Mayor Meeker has given us a downtown Convention Center, a downtown hotel and a new up-scale downtown supermarket – all funded, subsidized or paid for by taxpayers.

Now he’s giving us a ritzy, white-tablecloth fine cuisine downtown restaurant – at a cost to taxpayers of $1,000,000. This time he’s even made other restaurant owners downtown angry, who say taxpayers – thanks to Mayor Meeker – are subsidizing their competitors. (By the way, Mayor Meeker also voted against even considering using a dollar of Raleigh taxpayers’ money to help build schools.)

The School Board

The School Board just announced it’s going to need $5 billion for education.

Ashley Hawkins is a senior at Southeast Raleigh High School. She has a 3.67 grade point average, she’s on the track team, the Student Council, her teachers say she’s an outstanding young woman and she is just two courses from graduation.

So, what did the school Board do to prove its dedication to education (while it’s asking for that $5 billion)?

It booted Ms. Hawkins out of school. It seems her mother moved to Pennsylvania and Ashley stayed here with an uncle so she could graduate in May.

When the News and Observer asked the School Board about this, its spokesman replied with true bureaucrateze “…policy requires us to act.”

How about that.

Ms. Hawkins would still be out of school and wondering if she was going to graduate except for one thing.

The News and Observer printed her story on the front page of the newspaper.

Then the School Board managed to find an exemption to its policy in three days.