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The next police chief
The identities of the two finalists vying to be the next police chief of Greensboro will be known today.

They’ll also be in town this week for an extensive series of interviews with a cross-section of citizens and city staff.

Though none of the sessions will be accessible to the general public, citizens will be able to size up the applicants based on their experience, their accomplishments and their current jobs.

Give credit to the city for making this a more open process.

 Some public entities (including our local universities) still cling to the notion that anything other than absolute secrecy from start to finish jeopardizes the quality of the candidates.

We don’t buy that.

The hiring of a chief is always a critical selection, but even more so now given the apparent division inside and outside of the department. Greensboro needs to get this right.

So far, so good.

Battle lost; war to be won
The city’s small-business incubator has suffered a funding setback in its quest to move to a new location.

The Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship learned last week that it was denied a request for a federal Economic Development Administration matching grant to help renovate the old Carolina Steel Building on South Elm/Eugene Street as its new home.

The center has received a $1.2 million loan from the city to renovate the new headquarters. It also has received $200,000 from the Golden Leaf Foundation.

The federal grant of $1.4 million would have matched those funds. That still means the center will have to raise money to pay off the city loan and to cover the remainder of the construction costs.

But CEO Sam Funchess said last week he was confident other funding sources will be found. The EDA setback is hardly a “death knell,” he said.

That’s encouraging. Success for the Nussbaum Center means success for Greensboro.

Over its 20-year existence, the center has helped numerous start-up businesses gain solid footing and has created more than 1,300 jobs that pay an average annual salary of $49,000.

What else around here creates that many good jobs, year in and year out?

Texts for less
Texting — the old-fashioned kind, with covers and paper pages — just got a little bit cheaper.

More local colleges and universities are offering textbook rentals. Campus bookstores at Elon University, Guilford College, High Point University and UNCG will make some titles available for rental rather than purchases, reports the News & Record’s Jonnelle Davis.

That could save them as much as half the cost of buying the books.

Not all titles will be offered for rental, but the more the merrier.

Anything to take the edge off of recent tuition increases.

A little sunflower power
While Congress dithers over how best to renew noncontroversial tax breaks for biodiesel producers, the state is moving ahead with a unique program that turns sunflowers growing on highway rights-of-way into biodiesel.

The Winston-Salem Journal reports that road crews planted sunflowers along I-74 in Surry County that eventually will be gathered for use in making the alternative fuel.

State researchers say each acre of sunflowers brightening the interstate generates 40 gallons. DOT estimates that since 2006, harvested plants beautifying major highways statewide helped save an estimated 4 million gallons of fossil-based fuel.

Meanwhile, private firms such as Greensboro’s Patriot Biodiesel await congressional action. The tax breaks it needs to stay afloat are sidetracked in an unrelated omnibus unemployment benefits extension package.

The state program, at least, is a vote of confidence that, while biodiesel may be only one of numerous energy options, there’s a definite market for it.