Winston-Salem City Council Meeting Merry-Go-Round: January 4, 2021, Gunshot Detection, Belview Rec Center, Affordable Parking + Union Station!

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The Winston-Salem City Council started the year off with a rather dull meeting. They met remotely, as they have done since Covid-19 emergency orders were implemented last March. The Council, led by W-S Alliance President and WSNC Mayor Allen Joines, did not allow public comments. For some months now, local activists with the Triad Abolition Project, Housing Justice Now, and Hate Out of Winston have offered a blistering critique of the Council’s priorities (funding the WSPD, not funding affordable housing, inaction in the midst of an eviction tsunami). By consent, without any discussion, the WSNC City Council approved a new Gunshot Detection System.

The Winston-Salem City Council Prioritizes Elite Development Instead Of Affordable Housing

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Everyone knows that Winston has an affordable housing problem. But our city leaders aren’t doing much to address it. A recent study commissioned by the Winston-Salem City Council found that our city needs 16,244 additional units of affordable housing. It will take substantial efforts on the federal, state, and local levels to produce that many affordable housing units. Affordable housing has been largely abandoned at the federal and state levels.

Winston-Salem City Council Meeting Merry-Go-Round: Union Station Restaurant Requirements, A Do-Nothing Gun Violence Resolution, The City Adopts Juneteenth Holiday, And Generously Funds Share Co-op!

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Last night’s meeting of the Winston-Salem City Council was short but packed with important agenda items. The votes cast at last night’s meeting will impact our community positively or negatively for years to come. The decisions the Council makes with our limited resources matter. While the Journal’s Wesley Young covered the City  Council’s adoption of Juneteenth as a paid holiday for all City employees, there were other matters Winston’s newspaper of record didn’t cover. Chief among them was a $300,000 to help make Share Co-op a reality. Regarding the Juneteenth holiday, this is a welcome, but ultimately hollow achievement as long as poverty in Winston is tied to race, and little is done to improve East Winston.

The People’s Business: August 17, 2020

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Today is the first day of class for students attending Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools. The good news is, the kids don’t have to worry about what to wear. But the bad news is that they can’t go to school. For at least the first nine weeks of the school 2020-2021 school year, school has to come to them; they are going to have to learn to love online learning. That’s a huge challenge for students, parents, and teachers.

Winston-Salem City Council Meeting Merry-Go-Round: Front Street Capital And Industry Hill Move Forward, Purple Crow Gets $200,000

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Monday’s meeting of the Winston-Salem City Council was a good example of how our City Council serves Winston’s wealthiest, well-connected few. All of the items on the City Council’s agenda were approved unanimously, without any dissenting votes. Think about that; not a single dissenting vote was cast in a meeting that lasted well over an hour. One could argue that the mayor and councilmembers were simply agreeing on zoning measures and a relatively modest incentive deal with a local manufacturer. But Allen Joines and his compliant councilmembers were rubber-stamping developer’s prerogatives, while largely ignoring the concerns of the working class.

Crystal Towers Residents Want The City To Address The Sixth Street Freeway In Front Of Their Building

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There wasn’t a lot on the Public Safety Committee’s agenda last night. After going through a list of routine items, there was time available for the residents of Crystal Towers to speak. Three residents of Crystal Towers took to the people’s microphone last night and asked the City to address unsafe intersections at and around Crystal Towers. Shockingly, there aren’t adequate safety measures in place at Sixth and Polar,  in front of Crystal Towers. The 200-unit, 100 percent disability building, should have one of the safest intersections in the city at its doorstep.

The People’s Business: Week of September 16, 2019

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Monday

W-S City Council, 7:00 p.m. City Hall, Room 230, 101 N. Main Street. View/Download Agenda

Tuesday 

WSFCS Board of Education, Curriculum Committee, 4:00 p.m. in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools Education Building, Room 223, 4801 Bethania Station Rd. No agenda available

Thursday

Forsyth County Commissioners, 2:00 p.m., Commissioners’ Meeting Room, located on the 5th Floor, Forsyth County Government Center, 201 North Chestnut Street. No agenda available

The People’s Business: Week of September 9, 2019

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Monday

W-S City Council, Finance Committee: 4:30 p.m. in the Committee Room, City Hall, Room 239, 101 N. Main Street. View/Download Agenda

W-S City Council, Public Safety: 6:00 p.m. in the Committee Room, City Hall, Room 239, 101 N. Main Street. View/Download Agenda

Tuesday

W-S City Council, Community Development/Housing/General Gov. Committee, 4:30 p.m. in the Committee Room, City Hall, Room 239, 101 N. Main Street. View/Download Agenda

W-S City Council, Public Works Committee, 6:00 p.m. in the Committee Room, City Hall, Room 239, 101 N. Main Street. View/Download Agenda

WSFCS Board of Education, 6:30 p.m. in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools Education Building, 4801 Bethania Station Rd.

The Winston-Salem City Council’s Dixie Debate Word-For-Word

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Monday night’s Winston-Salem City Council meeting was one for the history books. The resolution to rename the Dixie Classic Fair passed by a 4-2 margin, with one abstention, effectively the resolution passed 5-2. Denise Adams, Dan Besse, Vivian Burke, and Annette Scippio voted yes. John Larson and Jeff MacIntosh voted no. And James Taylor, who was the first politician to suggest that the Dixie Classic Fair’s name should be changed in 2015, abstained.

Breaking Crystal: What We’ve Learned In The Year Since HAWS Announced Plans To Sell Crystal Towers

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It was one year ago to the day that the Housing Authority of Winston-Salem (HAWS) announced that it was putting Crystal Towers up for sale. The 11-story high-rise located at 625 West Sixth Street in downtown Winston-Salem, opened in 1970 and is home to approximately 200 residents.* According to Heather Fearnbach, the woman who wrote the book on Winston’s architectural heritage, Crystal Towers was the city’s first high-rise dwelling erected since the late 1920s. Crystal Towers, (along with its sister high-rise, Sunrise Towers) was designed to serve as housing for the elderly. Today, one hundred percent of Crystal Towers’ residents are elderly and or people with disabilities. These are the last folks that the Housing Authority should be evicting.