Picto Diary - 05 February 2016 - Robert Perkins
Above: Robert Perkins, former Mayor, Greensboro, NC, speaks to La Societe Deux Magots (LSDM), Wasatch Bagel, Park City, UT. 05 February 2016
Hat tip: PGA
Note: Note taker is fallible. Mistakes are his. Robert Perkins is welcome to make clarifications/corrections to these notes.
Background
Raised Richmond, VA.
Duke, BA; Duke, MBA
Ran for NIKE track team.... mile to 10K meters. Seven US teams.
Met a lot of people running track. Facebook connected with many of them today.
I tried, unsuccessfully, to recruit Alberto Salazar to Duke.
Track introduced me to the world.... traveled to Poland, Russia, Germany and others.
From Duke, moved to Greensboro, NC where I worked in Commercial Real Estate for the father of my ex wife.
I continued to run on the side. I was once hired as a "rabbit" for Billy Rogers. I received good pay for these extra curricular runs.
Greensboro, NC
280K population.... 60 minutes west of Raleigh... 90 miles north of Charlotte.
90 minutes to a Panthers game.
Early 80's was a great run for Greensboro. Textiles, Tobacco, and furniture all at their apex. Haines and Burlington were Greensboro headquartered.
Basketball
It was the era of Dean Smith, head coach at UNC.... Dean held MJ to under 20 points a game.
My son was a good high school basketball player. He was accepted at Davidson and Duke... but, he wanted to play for Coach K. Johnny Dawkins, then assistant to Coach K, took my son under his wing... gave him advice on how to improve his game. During my son's second year at Duke, he was invited to try out for the team as a walk-on. He made the team, but, didn't play a lot in two years as a walk on. My son's real job on the team was to guard JJ Reddick in practice.
But, there is an interesting story regarding my son. Circa 2004 Duke lost a game to Virginia Tech, away, they should have won. They should have won. Coach K was livid. He listed a starting line up for the next game, at home, that benched all the starters. My son was listed as a starter. It was a critical part of the season, and it was a real opportunity for my son to start.
Ross, aware of how important it was to win the next game, approached Coach K before the game and said, "Coach, are you sure you don't want to start Sheldon Williams? This is a big game for us. Coach K nodded his head and thanked Ross. Williams started and Duke won the game. In his autobiography, coach praised Ross and his selfless attitude.
Ross acquired the nickname, Rudy. He was the "Rudy" of Duke basketball. Ross holds the Duke record for career three point field goal percentage. One for one. 100%.
Greensboro Local Government
Greensboro prides itself on citizen involvement.
One can get involved and quickly ascend to leadership positions in Greensboro. There is a good leadership program. I tried and failed to get in... but, after a vacancy, was invited, belatedly to join. There are ten or so day long classes. It takes a year to get through it.
I did four or five terms on the city council and was mayor for one 2 year term. You don't get paid much to be mayor: $15K per annum... yet, its really a full time job. 50 hours a week. The mayor has no more power than a city councilman, but, he does get to set the agenda and use the bully pulpit.
We are a diverse city. 42% white and 42% black.
Israel
I traveled to Israel, and along with many other mayors from around the world, was given an intimate tour of Israel's homeland security apparatus. I was with mayors from Warsaw, Poland, Accra, Ghana, Christchurch, NZ, and Frankfurt, Germany.
Israel deals with a sense of urgency in matters like security. I talked to one minister in the national government. He said, "it would be a disaster if Israel got a nuke. We're not going to let them have one."
There are 4500 start-up's annually in Israel
Greensboro Now
After 2007, Greensboro was in disarray. Neither textiles nor tobacco made a full come-back. Down town was ageing... the city wasn't feeling good.
As mayor at that time, I asked myself and others, "what can we do?"
We decided on a new performing arts center to replace a deteriorating facility.
We raised $35 MM in private money and matched that with $30 MM in public money. We centered the facility near down town. With funding secured and plans in place the project is ready to break ground within the next couple of months. It has energized the down town area... people are feeling good about Greensboro after some difficult years.
Greensboro budget is $470 million. Greensboro has a AAA bond rating.
People who have replaced me, in my opinion are overly worried about social correctness. There is only one way to energize a city: jobs.
The new Greensboro economy is healthcare, VF Corp (Timberline, Northface...) and Honda Jet. Honda is the first non aircraft manufacturing company to try to build a plane. The Honda Jet is a two pilot and four passenger plan. Honda will pump $2 billion into Greensboro over a fifteen year period to produce the Honda Jet.
There are seven colleges with 50K students in Greensboro. NC A and T, UNC Greensboro and some private and community colleges. Elon University, in Greensboro, moves from strength to strength. I'm on Elon's board of visitors.
I was beat out in a second term for mayor because I outran my headlights. I wanted to do too much. I'm glad we got the performing arts center going, though. That will be transformational for the town.
Tobacco is a shadow of its former self. Acquisitions and consolidations have meant the departure of most of the management level people. That has had a harmful effect on upper income real estate sales.
Thank-you
LSDM thanks Robert Perkins for his informative presentation.
La Societe Deux Magots (LSDM) is a non-partisan ROMEO (retired old men eating out) group which meets daily, at 7:00 AM at Wasatch Bagel in Park City, UT. LSDM members are the rightful intellectual heirs of a group of authors (Hemingway, Sartre, Camus, deBouvoir) who met daily at Cafe Deux Magots, in Paris, France in the 1930's.)
Addendum:
Thanks, Steve. Just spent three days with friends at Steamboat's Storm Ranch, and got rid of all my bad skiing habits on their slopes after my dual knee replacement...so I'm back in the groove..
All best,
Uruguay,
Des Moines, IA