Category: Quick hits

A gang-awareness seminar will be held tonight for the public at Eaton-Johnson Middle School from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. You can look at the flyer on the City of Henderson web page here. Does Henderson have a gang problem, as our own Miles Gloriosus has suggested? Who owns the problem? Is it the city, county, state, schools, police or all of the above? Voice your opinions, concerns, or experiences here, on our Thursday open line.

The vote to oust former City Manager Eric Williams: is it representative government in action or the tyranny of the majority of city council members? The line is open. Let the games begin.

Now that the city is in the market for a new manager, what should we be looking for? Is a city manager an innovator, always looking for ways to improve the running of the city, or should he or she be a custodian, simply executing the will of the council? How much autonomy should the manager have? As always, the floor is open to debate.

Rumors are flying about changes in management at City Hall with the coming of the new City Council members. Do you think there should be some changes? If there are changes, will it make a difference, or will it still be “business as usual” in Henderson city government? Tonight the Vance County Board of Commissioners meets at 6:oo pm at the county courthouse. The Henderson City Council meets at 7:30 pm at City Hall. The city rescheduled its meeting, causing …

Congratulations to the winners of last night’s local elections: Middleburg mayor: Ray Bullock Middleburg council members: Ruth Nance, William Abbott Jr. and Annie Fudge Kittrell mayor: James Wynne Kittrell town commissioners: Eugene Pulley, Tex Finch and Millard Grissom With that, the floor is yours.

Just a gentle reminder that today is Election Day in Middleburg and Kittrell. If you live in either of those towns, you know that your vote truly could make the difference today, so be sure to use it. End of public service announcement. Let the floor be open.

In addition to the meeting of the county commissioners tonight at 6 at the old courthouse, the Vance County Board of Education will meet at 7 tonight at the school system’s Administrative Services Center on Graham Avenue. The agenda includes recognition of schools for success on the state ABCs testing and the presentation of plans to improve Western Vance High School’s results. Meanwhile, the floor is open.

We’re lacking in sources for Middleburg and Kittrell, but we’re looking forward to the elections in those towns Tuesday. Anyone have a read on those elections? Anyone care? In any case, the floor is open.

One of the downsides of the rise of activist volunteer organizations in the past couple of years is that you get a very different mix of people from meeting to meeting, with the result that the same problems and same facts are discussed over and over. Wednesday’s VOICE meeting was apparently the latest example. According to the daily newspaper and an e-mail message from City Manager Eric Williams, the VOICE chairman, the group had a lively discussion about gangs, schools, …

The City Council’s Public Utilities Committee is scheduled to meet today at noon, and it could be the final time that John Wester presides over one of those meetings before his time on the council comes to an end next month. There are a lot of things going on at the water plant, so it could be interesting to see what Wester can get done during the time he has left. With that, we open the floor to comments.

We’re reeling from the unexpected blow we suffered from our favorite columnist — et tu, Mile? — and from working our way through the 49-page Weed and Seed application, so we’ll just throw things open for discussion while we whimper in a corner.

The state Employment Security Commission released September’s jobless numbers Friday, and, as has been typical this year, the report combined good and bad news for Vance County. On the plus side, the jobless rate declined half a point to 8.8 percent from August’s 9.3 percent, and fewer than 1,700 people in Vance County are now officially counted as unemployed (1,664 to be exact). The downside is that Vance has the third-highest rate in the state and is at risk of …

We’re a little slow sometimes at HomeinHenderson, both in posting stories and in comprehending what they mean, but we finally took a moment to think about this whole question of the Clean Up Henderson Committee and conflicts of interest. First, we don’t think it’s a coincidence that the council members who are active on the cleanup committee were re-elected; the elections were a clear endorsement of Clean Up Henderson. More important, however, is that the cleanup committee has served as …

The city’s Public Utilities Committee meets this morning at 10 to discuss, among other things, the problems at Westover Terrace. Unless, of course, all the committee members resign to avoid any conflicts of interest. For the rest of us, the floor is open.

Unless our calendar is wrong, the Clean Up Henderson Committee meets this morning at 8 at the Operations Center to hold a privately funded thank-you breakfast for the Public Works Department for the workers’ participation in Clean Up Henderson Week. It should be an interesting meeting after City Council member Mike Rainey attacked the committee Monday night. Among other complaints, Rainey asked whether it was a conflict of interest for council members to sit on the cleanup committee, which began …

We’re confused about the message sent by the Henderson City Council on Monday night. The council instituted a hiring freeze — a step that maybe would have been appropriate a year earlier, when the Finance and Intergovernmental Relations Committee first got word about the depleted fund balance — but also wrote a blank check for the Embassy Streetscape Project. For what it’s worth, we agree that the city should bite the bullet and stick with the brick; we just don’t …

Well, we’ve obviously failed to spark any conversation the past few days, so we won’t try today. The floor is open. Talk among yourselves.

We’re looking forward to hearing the results of Tuesday night’s invitation-only meeting about the proposed Boys & Girls Club and, just as much, to learning about the scheduling of an informational session for the public at large. We’re in no position at this point to say what level of public support, if any, should be offered to what is, at its root, an anti-crime, “seeding” effort for the community. But we’re encouraged whenever a group with a good idea builds …

The floor is open for discussion, although the conversation seems to be at a lull. Even the newspaper shows little going on. In the meantime, here’s the Henderson City Council agenda for Monday night, the first meeting since the elections determined that three of the eight council members will be out of office come December. It’s worth noting that the City Council-ordered changes to the agenda schedule worked in their first test: We received the agenda by e-mail Wednesday.