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- The shakeup at CATS continues as the CEO of Charlotte's Transit System resigns.

Also, bringing back Brooklyn.

The county gets a peak at new plans for an old Charlotte neighborhood, and City Council talks about making future decisions with an equity lens to make sure what happened to Brooklyn doesn't happen again.

In politics, the Budd-Beasley debate, not exactly "Must-See TV".

And Charlotte's Airport is still one of the 10 busiest in the world, just not as busy as it was before COVID.

Plus no light rail this weekend.

One gun found at CMS School this week is the only gun found at a CMS school this year.

And after a home game that didn't feel much like a home game, the Panthers fire coach, Matt Rhule.

Lots to talk about next on PBS Charlotte.

("Off The Record" theme music) And from our historic PBS Charlotte Studios in Plaza-Midwood, I'm Jeff Sonier and we're "Off The Record" talking about the stories you've been talking about this week.

And if you watch the news, read the news, and listen to the news, well, you'll recognize the names and faces around our virtual table.

Ely Portillo from the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute, Danielle Chemtob from Axios Charlotte, Genna Contino from the Charlotte Observer, and Will Wright from the Charlotte Observer.

You can also join the conversation at home or from your phone, just email your questions and comments to OffTheRecord@wtvi.org.

And who'd have thought at the beginning of this week that if our top story was gonna be about the leader of a controversial organization stepping down, that we wouldn't be talking about Coach Matt Rhule, but we'd be talking about John Lewis, the CEO of Charlotte Area Transit.

We'll talk about the coach later in the show.

But let's talk about CATS right now.

A big surprise I guess in all directions, this announcement by the CEO that he is leaving at the end of November.

- I think it was a surprise, but also not completely shocking because there've been issues with CATS for really this whole year, looking at the problems they had with reliability and then having to cut service.

And in the meantime there's reports coming out about buses that are broken down and haven't been serviced.

And so he was really under quite a bit of pressure from the community, from city council.

I think the question remains whether those challenges will be addressed.

Just because you get rid of the person at the head of an organization doesn't necessarily mean that that organization fixes its problems.

We've seen this happen before with other organizations in Charlotte.

It's fairly common to fire the person at the top or he wasn't fired in this case, excuse me, but, you know, get rid of the person at the top or for them to leave, et cetera.

So I think the question remains to be seen whether this will turn into lasting changes for riders.

- Yeah, and CATS has had all kinds of problems, as Danielle mentioned, and they're also trying to build a really ambitious transit expansion.

The Silver Line, East-West cost billions of dollars, somewhere north of $8 billion.

The Red Line commuter line, the Gold Line, fixing the bus system and expanding that.

So I think that CATS is at an inflection point right now where whoever comes in next is going to have to both rebuild and try to repair some of the damage that's been done to the system, especially the bus system before and during the pandemic, but also find a way to build something new, whatever comes next for CATS expansion.

So it's not just going to be a turnaround job, it's going to also be a real expanding and visionary job.

And that's a tough place to be in.

- Yeah, and if they want to see this expansion of transit, they're gonna have to find that public funding piece, which John Lewis was pushing for, either in the form of a penny sales tax or something like that, like we've talked about on the show, it might be harder to get maybe Northern Mecklenburg Towns on board that have been paying the half cent sales tax since 1997 when they were promised the Red Line and they've yet to see that come to fruition.

- And politically, it raises the question, as you mentioned, timing's not great.

There's a lot going on at CATS right now, a change in leadership and let's remind folks it's not just John Lewis who's leaving, the number two man at CATS also announced he was retiring last week.

So we've got kind of a void at the top of that organization.

That's not necessarily a good thing when so much change is in the works right now.

But on the other side of the ledger, new leadership usually gets a grace period or a honeymoon and going into a period when political support's gonna be needed for increased taxes, and a lot of these projects are controversial in a lot of areas, does new leadership mean maybe a new image, maybe an image of more competency, more working together with the community?

I mean, it does kind of represent both a challenge and also an opportunity to change leadership at this particular point in the game, right?

- Yeah, I've talked to republicans who control the North Carolina General Assembly.

I've talked to Republican strategists who said before this was announced that it would be tough for the North Carolina General Assembly to be convinced to give Mecklenberg a ballot referendum for the sales tax they want unless there were major changes demonstrated.

You've heard a lot of people saying, "Well, why would we give you this money for an expansion under the current leadership that has not been able to fix the existing system."

So that could be a factor in it.

That said, I don't think the new leader of CATS is going to be the person who is out there pushing.

This is a job that is going to be very operational and of course, there's a political aspect to it, but really it has to come down to some kind of accommodation between the city leadership and the state General Assembly.

- Danielle.

- Well, and I think too that it's unclear what the role is of the CEO of the transit system in the day-to-day problems that we're seeing because as we've also discussed on this show, there's a third-party operator of the bus system.

So a lot of the things that have been in the media when it comes to the operator shortages and the bus can't run on time because of it.

And the bus drivers are concerned about safety, The bus drivers are negotiating with this third-party company that kind of runs the organization that employs them, which is a separate company.

I think, of course the person at the top is important, but there's so many different layers to these problems that we need to still keep an eye as to whether they'll be fixed.

There is supposed to be a report coming out to the city council detailing all of the problems with CATS and kind of how they can be faced and I believe that's still expected even in spite of this.

- Yeah, and the fact that the two top leaders have left recently kind of hints at what might be in that report when it comes out.

- I guess also it makes it easier if we're going to be changing that long-term vision plan of the transit system.

We've talked about the fact that there will be change based on what was originally proposed versus what we can afford or what the community will accept.

Change is, I guess, a little bit easier when you've got a change at the top as opposed to people having to backtrack on their earlier dug-in positions.

A new leader arguably could come in and make a change that's maybe more palatable on both sides, both on the political leadership side and in the community as well.

I would think that's the case at least.

Anyway, one last thing on CATS unrelated, but maybe it is related.

No light rail service this weekend.

If you're planning on riding the Blue Line or the Gold Line, make other plans because those trains won't be running.

This isn't necessarily a CATS problem, but it's one more, I guess arguably, it's one more thing that community sees as something not running the way it ought to be.

Any quick thoughts on the CATS' shut down for this weekend regarding light rail?

- Well, in Boston they recently shut down the Orange Line on the T for a month to do deferred maintenance there.

So I think that this is a kind of smart move to take a little pain right now and not defer years and years of maintenance that end up with weeks-or-months-long shutdown down the line, 'cause that is a possibility and we've seen it in other cities.

- Yeah, fair enough.

I guess we'll talk about CATS in future shows, we seem like we talk about CATS in every show, but with good reason and this leadership change probably something that will be ongoing as council decides what to do next with the head of their transit system.

I wanna talk about city council's decision this week, not a decision, but a discussion regarding something called the Equity Lens.

They won't decide on this policy until later in the month, but Genna, you wrote about what council is talking about here.

Can you outline what the equity lens is and how it might change decisions that council is in the process of making now?

- Yeah, definitely.

So what it's called is, I think it's Equity and Governance Framework.

And basically it's a way that when city council members and their committees are looking at policy, they're considering different questions regarding equity before making these decisions.

So will this displace anyone?

Will this have, I'm trying to think, I can't think of the questions right now, but a lot of it is really focused on racial equity because they've acknowledged like, we're talking about the Brooklyn Village project later, like who they've harmed in the past and the importance is not having that intention in the wording in the policy, which as we've seen can have dangerous impacts.

So some council members were like, "Well we've already talked so much about racial equity, do we need this actual framework that doesn't even feel like a framework?"

And other council members were like, "Intention is so important, wording is so important.

We need to do this now."

- Yeah -- - I guess one thing that -- - Go ahead, Will, I'm sorry.

- I think one point about this framework is that, these are some questions you would've kind of hoped they would've been talking about anyway, but I think the supporters are saying that at this point, if you have a actual written framework that requires discussion, you won't miss what you might miss if you're sort of just leaving it to what you would hope they would be discussing.

- Yeah, and I guess it plays into a lot of different policy areas that council deals with.

Things like affordable housing, things like capturing land along the future light rail lines for affordable housing.

Those are goals, stated goals by city council, but we've seen in the past that those goals don't always translate into actual decisions.

I guess this kind forces council to make sure that they do consider those equity issues on every big decision and not just the ones that are maybe more convenient or or less politically charged.

(crosstalk) (Jeff laughing) - Sorry.

- Choose among yourselves (laughing).

- I've already talked, go ahead Danielle.

- Oh, just that systemic racism is baked into government policy and the way that our government systems work and so I think this is an interesting approach and we'll see where council's support is, but I think it's one of those things where it's really important to examine every area of policy, even just in something like soliciting public feedback, which Ely had a story related to this week and who gets a say in local government, who's had input in the policies that they're putting, which can tend to be people with resources and time to come to a public zoning or hearing or whatever it is.

So, I think it's an interesting policy and we'll see how it plays out.

- Ely.

- Yeah, I think that this is part of moving from representation to outcomes and what I mean by that is in previous years there's been a lot of push to increased representation and get more diverse people into city government and politics.

And I think we've kind of seen that happen.

If you look at the city council, county commission, you've really got a very diverse group of people, especially compared to two decades ago.

So now the focus is kind of shifting to, okay, representation, we're doing better there, but we're not seeing the changes in outcomes yet.

So how do we move beyond representation to actually getting more equitable outcomes from city policies?

And I think that's the broader context for this change.

- Genna.

- Yeah, and I was just gonna give an example that they presented at city council.

I think Dimple Ajmera leads the committee that spearheaded this.

I know it kind of fits into the mayor's equity initiative as well, but one of the examples that she showed that council has already done that they would say kind of had this equity lens, which you might remember this but when they changed the rules for getting a speed bump in your neighborhood, it used to be you had to have a certain percentage of property owners petition, but that excluded a lot of renters, which are historically low income people, people of color.

And so now that's not a requirement when you're coming to council and saying, hey, people are speeding through my neighborhood.

We need to speed bump.

- Yeah, and what about zoning decisions?

I mean, Danielle, you did a story this week in Axios about a change in zoning at a hotel that's forcing 30 low-income families out of their hotel homes.

I guess theoretically that's something you could look at through an equity lens and and maybe decide differently.

Is it gonna get that deep into the weeds, do you think, this policy?

- I don't know how that will work with zoning decisions.

They're under a lot of constraints, so for example, the developer had originally talked about doing workforce housing on that site, although it's unclear whether that's still in the plan, but at the time, whenever workforce affordable housing comes up at city council they always have to remind council, "We can't decide because it's affordable housing."

And that goes back to this whole thing that we could do a whole show about, which is that the state general assembly or essentially the state has more control over what the city can do and they can't make decisions to force developers to put affordable housing.

So that was a long winded way of saying, I don't know where they can consider this within zoning decisions, but I do think it is important when it comes to zoning decisions, especially because zoning hearings are one of the places where you really see the disparities in who is impacted versus kind of like who has a say.

It's very common at zoning meetings to see like Myers Park and a lot of neighborhoods come out for rezonings that affect their area, but there are often rezonings in West Charlotte and North Charlotte where you might not get very many neighbors.

And I think this is one example, I mean I don't believe any of the residents spoke at that rezoning hearing.

I don't think most of them knew this was happening until it was already rezoned, so I think it's a good example of an area where you certainly could have a lot of impact by really being intentional.

- Of course, the best example might be Brooklyn, the Urban Renewal Project of the sixties.

And it was referenced to during the council meeting.

I guess that's the kind of decision that council hopes to prevent in the future.

And speaking of Brooklyn, we had the county commission talking about new plans for that old, large black neighborhood that was wiped away in the sixties.

Any thoughts on what they're planning in Brooklyn on the county side now versus what the expectations were for the folks who have been pushing for a Brooklyn Renaissance, if you will.

- It's mostly the same plan that it was when it was first approved, I believe it was in 2016, the initial county commission approval and then they inked various deals, paperwork, everything's been signed.

And in fact, that's one of the kind of tension points, is county commission for the last several years has been coming back and wanting more affordable housing and basically saying, is this enough to do justice to the former neighborhood where there were hundreds of black-owned businesses, more than a thousand families who were displaced, and so they've been asking these questions, "Is this enough?"

But the problem is that the deal was already signed.

So what that deal is currently is, it's about 17 acres, there's apartments, offices, hotel rooms, retail, and that's pretty much stayed the same.

The only thing that's a little bit different is they are talking about making decisions based on the market for some of the buildings on those parcels, for example, do they need less retail or more retail or less office with the environment that things are in right now after Covid.

So that was, I would say, be the only kind of change, but that's up to the developer.

There's nothing at this point the county can really do to change the plans unless they, actually, I don't even know.

I think that the developer, if they didn't meet in this timeline that they're under, maybe there would be a way to get out of it.

But other than that I'm not sure of any other way to make changes.

- Yeah, and some of the frustration that's been bubbling around this is that it's been almost seven years since they agreed with the developer and they're talking about breaking ground by next year.

So when you look at how much has been built around South End, there's a whole new skyline, the southern part of what was, excuse me, Stonewall Street and is now Brooklyn Village Avenue or Way.

There's been a huge amount of construction, but nothing has happened for this project yet.

So I think that there is frustration around that.

It's just been a really long wait for even the modest amount of new affordable housing that's going to be built there.

I mean seven years and it's going to be a dozen more before the project is completed, and in the end you're talking about around 120 affordable housing units, give or take, that's just not that impressive.

- Yeah, 120 to 149 affordable housing units among 1200 that will be built total.

I know there's been concerns that the bar's being set pretty low, also some concerns about open space, what open space will be available to folks who wanna see the opportunity for minority families and minority businesses to move back into the area that they lived and worked in for so long.

But that's a another discussion for another week as we move forward on this project.

I wanna change gears quickly to politics and the debate that we started talking about last week.

It was actually on the air as we were on the air last week.

Now that we've seen it or maybe haven't seen it, but maybe heard about it, Will, it wasn't exactly, as I mentioned, "Must-See TV" last Friday night, was it?

- No, I don't think it would've been that type of competition for you, Jeff.

(Jeff laughing) But yeah, we learned some interesting things, but it wasn't a firework show and that sort of fits with the brand of these two candidates.

You sort of know what you are going to expect going into the debate.

It was a lot of referendum on the administrations that the party is associated with.

So for example, Ted Budd will be talking a lot about Joe Biden.

He said if you vote for Cheri Beasley, it's essentially a vote for Joe Biden.

And Beasley brought up Trump's presidency and tying Budd to President Trump who has endorsed Ted Budd.

So, a lot of talk about inflation, we heard about their views on abortion to some extent, but yeah, pretty calm debate.

One of the more interesting things I think, is this was the first time that I'm aware of that Ted Budd said that he would absolutely accept the election results.

He sort of avoided this question previously.

We also heard Cheri Beasley say that Ted Budd said that she supported abortion up until the point of birth.

She pushed back on that, said that her framework would allow for exceptions of the mother's life is in danger, but wouldn't necessarily allow for complete access to abortion, which some republicans have tried to frame it that way.

So we heard some clarifying points.

- I guess what was disappointing though, was that we really didn't hear much more than what we're hearing in the ads every night on Jeopardy as Genna and I talked about last week.

I mean, you'd expect more depth, you'd expect more explanation, more of a layout of what we're gonna do once we get to Washington.

And we really didn't get that from either candidate last Friday, did we?

- I think if you have been following the race, you wouldn't have learned anything particularly new (Jeff laughing) from watching the debate.

That's right.

- I have another question.

No matter what side of the aisle you're on, as you're watching that debate last Friday, don't you kind of wish it was Pat McCrory versus Jeff Jackson instead of the candidates we have?

I mean, not necessarily that the people we have are bad, but there are better candidates that are better at laying out the framework of what the Democrats or the Republicans wanna do in Washington.

I'm just wondering if in their heart of hearts, both parties wonder if they've got the best candidate for this particular race on the ballot this fall.

- Yeah, and I know there's been a discussion about whether the Democrats nationally are supporting Beasley with as much money as in some other states' races.

Just a counterpoint to what you're saying, Jeff.

I think that if you look at some of the other high-profile Senate races, you look at Dr. Oz versus Fetterman, you look at Herschel Walker and Raphael Warnock, there are some pretty bonkers senate races out there right now so I continue to be surprised that this doesn't gather more attention nationally, but to some degree I think it's also a relief because this thing could be really going off the rails if it was like some other states.

So it's somewhat just kind of normal.

- You wanna wrap this up, Will?

- Yeah, I was just gonna echo that.

I think how much fireworks do we really want in our politics?

Of course, we want to be passionate about important issues, but there's a level of excitement that you ideally want to keep it below, I think.

- Yeah, not fireworks maybe a sparkler or two now and then would not be an entirely bad thing.

A couple of other stories I wanna touch on in the last couple of minutes we have here, I guess you'd call it good news from CMS this week.

They found a gun at one of the high schools, but it's the first gun they found all school year.

And if we recall last school year, it was just a couple of days or weeks into the school year that we were counting guns in the dozens.

I guess whatever they're doing at CMS or whatever the community is not doing when it comes to violence and teenagers, I guess that's a step forward.

It's hard to say that finding a gun is a step forward, but only one is not bad compared to our recent history.

- Yeah, and there's been more emphasis on metal detectors and prevention, there's also, I know been reminding parents to secure weapons in the house, so I don't know exactly what is behind that effect.

You hope that it means there are fewer guns being brought and not fewer guns being located.

So hopefully it's good news.

- Little news from the airport this week.

They are down from pre-covid levels, but they're still one of the top 10 airports in the world and top five when it comes to the fourth quarter of scheduled flights.

I guess we're seeing a slow build back, unless you're going to the airport to pick up or drop off someone, then you're seeing a really slow build back, five lane traffic jams that will continue at least for another week.

I was out there last week, not a great situation right now.

Genna, did your friends get in okay from outta town.

- They ended up changing their flight to Atlanta (laughing).

- Entirely bad decision.

- There was a hurricane.

- Yeah, not entirely bad decision.

And last thing, very quickly to talk about Matt Rhule gone, new coach coming.

Steve Wilks is a Charlotte native who will run the team, the Panthers for the rest of this season.

But I guess a decision that a lot of fans saw coming from a long way off.

We don't have time to talk anymore this week, but I think enough has been said about it during the week that we can move on and hope for better things for the Panthers the rest of this season.

Hey gang, thanks for -- - He can go run CATS.

- (laughing) Well, he could be moving from CATS to cats.

All right, I'm not gonna go there.

I promised I wouldn't than I did, sorry.

All right, hey, thanks for joining us gang.

We appreciate your participation at home.

Send your comments and questions to OffTheRecord@wtvi.org.

Thanks for joining us this week.

We'll see you next time on "Off The Record."

("Off the Record" theme music) - [Announcer] A production of PBS Charlotte.