{"id":11624,"date":"2014-12-19T23:50:24","date_gmt":"2014-12-20T04:50:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/?p=11624"},"modified":"2014-12-20T01:07:47","modified_gmt":"2014-12-20T06:07:47","slug":"breakdown-danville-city-council-meeting-12162014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2014\/12\/19\/breakdown-danville-city-council-meeting-12162014\/","title":{"rendered":"BreakDown &#8211; Danville City Council Meeting (12\/16\/2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Danville City Council \u2013 LIVE! (12\/16\/2014)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2014\/12\/16\/danville-city-council-live-12162014\/\" target=\"_blank\">We told you what happened at Tuesday&#8217;s Danville City Council meeting<\/a>. Let&#8217;s do a BreakDown and go in-depth to analyze it.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Big board for the BreakDown!<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The housing survey that was presented at the special work session before the council meeting has a lot of painful truth in it. Nobody wants to buy the abundance of ranch-style houses that were built in the 1960&#8217;s because they&#8217;re old and could use remodeling. The study&#8217;s suggestions said that the city needed to offer incentives for remodeling. That&#8217;s going to be hard to pull off in this type of economy because of the lack of city funding.<\/li>\n<li>It was good to see a lot of private citizens at the housing survey meeting. Most of them were at the business meeting a few weeks ago to speak against the &#8220;tearing down the historic houses&#8221; issue.<\/li>\n<li>The consulting firm presented the study to an assembly of real estate agents on Thursday morning. It&#8217;s not like real estate agents know what sells and what doesn&#8217;t in Danville&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>The Riverwalk Trail attracts as many as 300,000 users per year. Wow.<\/li>\n<li>Stewart Street. I couldn&#8217;t have told you where that was before I researched the issue. That housing proposal looked good and had Planning Commission approval. What could go wrong? Plenty.<\/li>\n<li>There were neighbors who used the &#8220;Change Is Bad&#8221; mantra. Ugh. They did the same thing at the Planning Commission and it failed. It should have failed at the council meeting too, but the developer made some huge mistakes. First mistake? Gus Dyer, Jr. He had an &#8220;I know everything and those opponents are stupid&#8221; attitude and that&#8217;s Strike 1. Keith Walden (the developer) didn&#8217;t say a word and let Dyer do all the slick talking. Strike 2. When council members asked questions, Gus Dyer got a sort-of-an-attitude with them. Strike 3. Gus Dyer&#8217;s demeanor almost got the project denied.<\/li>\n<li>FYI: I questioned Gus Dyer about his $30,000 in back property taxes. He said &#8220;I have a lot of vacant properties and I haven&#8217;t been able to rent them.&#8221; Well, jeez. If he&#8217;s got three other successful housing developments going on, it should be easy to cough up the $30,000 to pay off the back taxes. Or so I would think. Dyer&#8217;s also the chairman on the court-appointed Board of Zoning Appeals. Ain&#8217;t that a kick in the pants?<\/li>\n<li>The legal process for that Stewart St. thing required nine different public hearings and nine different votes. There was no way to combine them, but that didn&#8217;t stop John Gilstrap. When he tried to lump them together, you should have seen City Attorney Clarke Whitfield&#8217;s face. He zoomed in for the kill.<\/li>\n<li>Buddy Rawley was ready to vote on the issue that night and not send it back to the Planning Commission. When Whitfield made it clear that there had to be nine separate votes on the project, it was quite hilarious when Rawley let out a loud &#8220;Oh God&#8221;. Ha!<\/li>\n<li>We&#8217;ll deal with this issue again in about 6 to 8 weeks. I hope Keith Walden learns from what went wrong in this meeting.<\/li>\n<li>New design guidelines were passed for the Old West End area. I wonder how many citizens know what area that consists of?<\/li>\n<li>I honestly never paid attention to the &#8220;In God We Trust&#8221; signage until I was editing some photos.<\/li>\n<li>On to the work session. The Register &amp; Bee reporter didn&#8217;t even stick around for that.<\/li>\n<li>The Craghead Street alley was routine. The idiotic &#8220;Rules For City Council Meetings&#8221; discussion went on yet again. It will be passed at the first January business meeting and then soon forgotten. I chuckled when Sherman Saunders said that if 2\/3 of council members could vote to suspend the rules then there would be no way to have &#8220;order&#8221;. Clarke Whitfield said &#8220;That&#8217;s possible.&#8221; Saunders now knows that he&#8217;d better not get to the point where there will be six people against him. Hee hee. You wanted these &#8220;Rules&#8221;. Now you&#8217;ve got them.<\/li>\n<li><del>The closed session for personnel evaluations and the like probably had something to do with the Utilities department scandals&#8230; and that&#8217;s just an educated guess. Human Resources director Sara Weller was there with a big folder.<\/del> I&#8217;ve been told that I was totally wrong on this so I&#8217;m withdrawing this item.<del><br \/>\n<\/del><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And that&#8217;s the BreakDown. You won&#8217;t get in-depth coverage and commentary like this in the newspaper. You may get a story of Gus Dyer and his back taxes after they read this article. Heh.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/sclogo.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"8644\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2014\/05\/13\/breakdown-danville-school-board-election\/sclogo\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/sclogo.jpg?fit=120%2C120&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"120,120\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"sclogo\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/sclogo.jpg?fit=120%2C120&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-8644\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/sclogo.jpg?resize=120%2C120\" alt=\"sclogo\" width=\"120\" height=\"120\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We told you what happened at Tuesday&#8217;s Danville City Council meeting. Let&#8217;s do a BreakDown and go in-depth to analyze it.<\/p>\n<p> [&#8230;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[101,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breakdown","category-danville","odd"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pwqFk-31u","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10458,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2014\/10\/01\/breakdown-danville-city-council-coal-ash-meeting\/","url_meta":{"origin":11624,"position":0},"title":"BreakDown: Danville City Council Coal Ash Meeting","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"October 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"We've covered tonight's Danville City Council closed session meeting in the previous article. Let's do a BreakDown on it... Let's get a quick Big Board... If this had been a regular \"here's how this Duke Energy settlement thing is going\" type of meeting, it would have been over in less\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;BreakDown&quot;","block_context":{"text":"BreakDown","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/featurescentral\/breakdown\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"sclogo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/sclogo.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11325,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2014\/11\/22\/breakdown-danville-city-council-11182014\/","url_meta":{"origin":11624,"position":1},"title":"BreakDown: Danville City Council (11\/18\/2014)","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"November 22, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"We told you what happened at Tuesday's Danville City Council meeting LIVE!, but let's do a BreakDown on what really happened. BreakDown articles are analysis and opinion. They're served up best on a Big Board! Nobody ever attends and no other media covers the committee on Appointments, but they can\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;BreakDown&quot;","block_context":{"text":"BreakDown","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/featurescentral\/breakdown\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"sclogo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/sclogo.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9368,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2014\/07\/16\/breakdown-danville-city-council-7152014-meeting\/","url_meta":{"origin":11624,"position":2},"title":"BreakDown: Danville City Council (7\/15\/2014 Meeting)","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"July 16, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"We've started analyzing what happened (and other observations about things) at governmental meetings that we do LIVE! coverage on, so let's look at what happened at Tuesday night's Danville City Council meeting. Let's start this BreakDown by bringing on a Big Board... Poor attendance by Danville citizens at the meeting.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;BreakDown&quot;","block_context":{"text":"BreakDown","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/featurescentral\/breakdown\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"sclogo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/sclogo.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10790,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2014\/10\/25\/breakdown-danville-city-council-10212014-meeting\/","url_meta":{"origin":11624,"position":3},"title":"BreakDown: Danville City Council (10\/21\/2014 Meeting)","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"October 25, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"SouthsideCentral was at Tuesday's Danville City Council meeting (but you knew that). Even though everything Confederate flag related has been rendered moot, let's still do a BreakDown on what happened. Let's Break it Down on a Big Board... The 5:30PM closed session was to meet with coal ash attorney Charlie\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;BreakDown&quot;","block_context":{"text":"BreakDown","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/featurescentral\/breakdown\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"sclogo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/sclogo.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":10037,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2014\/08\/24\/breakdown-danvilles-8192014-city-council-meeting\/","url_meta":{"origin":11624,"position":4},"title":"BreakDown: Danville&#8217;s 8\/19\/2014 City Council Meeting","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"August 24, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"We promised a BreakDown on Tuesday night's Danville City council meeting, so let's get that done. Here's the LIVE! coverage of\u00a0 Tuesday's city council meeting so that you can play along at home. Let's bring on the BreakDown Big Board! It was good to see a large crowd in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;BreakDown&quot;","block_context":{"text":"BreakDown","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/featurescentral\/breakdown\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"sclogo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/sclogo.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11438,"url":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/2014\/12\/05\/breakdown-danville-city-council-1222014-meeting\/","url_meta":{"origin":11624,"position":5},"title":"BreakDown: Danville City Council (12\/2\/2014 Meeting)","author":"SouthsideCentral","date":"December 5, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"We told you what happened at Tuesday's Danville City Council meeting and we did it LIVE! Now let's analyze it in more detail. Let's do a BreakDown. BreakDown time. Let's put it on a Big Board. Although the meeting starts at 7:00 PM, I usually get there early. I walk\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;BreakDown&quot;","block_context":{"text":"BreakDown","link":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/category\/featurescentral\/breakdown\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"sclogo","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/sclogo.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11624"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11629,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11624\/revisions\/11629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southsidecentral.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}