Beware Skip Alston’s Designs: Fascism In Guilford County

The News and Record reports that the Chairman of the Guilford Board of County Commissioners, Skip Alston, wants to address homelessness and “affordable housing”.

How does he plan to do this?

To achieve affordable housing, he wants to extend “regional” water and sewer service to support building new affordable housing “to meet demand”. He said he wants to speak with developers to “find ways to support new residential projects”. He wants to “see what would it take for them to invest into affordable housing so that we might need to help them as a county absorb some of that cost”.

For the homeless, he wants to be “providing more retreatment centers (whatever that is) and transitional housing and job opportunities for them to address their behavioral health problems and to become productive citizens again”.

It all might sound very nice.

But don’t be surprised at whatever Skip tries to do. He will tax you to smithereens; ruin small towns and rural areas; crawl in bed with developers; build bigger government; and squander taxpayer money. He will gleefully bring Greensboro’s crime and murder rate to the rest of the county.

He has a socialist supermajority on the Board of County Commissioners. At least a couple of seats are on the ballot this November. Don’t vote for the socialists.

And remember that fascism (a form of socialism) consists of government and private industry becoming intermingled financially, working toward the government’s goals.

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4 thoughts on “Beware Skip Alston’s Designs: Fascism In Guilford County

  1. I think the N&R best describes Alston:

    Teflon Chairman: Why Alston’s the most powerful politico in the county
    Feb 4, 2010 Updated Jan 25, 2015

    Despite all the recent huffing and puffing about county commissioners Chairman Melvin “Skip” Alston overstepping his bounds as the broker for a proposed new hotel, don’t expect much to change.

    This, even though three members of the Greensboro City Council, including Mayor Bill Knight, confirmed that Alston personally met with them on the hotel’s behalf and even threatened them (as they heard it) with recall elections if they said no.

    And even though competing hotelier Mike Weaver recounted similar intimations from Alston that there would be a protest at the Feb. 1 opening of the International Civil Rights Center & Museum if he and partner Dennis Quaintance didn’t stop questioning the hotel’s feasibility.

    The protest was called off, Alston later said, at his behest. Alston says he was merely communicating what he was hearing on the street, not his own intentions.

    He also later apologized to Knight and council members Danny Thompson and Nancy Vaughan. They all eagerly accepted. But Alston sounded less remorseful for what he did than for getting caught. “If I had it to do all over again,” he said, “I would probably work more behind the scenes rather than being up front.”

    How Alston weathers one storm after another, without sustaining so much as one snag or wrinkle on his impeccable suits, is a wonder to watch.

    Alston said Feb. 1 on WUNC radio’s “State of Things” that he is no stranger to controversy because he is a man of the people who will fight for the rights of the powerless.

    “I’m still controversial,” he said of his 18 years as a county commissioner. “Nothing has changed.

    “My district was very unfairly represented in Guilford County. So when I got there, I tried to correct those wrongs. And some in the white community — the powers that be — didn’t like that. But I wasn’t there to do a popularity contest. I had a job to do. I was going to be a voice to the African American community regardless of what anybody said about me. So that’s what I did.”

    The record seems to say otherwise.

    Alston’s company once managed a local, city-subsidized apartment complex for low-income, mostly black residents called St. James Homes II. Residents complained about crime, squatters and the general disrepair of the units. Some also said Alston had been unresponsive to their concerns. In 2005, a 21-year-old tenant was injured when one of 11 defective stairways collapsed underfoot.

    Alston was state NAACP president at the time.

    Ultimately St. James II was demolished, but not after city taxpayers had invested more than $1 million in the complex.

    In 2002, a city inspections sweep turned up 45 building code violations at an apartment complex owned by Alston.

    In 2006, properties owned by Alston ranked No. 3 in the city with 15 housing code violations, a tally Alston disputed.

    Flash forward to the present, where Weaver and Quaintance last week filed a request in Superior Court to “invalidate” local governments’ approval of the hotel for federal stimulus funding. They cite a conflict of interest on Alston’s part as a major reason.

    But even in the event of a do-over on the stimulus projects, odds are this too will eventually pass for Alston. That’s because he has consolidated so much power in so many different corners and created so many strong alliances that he is nearly untouchable.

    Alston, a Democrat, is serving his third term as chairman of the county commissioners.

    He has created an unlikely but very effective alliance with fellow Commissioner Steve Arnold, a Republican.

    He is a leader of perhaps the most formidable political force in the local black community, the Simkins PAC, and as such wields significant influence in city and county elections.

    He is an astute businessman and a master politician. Few can wheel and deal as smoothly and effectively.

    For instance, it was his idea that the South Elm/Lee Street hotel ownership group merge efforts with a downtown hotel ownership group (Good Skip). Of course, it was also his idea to seek to profit from the initiative — and to lobby other elected officials on its behalf (Bad Skip).

    Alston tends to frame such criticism as a personal attack but it’s more a plea to put his considerable gifts to better use. But why do better when you don’t have to?

    He represents a district that almost automatically returns him to office every four years. And most of his fellow commissioners hardly batted an eye about the obvious conflict of interest posed by his stake in the hotel deal.

    This is why he seems so resilient in the face of one prickly issue after another.

    And why the Teflon Chairman likely will be around for a very good while.

    1. Fred, thanks for posting this. I had forgotten about some of these issues.

      It once again points out that the state’s ethical rules for local elected officials are far too lax. He should not have been able to get away with all of this sleaze, but obviously, he has… and then some.

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