As the Rhino puts it when writing up the Kernersville Planning Board’s rebuke of Guilford County Schools’ plan for an airport -area high school near Triad Business Park. Planning Board Vice Chairman Phyllis Mendel was brandishing the whip:
The idea was dopey because Kernersville, Guilford County and the State of North Carolina all invested money in the business park, which is anchored by a FedEx Ground Package System Inc. package-sorting facility, and expect a return on that investment in the form of property taxes and jobs. The proposed high school would be untaxable and wouldn’t hire many Kernersville residents, except perhaps in low-paying, menial jobs.
The idea was dopey for other reasons, which Mendel and Kernersville Community Development Director Jeff Hatling delighted in making clear.
Mendel not only attacked the rezoning request for land-use reasons, but seized the high moral ground and attacked it as a failure based on what the school board is supposed to consider most – the safety of Guilford County Schools students.
“This was such an awful petition,” she said. “I cannot imagine putting a school where there are school buses, where there are students who are just learning to drive, and having them compete with industrial traffic and a railroad.”
Easy pickings, though, considering the fact that GCS didn’t bother sending its ‘A’ team to make the pitch, which would include school board chairman Alan Duncan, who — as we all know —- has “had his hands full this week trying to keep Johnny Reid Edwards out of jail.”
As you also know, we’re still waiting on verdict. Eugene and Market streets near the courthouse is still clogged with news trucks.
