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Thursday, February 7, 2013
The Rhinoceros Times Greensboro
Duke Energy Revving Up Chainsaws By Alex Jakubsen Staff Writer
Duke Energy District Manager Davis Montgomery said Monday, Feb 4, that his company plans to resume tree cutting operations on Monday, Feb. 18, although only on high voltage transmission lines. Montgomery addressed the Tree Ordinance Review Committee of the Greensboro City Council at its first meeting on Monday in the council chambers at city hall to talk about moving forward with line clearing and developing a new tree ordinance. “The distinction that we always try to draw is, again, that this is the transmission system,” Montgomery said. He said that Duke Energy never agreed to stop work on transmission lines, which, unlike distribution lines in neighborhoods, are regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. One of the transmission lines that Duke Energy wants to start working on runs through Lindley Park. Montgomery said the transmission line work is not related to the attempt Duke Energy made to start cutting trees on Collier Drive in Lindley Park two weeks ago. Montgomery said that he planned to meet with Lindley Park residents on Thursday, Feb. 7 to talk about the transmission line work. Councilmember Nancy Vaughan, chair of the Tree Ordinance Review Committee, asked Montgomery to clarify the relationship between Duke Energy and Asplundh. Montgomery said, “Asplundh is our sole contractor for tree work at this point in time.” He added, “Through this situation in Greensboro we have met with their leadership,” and he said they would be expected to abide by whatever Duke agrees to. Vaughan also asked if Asplundh really has an arborist in every crew. “Asplundh does not,” Montgomery said. He said that if a customer raises concerns to an Asplundh crew, they have been instructed to stop work. The crew foreman would then meet with the concerned
customer. “If the customer still has concern then the next level is our arborist,” Montgomery said. Greensboro Urban Forester Mike Cusimano made his first appearance at a City Council meeting, City Council committee meeting or City Council small group meeting since the dispute over Duke Energy’s tree cutting practices began in December. Cusimano presented a matrix comparing tree protection ordinances of other cities in North Carolina. “In every case the pruning standards are the ANSI [American National Standards
Institute] pruning guidelines,” Cusimano said, although the Raleigh ordinance has additional restrictions setting how far from a power line branches can be pruned. However, Cusimano said that, “Out of all the city’s that we canvassed, Raleigh is the only city that is actively enforcing its ordinance on power companies.” He said other cities have informal agreements with the power company. Councilmember Yvonne Johnson asked if there had been any disagreements between Raleigh and the power company. Montgomery said that since Raleigh’s arrangement was with Progress Energy,
until it recently merged with Duke Energy, he didn’t know. Cusimano said in his discussions with Raleigh that they said they had a “great relationship” with Progress Energy. Like Greensboro, Raleigh has a franchise agreement that requires the power utility to abide by city ordinances. “They do have the authority to issue a stop-work order, which they have done a number of times,” Cusimano said. But he said they had been able to resolve the dispute themselves. The Raleigh tree ordinance only (Continued on page 10)
State Of Our Schools: Better by paul C. clark Staff Writer
Guilford County School Superintendent Mo Green held his annual State of Our Schools address at the Carolina Theatre in Greensboro on Thursday, Jan. 31, and it was a presentation with a reason to exist. Since Green released his 2012 four-year strategic plan for Guilford County Schools at the Koury Auditorium at Guilford Technical Community College (GTCC) in Jamestown in January 2009, he has held three increasingly elaborate State of our Schools events. Green’s annual State of Our Schools speech has been part pep rally, part update on the successes and failures of the school system under the strategic plan, part marketing event and part chance to lobby the Guilford County Board of Commissioners and members of the Guilford County state legislative delegation for funding. The 2009 event in Jamestown was important because of the release of the strategic plan – the first for Guilford County Schools, and one that set relatively ambitious goals for improving Guilford County public schools, particularly ones that had been mired in mediocrity or outright failure for years.
The first three State of Our Schools events were best treated as spectacle and reviewed the same way you would review a movie. Green reported already-known improvements in the school system, sometimes acknowledged already known failures and left the stage periodically so that students could dance, sing, recite poetry and the like. The State of Our Schools events did nothing to improve schools in Guilford County, but were funded by donations from corporations and foundations, as Guilford County Board of Education Chairman Alan Duncan reminded the audience Thursday, and at every such event. Although, at first, the events seemed a tad grandiose for Guilford County, if companies and foundations wanted to pay the tab, and if the events improved the morale of Guilford County teachers, no harm done. The 2013 State of Our Schools event had more weight, as it was the fourth anniversary – and the end – of Green’s four-year 2012 strategic plan. It gave Green, politicians and the public a chance to measure the success of that plan. The bottom line is that Guilford County schools, despite having significant
problems, are better performing, better managed, and (thanks to Guilford County voters, who approved $457 million in school bonds in 2008, better housed and equipped) than they were when Green took the helm of the school system from former Superintendent Terry Grier in 2008. Surveys released at the school board’s retreat on Saturday, Feb. 2, show that parents and, to a lesser degree, the public at large, are happier with Guilford County Schools than they were four years ago. Guilford County Schools and many other public school systems were so bad in recent decades that there was room to make significant improvement an still leave a school system with a long way to go before it could be called well performing. Green acknowledged that obliquely throughout his speech, saying Guilford County Schools has a long way to go in some areas, and a lot of work to do in others. For example, when Green took over, only 55 percent of fifth and eighth grade school students read at grade level, according to state tests. Now, 68.1 percent are. That’s a 13.1 percent increase in reading proficiency, mostly in poorer performing (Continued on page 10)