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Commissioners had a hard time finding time later this month for some work sessions that they hope to hold for various issues in the county.

In the span of about five minutes this afternoon, a work session for the ongoing incentive plan moved from Tuesday to Thursday and then to Sept. 16 and then 17. Then back to Sept. 16.

Confused? Read on.

"I think that we're promoting job growth that can grow jobs, but I think we ought to do it today," said Commissioner Mike Winstead, ready to vote to approve the plan that would offer county incentives to small business.

"We want to have as much buy-in as possible," Board of Commissioners Chairman Melvin "Skip" Alston said. "Time is not of the essesnce. This is something that we're going to be setting that is going to be our policy, that we're going to have be here with for some time."

Meanwhile, other commissioners were antsy to get out the the grand opening of the Mack Trucks Inc. world headquarters in the Triad.

Which Commissioner Kirk Perkins cast in the light of economic development, the topic of the day.

"What we're headed to is Mack is moving here and relocating hundreds of jobs," he said.

After several other commissioners did some schedule finagaling, they all settled on a date for the work sessions and hearings.

But other commissioners, well, they would just as soon be elsewhere.

"Some of us have other things to do," said Commissioner Carolyn Coleman, who proposed a motion to have all the work sessions on Sept. 16. She also opposed having Thursday's work session for the incentive plan in the first place. Nobody seconded her motion.

Here's the schedule coming up:

The proposed incentive plan: 3 p.m. Sept. 16 in the Old County Courthouse, 301 W. Market St. The meeting is open to the public.

Other incentive discussion:
Commissioners held a closed session Thursday to review economic incentives for an undisclosed business that would bring 228 jobs with an average wage of $44,062 . The business, which will be discussed in a public hearing Sept. 17, is seeking $277,000 from the county that would be paid over three years, according to Commissioner Carolyn Coleman .
A number of real estate executives contacted Thursday said they knew nothing about the company and economic development officials declined to comment.

And the regular ol' commissioners meeting will be at the same bat-time, same bat-station, 5:30 p.m., Sept. 17 in the Old County Courthouse.

Pay no mind to that spate of cool weather outside, because there are two things heating up in county business today: incentives and efficiency.

This guest editorial from Guilford County's former head of economic development, Rob Bencini, may wind up in the dead center of a discussion on a new economic incentive plan that county commissioners will review this afternoon.

There's widespread support among commissioners to pass the plan, though the legality of it has been called into question. A previous draft allows a business to receive tax money for adding property value to its business, but had no requirement for jobs. Supporters call it an incentive for growth. Opponents call it a tax rebate.

And while local economic developers appear to support the idea along with commissioners and others, there have been some voices of dissent from the blogosphere and elsewhere.

Late yesterday the county sent us the most updated draft of the proposed policy, which is more specific on what types of property can and can't receive county money, and sets a minimum $10,000 investment requirement. We still need to read down the rest of the new draft.

Meanwhile, this story caused Commissioner Carolyn Coleman to give us a call this morning.

She said that she met with Mike Perdue from the Greensboro Coliseum and a representative from Siemens last year about efficiency, but felt that a meeting with someone from just one company was suspect.

"Anytime that happens, it seems to me, that you're pushing somebody," she said.

Later, as her efficiency committee kicked off, she said that A&T came into the conversation as a result of a conversation with one of her neighbors, who works with the Center for Energy Research and Technology. As a note, the county never paid any money to A&T for their audit.

Preliminary audits from companies seeking a performance contract don't cost money either, but those companies do take a fee out for their services once the work of installing equipment is done.

Coleman, for her part, said she doesn't see the difference between the two methods, and that she didn't stop the process on finding an outside firm to do the work.

"What is the difference? If A&T does it for no charge and a company was going to make money doing it, I don’t see the big difference there. It’s a matter of going in one direction or another," she said.

"And what is implicating me in something that I don’t know anything about?" she said. "This is over my my head."

We attempted to contact County Manager Brenda Jones Fox on the matter, but she has not returned phone messages.

What: Greensboro City Council meeting

When: 5:30 p.m. Tuesday

Where: Melvin Municipal Office Building, 300 W. Washington St.,
Greensboro

Watch it: Time Warner Channel 13 or www.greensboro-nc.gov/citygovernment/ council

How to speak: Sign up before the meeting. Speakers have up to three minutes for items not on the agenda. The speakers-from-the-floor section is limited to 30 minutes.

On the agenda: City Council members will be asked to add $30,700 to the budget for the Benjamin Library branch construction.... The Greensboro Economic Development Alliance will report on its activities for the last year. ...Council will be asked to designate a recovery zone area, portions of the city where projects can be funded with bonds created by the federal recovery act.

Let's round up a couple reactions from the State of Our Community Luncheon last week.

A hashtag appeared last week on Twitter (yes, it's becoming relevant) for the luncheon hosted by the Greensboro Chamber. It is #SOCL, and several local Twitter users seized upon the hashtag, which makes a search about one topic easy to do on Twitter.

This also means that Twitter is becoming a network of information distribution, not just the unending barrage of text message-like missives that only Gen-Y folks would understand.

While we're on the topic of #SOCL, be sure to check out what editorial had to say, if you want some more about the conversation.

Generally speaking, not a whole lot of news types latch on to a meeting such as a chamber-hosted luncheon. They tend to be pulpits from which politicians can stump freely and on nearly anything without direction and restraint. Yet there seemed to be more subtext to the recent luncheon, perhaps punctuated by the goodwill feelings across the region still lingering from the Wyndham Championship.

But even for we scruffy reporter types at Scoop, there seemed to be some enthusiasm for boosting the county. Then again the meeting was in the doldrums of summer, well after budget season and during a time in which the hype and business of government is traditionally slow.

Nonetheless, this week we're working to see how state dollars are coming to the county.

Friday’s newspaper story will have some reaction from folks in Ohio and Greensboro about the City Council expected hiring of Dayton City Manager Rashad Young to be Greesboro’s new city manager.

Here is a roundup of what other folks have said about Young.

The Dayton Business Journal offers up local leaders who are sad to see Young go – and at least one staunch critic. Read it here.

The Dayton Daily News has this peak into Young’s management style. Apparently he leads a group fitness class. Check it out here.
 

We talked with Kirk Perkins yesterday, who handled the first search for the county attorney and is now working on the second search to find someone for the county's top legal post.

Currently the attorney's office is outscored to a firm charging $275 an hour. And the budget for the attorney's office was increased by $250,000 for administrative and legal needs in the 2009-10 budget.

After Sharron Kurtz resigned under what looked to be pressure from the Board of Commissioners in December, the county had trouble keeping the county attorney's seat filled. And they had a hard time finding qualified applicants for the position earlier this year.

Perhaps those conditions led to the county looking to get an outside firm.

Nonetheless, a new search is on, Perkins said.

"We would like to have some on board in 60 days," he said. An outside firm is handling the search this time, unlike last time, when a group of local attorneys and county staff handled the matter.

"I think that time always gives you a little distance from negative publicity or perceived negative publicity," Perkins said.

He said that the firm is working on gathering applicants and he expects the county attorney search committee to meet and review those in the next couple weeks.

City Council members met in closed session again today to discuss city manager candidates.

The discussion took so long – more than two hours – they actually canceled Tuesday afternoon’s planned council briefing.

After council members came out of closed session, Mayor Yvonne Johnson said that the council continued to negotiate and had not yet reached a conclusion. She would not elaborate about what she meant.

City Council members interviewed five semi-finalists for the job last week. They have not indicated where they are in the hiring process or revealed any information about the candidates for the position.

Councilwomen Goldie Wells and Mary Rakestraw did not attend today's City Council meeting. Last week Rakestraw, who was out of town, attended the interview sessions via telephone.

It was unclear Tuesday whether Rakestraw or Wells listened in on the closed session discussion by telephone.
 

Our latest story from the Guilford County commissioners focused on an incentive plan, backed primarily by Steve Arnold, to offer incentives -- or tax abatements, depending on where your politics lie -- to nearly any business in the county.

In the story, we paraphrased a comment from Commissioner Carolyn Coleman and supported it with her ending quote.

Coleman called us up today and asked why her entire quote wasn't included. Scoop says that her quote was included, but the verbatim discussion was not.

From the story:

Commissioner Carolyn Coleman voted against tabling the policy, citing private conversations Arnold held with individual commissioners.

“I’m wondering why we need a work session to discuss the same thing again,” she said.

Commissioners usually hold several work sessions per year. They often focus on subjects such as the budget or an annual meeting or discus the particulars of a complex project or issue.

Back to Thursday's conversation. After the comment from Coleman, which we quoted, Arnold answered by saying that the Board of Commissioners has "strong personalities" and that he wants to make sure that "there’s adequate opportunity to comment." He also made several other points on the legal and policy aspects of the plan that are under review and mentioned that the public may also wish to participate in the discussion.

Coleman, in response, said,  "And you don’t think that could be done in a regular meeting setting?"

"It could, but if we could just have time to focus on it for a hour or two," Arnold said, "I think we'd make a lot of progress and just be done with it."

You can see it yourself here, about 15 minutes into the meeting.

As for the overall future of the incentive plan, it appears that there will be a work session and then another opportunity to talk about it in September at a regular commissioners meeting.

Earlier this week, Scoop tried to (somewhat scientifically) figure out who might become the next city manager.

There are only so many people who could be in the running, we figure, considering the qualifications it takes to be a city manager of a place as large as Greensboro. And we already knew, based on his resume, where search consultant Colin Baenziger might be fishing for candidates.

We pawed through Web sites from dozens of U.S. cities to track down photographs of top city officials from around the country so that on the occasion that we ran across them in the lobby of the O. Henry Hotel during the council’s interviewing sessions Monday and Tuesday, we might be able to introduce ourselves.

The city’s security staff was way ahead of us. Next time we will have to be better snoops.

But just so this work does not go to waste, here are three random observations made during this research process:

1. Nearly every city in America has a more attractive city hall than the Melvin Municipal Office Building. Not that research was required to figure that out.
2. Tempe, Arizona, City Manager Charlie Meyer has his own blog. Imagine that, Greensboro! A blogging manager. Of course, no one seems to comment on it. Charlie, what are we doing wrong?
3. All but a few city managers reviewed had one physical characteristic in common: They were bald or balding. In regard to this trait, Mitchell Johnson will be very difficult to replace. Say what you will about the man – he has a heck of a head of hair.
    

What – T. Dianne Bellamy-Small wanted to know – was the city going to do about that S.O.B. on MLK?

Her question came toward the end of Tuesday night’s City Council meeting. So the peanut gallery (the reporters, city staff members, etc.) was already having a tough time concentrating on the conversation. This question took a few moments to register.

She repeated herself.

Now the councilwoman has never been one to mince words. But she is not usually into this particular brand of name-calling.

After several moments of blank stares and shrugged shoulders, she cleared up the confusion. She was wondering about a “sexually oriented business” on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

Ahh, the language of government. It's a special kind of silly.