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GREENSBORO — If a two-day retreat is any indication, the next term of the Greensboro City Council might be as contentious as the last.

City Manager Rashad Young came away with a better idea about what things were most important to his nine council members.

But council members were left frustrated as old procedural and interpersonal debates reignited and new issues emerged.

“I thought it was going to be a new change and it was about 'Let’s just forge a much better consensus,’” Councilman Danny Thompson said after the retreat ended Saturday. “I don’t want to sound naïve, but I was really hopeful.”

The retreat — which cost the city about $2,400 — was the first work session for the new City Council, which includes four new members, three of whom have never held public office.

Beginning Friday night at the Center for Creative Leadership, council members and senior city staff met with UNC School of Government professor Carl Stenberg to learn about productive meetings and how to work successfully as a group.

Problems with group dynamics and sometimes unending debates plagued the last City Council. Some of the new members campaigned to run things more smoothly.

Much of Stenberg’s curriculum, however, was set aside by council members who wanted to ditch the “fuzzy-wuzzy issues” in favor of nuts-and-bolts discussions about what they wanted to accomplish during their two-year terms, which began Dec. 1.

The council members had some things in common — they all stressed that economic development, infrastructure upgrades and public safety were their top priorities.

They spent several hours Saturday discussing what those topics meant to them, giving Young some ideas of what should take precedence when he develops next year’s city budget.

But the meeting also opened the door for the City Council to air differences.

“There is an extreme lack of trust between the council members themselves and between the council and the staff,” Councilman Robbie Perkins said. “That goes both ways. I think until we deal with the trust issue as a group, dealing with a lot of this other stuff is not going to get us anywhere.”

The issue of trust — or distrust — was reiterated by other members, including Councilwoman Mary Rakestraw.

Council members rehashed an old discussion about whether members should be able to meet in groups of two or three with city staff — a policy banned by the previous council out of fear that some members were working in secret.

Others saw it as an issue of being able to effectively stay informed.

“It wound up being made that there was some conspiracy, but there wasn’t,” Councilwoman T. Dianne Bellamy-Small said.

Meanwhile, issues with new council members also emerged. Perkins questioned how Mayor Bill Knight planned to appoint people to boards, and Councilman Jim Kee asked whether the group would reconsider the seating chart for council meetings.

In both cases, council members suggested that Knight’s decisions might be overruled.

Those discussions, which came at the end of the retreat, left bad feelings among some members.

“I hope we get back to what Bill Knight said he wanted to do and quit the political jockeying,” Councilman Zack Matheny said after the meeting.

Contact Amanda Lehmert at 373-7075 or amanda.lehmert@news-record.com