scuttlebutt

Wachovia to add 150 Winston-Salem jobs

Wachovia plans to add 150 jobs to its Winston-Salem operations over the next two years as part of its merger with Wells Fargo & Co. The bank announced last week that it would retain its 3,400 employees in Winston-Salem and add new positions to the bank’s trust center and specialized service group, Mayor Allen Joines said. After Wells Fargo merged with Wachovia last October, the city put together a task force aimed at retaining jobs at the homegrown bank.

Joines said the group put together a business strategy and presented it to CEO John Stumpf to keep the bank’s trust operations centered here.

“This is great news for Winston-Salem’s economy,” Joines said. The company will begin recruiting for positions this week, spokeswoman Christine Shaw said. — JG

Upcoming candidate forum

Candidates for the Greensboro City Council at-large race, District 2 and District 5 will appear at the Greensboro Historical Museum at 6 p.m. on Sept. 22 at a forum hosted by the Guilford County Unity Effort. All 11 at-large candidates have confirmed that they will attend: Marikay Abuzuaiter, Max Benbassat, Jorge Cornell, Sandra Anderson Groat, DJ Hardy, Julie Lapham, Gary Nixon, Robbie Perkins, Ryan Shell, Danny Thompson and Nancy Vaughan. All four District 2 candidates have likewise promised to attend: Nettie Coad, Gordon Hester, Dan Fischer and Jim Kee. A notable absence is District 5 incumbent Trudy Wade, who first committed to attend and then withdrew. The only candidate for District 5 will be challenger Art Boyett. Asking questions will be NC A&T University sociology professor Robert Davis, YES! Weekly reporter Jordan Green, Carolina Peacemaker reporter Yasmine Regester and News & Record reporter Amanda Lehmert. — JG

NC Court of Appeals denies Smith’s motion

A three-judge panel of the NC Court of Appeals denied Kalvin Michael Smith’s appeal of the denial of his request for a new trial on Monday. Attorney David Pishko filed the appeal after Judge Richard Doughton denied the request for a new trial in January. Duke law professor James Coleman, who heads up the DUke Innocence Project, has worked on Smith’s case for the past five years. Coleman said Pishko filed Smith’s 586-page petition on Sept. 1, and questioned if the three-judge panel could have conceivably read and digested the material in seven business days. Coleman pointed out that Doughton ruled against Smith without offering any explanation for his decision, and adopted the state attorney general’s written decision to explain his denial. Forsyth District Attorney Tom Keith handed over the state’s defense of Smith’s prosecution to the NC Attorney General’s Office for the January plea hearing. Coleman also pointed out that Doughton ruled that “the state’s failure to disclose to Smith that the police had shown Jill Marker photo lineups that included Smith’s photograph and that she did not identify him was not a Brady violation.” The ruling is contrary to an admission by Keith that the information was not disclosed to Smith’s defense and the failure to do so constituted a Brady violation. “I am left speechless that an appellate court would not even formally review the decision,” Coleman stated. Smith’s defense team plans to appeal the decision to a higher court. — KTB

Shuttered nursing homes crimp Greensboro’ growt

The Greensboro Planning Department announced on Monday that the city’s population estimate slightly decreased by 0.26 percent from July 1, 2008 to July 1, 2009, from 258,671 to 257,997. The department attributes the decrease to several factors, including the recent closure of several group homes and a change in methodology to count group homes located within the city limits. Also, the annual count of the city’s homeless population was used this year but not last year. A specious factor included in the city’s press release is that “significantly fewer people were annexed into the city this year versus last year.” Karen Markovics with the planning department elaborated on the most tangible factor: “One very large nursing home closed down. Evergreen is about to close down. Their population is about half what it was. Whether these resident are being absorbed in other facilities in Greensboro, we don’t know that.” — JG !