The City Council will begin an effort to move the horse back in front of the cart as far as the policy on the extension of water and sewer service goes at the work session on Tuesday, March 28.
In November 2023, the cart was definitely in front of the horse in regards to extending water and sewer service to industrial sites in the Town of Pleasant Garden.
Former City Manager Tai Jaiyeoba had engineered an agreement with Pleasant Garden to offer Greensboro water and sewer service to industrial sites that would presumably house industries that would provide materials to the nearby Toyota battery plant in Randolph County at the Greensboro Randolph Megasite.
The Pleasant Garden Town Council was scheduled to approve the agreement on Nov. 2 and the Greensboro City Council on Nov. 21.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the approval of those agreements, some Greensboro city councilmembers found out about the proposed agreements when reporters called for comments. Needless to say, some Greensboro city councilmembers were not pleased with discovering from the media that there was a proposed agreement that the Pleasant Garden Town Council was set to approve before the Greensboro City Council had even been told about it.
The agreement, supported by Jaiyeoba, violated a longstanding Greensboro City Council policy on the extension of water and sewer service.
The Nov. 2 special meeting of the Pleasant Garden Town Council was cancelled and the agreement was removed from the agenda of the Nov. 21 Greensboro City Council meeting.
Mayor Nancy Vaughan had some particularly harsh words about the way the proposed agreement had been handled.
At the March 28 work session, the City Council is scheduled to discuss establishing a new policy on the extension of water and sewer service to areas outside the Greensboro city limits to replace the current policy established in 2012.
The proposed new policy includes a section on “interlocal gov’t agreements” or extending water and sewer service to other incorporated areas.
The new policy would require “City Council authorization prior to beginning formal drafting process.”
In other words, the new policy would prevent the City Council from being blindsided by an agreement that had already been drafted and was being considered by another governmental body before the City Council was informed about its existence.
This is going to be interesting.
I’m looking forward to all the shell game tricks the City Council is going to use to delay or make difficult this action and will probably include a vague but weak attempt to get us to to do away with our incorporated status.
Not sure what the problem is the former manager who was hired by the current council ( who resigned after getting caught having an affair with the person whom brought from Charlotte with him) was the self-proclaimed CEO of Greensboro. What’s the issue
Guess we shall see.
Even after Jai is gone, we get another example of his arrogance.
Any Civil Engineers on the City Council? Oh, I forgot, everything is political.
What’s the old soap opera? . . . .”As the World Turns”, and in this case, it’s as the city council does not turn.
Vote all of them out!!!
Hate to say it, however it may be time.
What is the capacity usage of the current water and wastewater plants in GBO?
What Rubes the council are.
Does not surprise me. I believe this just tip of the iceberg.
They took away the only service (leaf pick up) that the people that pay the bulk of the taxes wanted and replaced it with a less efficient procedure and did it all without any input from those that received the service. THIS MUST BE CHANGED.