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Discuss Election Result. How will it affect Development in the city


monsoon

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Not too surprised to see Tabor losing (he didn't work hard satisfying his old district, so he didn't have a strong base) or Bonapart (where the heck was his campaign?)

Erdman in 5th place is a little interesting. Not sure what he's done to deserve a tossout.

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The fact that she is still dead last with 55% reporting, makes it pretty certain that she is not going to be in the final four.

The winners will likely be Mumford, Lassiter, Burgess, and Foxx (although Erdman might sneak in there).

McCrory is 57%-43% with more than half the precincts reporting.

Hopefully once and for all, the anti-arena and anti-transit forces will find a new issue.

I have no idea how the bonds and school board stuff is turning out. It appears that incumbents are being voted back in, but the bonds are being voted down. That makes little sense to me. If you don't like the deal setup for the current bond request, then why put the same people back in? Meanwhile, the system will be run by the same terrible people, but they will have no money to apply to the capacity/growth issues.

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Erdman in 5th place is a little interesting. Not sure what he's done to deserve a tossout.

What do you mean by a tossout? Erdman is not an incumbent. For me, I hope he doesn't get in. He is against city projects, favoring a bare-bones city.

Anyway, now, 90% of precincts are reporting and Erdman almost certainly going to finish 5th.

Does Tabor remain on the city council, even when he loses his At Large bid, or did someone else already win that seat during the primary?

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I think Tabor gave up his 6th district seat to run at large. (I did not know Erdman was a new challenger.)

Vilma Leake and George Dunlap were returned to the school board by wide margins. So, the voters aren't yet in a "Throw The Rascals Out" mood.

Overall we're probably looking at a council much like the last, but one that might be less afraid to edge fees up a bit for things people have been complaining about (trash collection, road resurfacing, etc.) Although the big NO vote on the CMS bonds will be a warning flag to them, not to go too far.

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I think the hope is that CMS will be forced to send students to the large numbers of schools they have built that are under capacity. This whole push for yet again more bonds was a big lie. While some schools are overcrowded, we don't need more money to fix it. CMS sitting on top of a lot of unspent bond money and they have built and rennovated schools that are operating under capacity, while allowing enrollment at facilities that are way above capacity.

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It is fine with me to bus suburban kids to the inner city schools where there is capacity against their choice. I'm simply surprised that the suburban voters opted against increasing capacity at the schools nearer to where they live.

Well actually they want to stop busing of Charlotte kids into the North. If you look at the ones who caused the riot at North Meck last week, all but one of the 15 arrested were from Charlotte addresses. The other one was from a Huntersville address where the school is located.

If they don't do something, I predict they will continue to push to build charter schools which are paid for by taxes but are not operated by CMS. The separation is going to happen one way or the other.

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I believe it is already happening.

Mecklenburg county is 64% White, but white enrollment in CMS is down to 37.9%. It is a pretty disturbing thrend and a sign the schools here are failing in the eyes of a lot of people.

For now, I think the schools in the North could more than handle the people living here if they quit overloading them with students from the city.

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North Meck HS is near the Huntersville-Charlotte border. It makes sense for the school to include children from both municipalities. Fights happen everywhere, but clearly the management at north meck can't handle their number of students. I know of other large schools that have policies where if any student heads in the direction of a fight, they are automatically suspended. That sure keeps fights from erupting to a riot.

I guess we'll have to wait and see what solutions the stellar school board will come up with. My guess is that they will continue to miss every possible lesson that could be learned from their problems. What they'll do, though, is go through that map of where people voted 'no', add a few new elementary schools in those areas, and put up the larger bond package for next time.

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The no vote was the result of a confluence of things, and discipline was a big one too. The silent message from the fight at North Meck, is that CMS is full of inner city trouble makers, and they just get shifted around from school to school. You couldn't have asked for worse timing of such an event, and for it to happen in a worse location than North Meck.

I have to wonder if the fight might have been what saved Larry Gavreau's neck. Rhonda made it a tighter race than expected.

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North Meck was designed for 1400 students, and is a pretty old facility. CMS has allowed enrollment to grow past 3000. CMS has not invested any money in it in a long time except to continue to plop moble classrooms on the land there.

In the same school choice zone as North Meck, are Vance and West Mecklenburg.

Vance is at 96% capacity

West Mecklenburg is at 77% capacity

Many of the students that could go to these schools are instead going to N. Mecklenburg.

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No question that they should cap enrollment at schools. However, part of the theory in a choice-based system is that it is driven mostly by the market. If a school has a good reputation, most might choose to go there. That might detract from the value of that school, but it is based on the options of the parents/students. Schools with lesser reputations, get robbed of students, which decreases their budgets, but also provides them an opportunity to turn around the school by dealing with smaller numbers.

The capacity of North Meck increases with mobile units, so it isn't accurate to imply that it is more than 100% over capacity. No doubt that many choose to go to North Meck because of its management and reputation, and would rather be taught in a trailer (which are often better quality than actual classrooms), than to go to a mismanaged school.

To be clear, I agree with your underlying point, that overcapacity schools should be capped to provide better distribution of students and use of existing capacity. However, there is much more complexity. Starving the whole system of capital funds does not solve any management or social problems. It simply creates a situation where there is not enough capacity, and parents with means either flee the county or pay for private schooling.

It does, however, save money. I believe that is the motive behind the bond vote results, and not any altruistic attempts to improve the system.

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The problem with throwing down additional classrooms at a school is that you overload the common facilities such as bathrooms, cafeterias, and infrastructure that wasn't designed to handle that many students. I would invite you to go to North Meck when school lets out to see the traffic mess there. There are only two 2 lane country roads that go by the school.

I voted against the bonds simply because they are wasting a lot of tax money. It does not make sense to continue to build more schools where there are empty schools all over the county. We had a 10% increase in the county tax rate this year and much of that went to fund CMS.

This problem was caused by the school Choice plan which was really a way for the school system to circumvent the Court order (which CMS spent millions of tax dollars fighting against) which prevents assignment by race. I think now that we are going to end up with innercity schools and suburban schools that are highly racially polarized. They had a chance to do this correctly and failed unfortunately.

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