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City Council candidates have taken the gloves off to deal with opponents and critics.

A week ago, at-large candidate Danny Thompson took a jab at sitting Councilman Robbie Perkins over the Urban Loop controversies at the League of Women Voters Forum.

The neighborhoods in the area of the loop didn’t know it would be so noisy. Thompson said he would be embarrassed to have been a councilman for 14 years and failed to communicate the issue to the residents.

Perkins said that the loop was well-publicized during its planning and construction and that Thompson’s comment would not be welcome on the City Council.

“We need to debate the issues and not personalities,” Perkins said.

Thompson is hoping to build on his fourth-place showing in the primary to capture one of the three at-large council seats in November.

In District 2, meanwhile, Nettie Coad addressed the question of whether, at 73, she is too old to be a City Council member.

“I heard some Jim Kee supporters say during the primary that I am 'too old,’ ” she wrote on her blog, http://voteforcoad.wordpress.com. “My response — walk a week … no wait, a day in my shoes. And even then, exclude any election-related activities. I guarantee that you will sleep well when your head finally hits the pillow.”

Kee could not be reached for a response on Friday.

And District 1 candidate T. Dianne Bellamy-Small expressed her exasperation over Bench-gate 2009. (If you haven’t heard, the city removed five decorative benches along the new Downtown Greenway after neighbors complained about prostitutes and drug users hanging out there.)

Former District 1 candidate Ben Holder and others pushed for the benches to be removed.

During the News & Record’s editorial board interviews, Bellamy-Small said police have spent 250 hours patrolling the area and haven’t nabbed a single criminal.

“This was a bad decision,” Bellamy-Small said. “It was based on bully politics.”

Reading, writing and ...

Mary Rakestraw, a sitting at-large councilwoman seeking the District 4 seat, said recently that she had never voted for cash incentives. She did vote for incentives as a county commissioner in 2004 to offer Dell $7.1 million in incentives and other government money when the computer manufacturer was choosing between several North Carolina municipalities.

“You’re wrong on that,” she said after Scoop pointed out her voting history. “I never voted to give any kind of cash deals to Dell.”

Later, she called Scoop again.

“I don’t vote for cash incentives,” she said in a voice mail. “I voted for infrastructure.”

The $7.1 million incentive package included $5.6 million in county money and $1.5 million from a water and sewer trust fund. Both were included in the same resolution for the Dell deal.

Joel Landau, Rakestraw’s opponent in District 4, said in a News & Record questionnaire that the city needs to stop spending $100,000 on a lobbyist in Raleigh.

The contract was really worth $40,786.90 in the 2008-09 fiscal year, according to the city attorney’s office.

“I don’t recall offhand,” Landau said about where he got the $100,000 figure, adding that it could have been local media or a city report.

“That is an expense that we can do without,” he said.

Asked and answered

And now, another in our series of questions we have asked the City Council candidates to pose to their opponents. Here are mayoral candidates Yvonne Johnson, the incumbent, and Bill Knight:

Knight to Johnson: What are the reasons for your support of collective bargaining rights (unionization) for state and local employees?

Johnson: “Mediation and conflict resolution have been what I have been doing for a long time. Collective bargaining is no more than a process where management and workers come together and talk about working conditions, benefits, hours, hiring practices, whatever. … I believe sitting together and working out these things is not only good and it benefits workers, but it also benefits the company.”

Johnson to Knight: What is the most difficult, highly public and controversial decision that you have ever had to make, and what was at stake?

Knight: “We had a golf club, a membership golf club. Golf course economics have been in a downturn for some time. Rather than seeing the club fail financially, the membership was faced with having to make a choice. I happened to be president at the time. I presented the membership some choices and led them through numerous full membership meetings down to the point a vote was held and a decision was made … in this case to sell. That was the best solution.”

Compiled by staff writers Amanda Lehmert and Gerald Witt