More from the Mecklenburg County commissioners' retreat:
In a discussion on the county's funding of outside agencies – sometimes a topic with lots of undercurrents – commissioner Vilma Leake, who spent years on the school board, made clear her displeasure with two school-related nonprofits that get county money:
– Communities in Schools, a dropout prevention service, which gets $815,000 county money this year.
– Partners in Out-of-School Time, which offers services to middle school-age students, and gets $200,000.
That's too much money for two agencies, Leake said. And she questioned why the county is funding services that, in her words, compete with services offered by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
No action was taken – this is just a discussion meeting – but commissioners talked about the need to beef up county analysis of how all outside groups getting county money are performing.
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6 comments:
They get money because somebody, somewhere went to church with a previous County Commissioner, or had a drink with him/her, and he/she said "Here ... let me help you out with a little funding. We'll sneak that through and nobody will notice. If they do, I'll threaten to withhold my vote to give your Scottish Highland Games a few thousand bucks."
That's called politics.
C'mon Mary, this is a pretty transparent hit on former Myers Park principal and current Communities In Schools executive director Bill Anderson, the running target of the smear that he banished low-income, minority kids from the school during his tenure.
You recall that one. The Charlotte Post hyped the claim for months but the TCO ignored it until a Time magazine stringer turned the sketchy claim into a "scandal" story in March 07 ("Is a Top School Forcing Out Low-Performing Students?")
Your paper immediately threw massive headcount on the claim. This, of course, triggered one of CMS' special hair-on-fire "investigations" which turned up absolutely nothing, but at a cost of thousands that could have gone to actual education of real kids.
Now comes Vilma, slapping the same racially-charged hot button while trying to grow jobs for her incompetent cronies in the EdShed. We should not be surprised -- and should not shy away from calling her out.
JAT
All will be forgotten when the commissioners see how Rodney Monroe has run the CMPD 15% over budget.
Nice smackdown, meckdeck. Of course, the concept of Vilma Leake wanting to REDUCE spending should have set alarms off all across town.
This MUST be a misprint. The only thing Velma Leake would like to cut is White People!
HATE TO FIND MY SELF AGREEING WITH VILMA "GET WHITEY" LEAKE, BUT MAYBE WE COULD USE THAT MILLION BUCKS TO FIX THE PAVEMENT.
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