a weblog going.

She says she can see how having one would be helpful during the times when the council is considering very contentious and divisive issues, but that it might be a bit tedious for the everyday agenda of sewer line extentions.  Good point, you'd have to be a real good writer to make much of what comes before the council into an interesting read.

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With all of the current interest about blogging and the public square, I'm going to try something new.  I'm headed down to tonight's City Council meeting to live-blog from there. It ought to be interesting even though most of tonight's agenda (PDF file) is pretty staid and boring.

I called the N&R's city guvment reporter Matt Williams to ask about internet access at the press table and he informs me that there is WiFi available in the chamber.  However, he says the connection's password is a closely guarded secret and he has never asked to be privvy to it.  I'll at least ask the powers-that-be to let me access the fast connection but I don't hold out much hope for it - this visit.

If things go as I envision, you can get that old simulcast effect by watching the meeting on public access Channel 13 and hitting refresh on your browser from time to time.  I expect bugs in my plans, and many typos, so bear wih me.

So I'm goin' in folks... the tenth councilman... armed with only my weblog software and Road Runner dial-up access.  Be there, or be square.  Comments are enabled and expected.

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Not to steal any of Lex Alexander's  thunder, but I have posted his report and recommendations online.  The memo is what Lex submitted to his bosses about how the N&R might address blogs and other online enhancements in the future.  Pretty cool stuff....

"...Many of us in this industry over the years have been fond of likening newspapers to a public trust. To truly become one, though, we have to start by trusting the public ... and giving the public reason to trust us. Here's how we do that...."

Public Square Memo here or download it here.

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How does this make sense?  Hang with me....

Here in the Aycock Neighborhood we a have an excellent landlord who owns many of the old homes on Chestnut Street.  He has almost single-handedly turned that street around one house at a time.  All of his properties discussed here are zoned single family (RS-7) even though they were split up into duplexes or triplexes many years ago which 'grandfathers' them in a way that they can continue under their current useage unless they are destroyed or converted back to single family dwellings.  If (when) that happens in the future, the zoning would 'revert' to single family (RS-7). (Zoning designations defined here)

Recently this landlord purchased a flop-house triplex that shares property lines with three of his other single family zoned, but grandfathered, duplex/triplex rental properties to really solidify that part of Chestnut Street.  Problem is, the old house was converted to a triplex many years ago, but it only has one gas meter for the whole place.  The owner wants to split each existing apartment off so that each tenant is responsible for their own utilities, which makes all the sense in the world... seems simple enough, right?  Hang on.

It is against the zoning laws to add gas meters to an RS-7 zoned property even if it has been used as a multi-family dwelling for decades, which also makes sense.  That way, people can't just chop up RS-7 properties and convert them to residential multifamily (RM) use.  So, to make himself legal for his plans the owner went to the city to see about getting his new property zoned RM18... seems simple enough, right?  Hang on.

Under the zoning rules, the house, that has been a triplex for decades, has too few total square feet of lot size to be zoned RM18 for three apartments. Under the current law, such rezoning is not an option.  So... why not just rezone the property RM18 with a special exception alowing for the less-than-legal square footage... seems simple enough, right?  Hang on.

Here's the City's Planning and Zoning Department's solution to the conundrum of how to legally add two measly gas meters to the owner's RS-7 zoned property that has been a triplex since World War II.....

They recommend a re-zoning of all four of the owner's properties to RM18.  That's right... all of them.  Why?  In this way, all of the square footage of all four of the properties would be considered as single zoning entity, thereby providing the one meter-challenged property with enough square footage to be able to legally install two new gas meters.

We, here in Aycock, have worked for years to get these old houses reverted back to single family useage when possible.  That goal, which is one of the tenants of the Aycock Neighborhood Association's by-laws, motivated previous neighborhood leaders to work successfully with the City during the last zoning re-designation so as to help restore the original character of our housing stock for future generations.  It is for that very reason that most of Chestnut Street is currently zoned RS-7 and not RM-18.  It just made sense.

The 'hood is up in arms over this re-zoning case, and rightfully so.  The whole thing is just stupid. 

This case is a prime example of bureaucratic overkill.  Just to add two freakin' gas meters to a dwelling that deserves to have them, the City is recommending that the Zoning Board approve this crazy scheme.  If successful, such a zoning change would alter the basic character of one of Greensboro's historic residential streets for generations to come.  Why not just recommend granting the owner a special exception to RM-18 (or lower) zoning and get on with life?  Probably because it makes too much sense.

The first skirmish of this looming battle will occur tomorrow during a meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission (agenda here).   Then on to the Zoning Commission next Monday (agenda here).  I'll keep you posted.

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OK.  It's real late, but someone needs to take up The Shu's job since he is otherwise indisposed..

Go read Michael's Corner.  He's pretty damn good right out of the chute.  His comments are enabled (naturally) in case you get the urge... and I think you will.

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I just updated my blogroll and it has a net gain of "0"... who's outtahere?   If you don't miss the deletion it was the right decision on my part.  In my personal and very biased opinion, my blogroll is a very important filter in this day of the come-one-come-all aggregator sites.

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