The video shown below is one of outgoing Republican Mayor Pat McCrory's weirdest Charlotte City Council meetings ever. That particular video ("Helicopter Man"), has received more than 820,000 views.
Hopefully Pat McCrory will be voted back into Public Office as North Carolina Governor during the 2012 elections. He has the right stuff to straighten out this troubled state so riddled with Public Corruption.
Charlotte constituents had better be prepared for higher taxes. Newly elected Mayor Anthony Foxx said he wouldn't raise them however many people don't believe him.
After all this is the same guy who voted for 9% tax hike just a couple of years ago while serving on the Charlotte City Council.
Leopards don't change their spots overnight. In fact I've never seen one whose spots changed at all.
For some reason many Democrats think the only way to create more revenue is by raising Property Taxes or Sales taxes.
Increasing Property Taxes for LEGITIMATE reasons such as ensuring ALL of Charlotte's Constituents are treated equally and fairly is ok, however that has never been the case in this Southeastern city.
Higher Property Taxes seem only to be directed at Charlotte's Middle Class and Low Income Constituents. The Wealthier residents haven't seen a Property Tax increase in 6 six years! This includes many Wealthy African-Americans residents.
In addition many of those Wealthier citizens are allowed NOT to pay their taxes while escaping any type of retribution.
Not only are Charlotte's Wealthiest citizens given the privilege of "Legal Tax Evasion" but their communities continue receiving Excellent City and County Services.
In essence these people are living like kings and Queens at the expense of Charlotte's Middle Class/ Low Income Constituents! Can you believe it?
On the other hand when Charlotte's Middle Class and Low Income Constituents don't pay taxes in a timely fashion, Charlotte City Council members punish them by providing their communities with inferior City/ County Services or slapping liens on their properties.
If that isn't a clear example of Public Corruption I'll eat my hat!
If you think I'm lying or exaggerating, as I've challenged local readers of this blog to do before, just take a stroll through Charlotte's forgotten Corridors (Eastside, Southwest, Northwest, West) to see for yourself.
Than stroll on over to South Charlotte (not Southwest, South), Uptown and North Charlotte (UNCC community).
Notice anything different?
Foxx slid into office via Straight Ticket Voting by Low Income citizens who don't read issues or know what they are voting for.
Let's see how those same citizens feel when instead of showing them his appreciation, Foxx throws them under the bus.
From this point all we can do is pray, move or wait until the next election in 2011.
Pat McCrory is gone. Lord help us!
Note:
For the record Pat McCrory was always opposed to increasing taxes. He was smart enough to find other innovative ways of bringing in revenue.
Let's pray Anthony Foxx wises up and does the same.
Outgoing Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory looks back on 14 years of memories
A teal seat from the old coliseum. Red boxing gloves signed by George Foreman. Helmets from the Panthers and NASCAR. Photos with presidents and preachers and the pilot of the "Miracle on the Hudson." Even a new pair of shoes left forgotten for two years.
All were among the stuff packed into cardboard boxes or tossed into rollout trash bins Friday as Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory prepared to leave his 15th floor office in city hall.
"I'm a very sentimental guy," he said. "Cleaning out 14 years of memories is difficult."
When he turns over the gavel to Democrat Anthony Foxx on Monday, McCrory will leave office as Charlotte's longest-serving mayor. He presided over a period of unprecedented growth until upheavals in the economy and banking cracked the pillars of prosperity.
During his tenure, Charlotte built North Carolina's first light-rail system. It replaced four decaying public housing projects with attractive mixed-income developments. It saw Ballantyne grow from a planner's dream to a community almost the size of Concord.
The Panthers played their first game uptown. The Hornets left and Bobcats arrived. The WNBA came and went.
"History will look back on Mayor Pat's 14 years in office in a very positive way," says historian David Goldfield of a UNC Charlotte. "In some areas he was a catalyst, such as light rail and the arena, and in other areas he didn't stand in the way."
McCrory championed light rail, overcoming skeptics in his own party and a 2007 attempt to repeal the tax that funds it. When voters rejected a new arena in 2001, he persuaded the NBA to promise an expansion franchise and used that promise to push for what is now Time Warner Cable Arena. He fought for the NASCAR Hall of Fame, which opens next spring.
"He was more or less the continuation of a long-standing tradition where there was a very close connection between the desires and interests of uptown, center city, corporate leaders and City Hall," says local historian Dan Morrill.
Energy and Idealism
Extroverted and energetic, McCrory found bigger stages as well.
He took advisory roles with a Washington think tank and the Department of Homeland Security. He developed a reputation as a transportation expert and was active in national mayors groups. Last year he ran unsuccessfully for governor against Democrat Bev Perdue.
In the 1980s, McCrory, a Guilford County native who moved to Charlotte in 1978, couldn't even get appointed to a city board despite several tries. When finally named to one, it disbanded before his first meeting. But in 1989 he won a City Council seat on his first try.
Republican Lynn Wheeler, elected to council the same year, says they both faced a learning curve. "Pat did his homework," she says, "and developed an engaging style."
"I came in with an incredible amount of energy and idealism and passion," McCrory says. Now he considers himself wiser and a little more patient.
He likes to say he angered people on the left and the right, and he did. His most vocal critics were more conservative Republicans. Some voters never forgave him for building an arena after they rejected one in a referendum. When he led a 2007 caravan to Raleigh to lobby for more criminal justice money, critics called it self-promoting and heavy-handed.
Asked what he'll miss the most, McCrory says "the arena of decision-making and the interaction with teams that can make a difference."
"He's been such a hands-on mayor and abruptly he's going to become a private citizen," says Mayor Pro Tem Susan Burgess, a Democrat. "It's going to be a real adjustment for him to be out of the public glare."
Likely to stay in Politics
A Mayor who never won less than 56 percent of the vote leaves office with his personal popularity intact, but scars from last year's governor's race. He lost not only the race but the city he'd carried so many times.
Leaving public office for the first time in 20 years, McCrory says he's "always evaluating" his political options. He doesn't sound likely to leave politics.
In September he spoke at a rally in Raleigh organized by opponents of President Barack Obama's health care proposals and continues to weigh in on statewide issues. He's remained visible with the state GOP.
"He's making every indication that he continues to run for governor in 2012," says Burgess.
For now, McCrory plans to devote time to three business ventures he joined this year and pursue plans for a regional organization he hopes to start with outgoing Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin.
On Friday, he scribbled his name on a final proclamation: a tribute to the founders of the Ballantyne Breakfast Club.
"I'm not sad about leaving," he said. "I'm sad about the memories."
Anthony Foxx wins race for Charlotte Mayor
Voters ended more than two decades of Republican leadership in Charlotte Tuesday by electing Democrat Anthony Foxx the city's second African-American mayor and the youngest in memory.
Foxx won Charlotte's closest mayoral race in years, taking just over 51 percent of the vote over Republican John Lassiter in unofficial totals.
At a victory celebration, Foxx shared a long hug with a jubilant Harvey Gantt, the last Democratic and first African-American mayor.
"It's been 22 years since we've had this moment," a hoarse Foxx told a cheering crowd at the Westin hotel. "The work of rebuilding our community starts very soon. ... We will work together - Republican, Democrat and unaffiliated, white and black and Hispanic. ... Let's get going.
"We're going to pull Charlotte together."
He went on to thank Lassiter for a "race well run."
An hour earlier, Lassiter had been conceding on live TV when his cell phone rang.
"Oh, it's Anthony," he said, telling Foxx, "You can count on me in any way I can serve this city. Good luck to you."
Foxx carried a wide swath of precincts from east to west Charlotte, while Lassiter's support was largely confined to a wedge in the south and southeast.
Though turnout was heaviest in the southeast, Foxx benefited from heavy straight-ticket voting that pushed Democrats to an 8-3 City Council majority.
Foxx got his strongest support in predominantly African-American precincts. He carried two by more than 1,000 votes. At East Stonewall AME Zion Church off Beatties Ford Road, he won 1,307 votes to Lassiter's 3.
Foxx planned to continue the momentum that began a year ago when Barack Obama carried Charlotte by more than 25 percentage points. He benefited from a strong base. At 35 percent, the city's proportion of black voters is more than a third higher than when Gantt was first elected in 1983.
After 14 years of Republican Mayor Pat McCrory, Foxx campaigned on a platform of change and promised to help Charlotte to "reach its true potential." At 38, he'll be a year younger than McCrory was when he was first elected at 39.
Throughout the campaign, Foxx stressed his own story: growing up in west Charlotte with a single mother and grandparents, becoming the first black student body president at Davidson College and going on to study law at New York University.
"My life example proved what this city must do," he said Tuesday night, "which is the simple thing of believing in yourself."
Lassiter, a lawyer and businessman, campaigned on experience. He brought a long resume of community service - as a neighborhood leader, planning commissioner, school board member and a City Council member since 2003. He said all that offered a stark contrast to Foxx, a council member for four years.
But change trumped experience for many voters.
Foxx supporter Lachelle Smith took her 5-year-old son Julius Hall to the polls at Hawthorne High School. He pointed to Foxx's picture on a campaign flyer. "Why's he running for mayor?" he asked.
"He wants to make changes in the city to help us," Smith replied.
Lassiter had appeared to break away from Foxx in recent days.
Last week Raleigh's Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling found the race tied. Monday it released a poll that gave Lassiter a 4-point lead and showed white undecided voters moving toward him.
The mayoral campaign featured more than 40 forums and debates and was widely applauded for its civility. That began to fray last week when Foxx and the state Democratic Party made an issue of Lassiter's support from developers.
In a televised debate, Lassiter accused Foxx of spreading "false information" about his record and later lashed out at a state party mailing that he said injected negative politics into the campaign. Foxx distanced himself from the mailing.
Throughout the campaign, the two tried to underscore contrasts over streetcar funding and taxes. But many people struggled to find differences between candidates whose City Council voting records were often similar.
"I don't see a big difference between the two, frankly," said Republican Ben Kinney, a magazine publisher who voted for Lassiter in east Charlotte. "I have a strong feeling Democrats are basically going to control most of City Council."
Foxx alluded to the strengthened grip Democrats will hold on council.
"There's a great amount of opportunity there," he said. "But there's a great amount of pressure."
Foxx: No property tax hike for streetcar
Democratic mayoral candidate Anthony Foxx said Thursday he wouldn't raise property taxes to pay for a streetcar, despite his vote to move ahead with the project and suggestions from city staff that a hike may be needed.
"We aren't proposing or considering any increase in property taxes, and now would be a terrible time to think of that," he told the Observer. "I will not raise property taxes for the streetcar."
The streetcar and property tax issues came up when Foxx and Republican John Lassiter spoke to a luncheon of the Charlotte Regional Mortgage Lenders Association at the Myers Park Country Club.
Lassiter has also opposed property tax increases.
The rivals, both at-large city council members, were on opposite sides last month when council Democrats overrode Mayor Pat McCrory's veto of $4.5 million to start design work on the line.
The project, which would run from Johnson C. Smith University through uptown to Eastland Mall, would cost over $450 million. It's unclear where the money would come from.
"I could not promise to build something I didn't know how to pay for," Lassiter told the mortgage group.
Foxx defended his vote. He said the line would bring economic development to neighborhoods that need it. One study showed new development could generate $112million in new property taxes over 20 years.
"The future of our city is dependent on making every part ... a great place to live in," he told the group.
On Monday the city staff outlined ways to pay for the line to the council's Transportation Committee, which Foxx chairs. One option called for creating a special taxing district along the line and enacting a 4-cent tax hike for every $100 of taxable value. Another called for a citywide tax increase of 2 cents.
The city's current tax rate is 45.86cents.
"By supporting the streetcar, I'm not committing myself to a property tax increase," Foxx said later.
During the meeting, he defended his vote for a 2006 city budget that raised property taxes 9 percent - the first increase in at least a decade. Lassiter voted against the budget.
Foxx said the tax hike helped pay for the 70 new officers the police chief requested, more than in the no-new-tax budget supported by Lassiter and McCrory. It also brought in money for new roads and neighborhood improvements.
He suggested that without the tax hike, Charlotte's crime rate might not have gone down. Police say it's down 20percent from a year ago.
"You can't out a price on (a) family's sense of safety, put a value on the life saved because we had the additional police officers," he told the group.
Lassiter has criticized "unnecessary and unmanaged government spending" that he says had nothing to do with police, roads or neighborhoods.
Thursday he alluded to this year's General Assembly actions that raised the state sales tax by a penny and enacted surcharges of 2 percent or 3percent on some taxpayers. He told the mortgage lenders that he'll keep taxes down.
"We're in a high-taxed city in a high-taxed state," he said. "We've got to right the ship."
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Sources: McClatchy Newspapers, Charlotte Observer, Charmeck.org, Google Maps
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