The Greensboro City Council’s decision to sell the Renaissance Shopping Center on Phillips Avenue last week angered members and supporters of a cooperative grocery initiative that hope to move into the strip in northeast Greensboro.

The budget includes an investment in side-loading refuse trucks that will further automate the sanitation department and gradually eliminate jobs, but sets aside a recommendation to require citizens to provide a doctor’s note to qualify for backyard trash pickup.

Though noise complaints come in from all over the city, the discussion about Greensboro’s noise ordinance — which is back on the agenda for the city council’s June 18 meeting — always seems to return to two downtown titans: Greene Street night club and developer Roy Carroll.

Avolunteer board appointed to hear appeals to property tax valuations in Forsyth County reversed position last week when members said they are no longer interested in scheduling a meeting in the community to hear directly from residents in neighborhoods affected by plunging home values.

The strength of the demonstrators’ roar in the packed hall could make any college football team proud: “Forward together! Not one step back!” thundered off the General Assembly’s walls in Raleigh on Monday.

Witherspoon pulled out a copy of the budget — named “Plan C” — the commission was about to approve. He jabbed a finger at the numbers — a $5.9 million reduction in services to pay for a 2.5-cent tax decrease, a transfer of $1.4 million from Dell recovery funds to offset cuts to public schools and reductions to economic development projects and reserves.

Buried in the fine print of Greensboro’s proposed 2013-14 fiscal year budget are 13.9 full-time equivalent jobs that would be eliminated to help balance the city’s budget, 12 of which are currently filled, spokes person Donnie Turlington said.

Three organizations active around Greensboro’s proposed tree ordinance convinced the city council to postpone its scheduled May 21 vote to approve the new ordinance, arguing that while it is a major improvement, the ordinance should do more to protect trees from electric utility line maintenance.

Greensboro City Council held its first of three budget work sessions last week, and with the help of boxed lunches from Jimmy John’s, council made it through numerous spreadsheets, proposals, cuts and increases. The proposed budget, which will be voted on at council’s June 18 meeting, includes $4.

INSERT: WANNA GO? The Forsyth County Board of Equalization and Review meets on Thursday at 3 p.m. in the Board of Equalization and Review Room on the first floor of the Forsyth County Government Center, located at 201 N. Chestnut St. in Winston-Salem..

Winston-Salem City Council decided in a 5-2 vote on Monday to authorize the sale of Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum to Wake Forest University, with the majority brushing aside a substitute motion to put the deal on hold and direct the city manager to explore other cost-saving measures through contracting out the management of the facility.

The void of a mid-sized performance space in Greensboro is at the forefront of plenty of minds in local music and performing-arts scenes, but Carolina Theatre President Keith Holliday may have a solution. With some renovation, a large, somewhat forgotten room on the third floor of the Carolina Theatre could fill that niche, he said.

Councilman James Taylor Jr., who represents the Southeast Ward, wants Winston-Salem City Council to pass a resolution in support of state legislation that would allow undocumented students to receive in-state tuition at North Carolina universities and community colleges.

Members of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee union and supporters from across the street picketed outside Reynolds American’s corporate headquarters in downtown Winston-Salem last week in an effort to pressure the tobacco giant into signing an agreement to guarantee collective bargaining rights for farmworkers.

Finishing college is usually something people reflect on fondly, but for four student leaders at Bennett College, the experience has been marred with criminal charges.

Only three people spoke to the Forsyth County Board of Equalization and Review on Monday during a special meeting set aside for public comment, but their pointed questions about how revaluations were conducted in a band of predominantly black neighborhoods where residents saw deep markdowns in values put the tax office on the defensive.

The proposed sale of the two city facilities to separate universities yokes together two transactions that tap into an undercurrent of racial feeling, while satisfying and antagonizing a complicated mix of constituencies — on one hand offloading the...

Greensboro moved a step closer to approving a new tree ordinance last week as a city council subcommittee meeting unanimously passed the stronger ordinance. Council will hold a public hearing and a formal vote on the changes — a compromise between residents’ demands, city desires and Duke Energy’s interests — at its regular May 21 meeting.

The board of equalization and review elected Richard N. Davis, the only African-American member, as its chair, and David Shaw as its vice chair. All five members, including Marybeth Abdow and William V. White, are carryovers from previous year with the exception of Harvey Pardue, who is a former Forsyth County Tax Assessor.

It’s not difficult to find a cyclist in Greensboro who’s been hit by a car — just find someone who relies on their bike for transportation. Despite the city’s efforts to make the city more bicycle friendly, many cyclists know that they are risking serious bodily injury by biking and call for a societal shift in Greensboro.