Michael Praats
Investigative Reporter-
On this episode we dig into questions about whether or not Wilmington Council Charlie Rivenbark should have recused himself from a recent rezoning vote. Plus, the Wilmington City Clerk’s office is taking a very long time to fulfill public records requests – which violates, at the very least, the spirit of state records law. And, the latest on upcoming stories on County Chairwoman Julia Olson-Boseman and now-former Cape Fear Community College Trustee Jimmy Hopkins.
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On this episode, we look at the purchase of the former Bank of America building by New Hanover County on behalf of Cape Fear Community College — and the intertwined story of the CFCC Trustee Jimmy Hopkins’ dismissal by the county chair, after Hopkins’ disagreed with CFCC President Jim Morton about the BoA building purchase. Simple, right?
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The county is facing blowback from the removal of CFCC Trustee Jimmy Hopkins. Now Hopkins says he hopes the county commission will do the “right thing” but if the matter needs to go to court he seems prepared to take it there.
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On this episode, two interwoven stories revolving around the potential purchase of the former Bank of America building in downtown Wilmington by New Hanover County on behalf of Cape Fear Community College — and the abrupt removal of trustee Jimmy Hopkins from his longtime post on the CFCC Board.
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For more than ten years Jimmy Hopkins has served on the Cape Fear Community College Board of Trustees, but on Monday his decade-long tenure came to an abrupt halt.
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On this episode: after years of planning, and numerous iterations, New Hanover County’s ambitious and controversial proposal to redevelop the downtown Wilmington library block as part of a public-private partnership has apparently reached the end of the road. When the proposal went in front of the Local Government Commission, it died for lack of a second vote to consider the project. Now, the county says it will go it alone.
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On this episode, we look back at Hurricane Florence, which drowned the Cape Fear region four years ago this week. Plenty went wrong during a punishing week of rain and flooding, but a lot of those missteps and issues have been addressed. We’ll also take a look at last week’s press conference, held by Novant Health to address the question that’s been hanging in the air for months: would the crisis at NHRMC be better if it were still owned by New Hanover County?
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On this episode, we unpack the abrupt closure of TRU Colors – the controversial, for-profit brewery that employed active gang members while trying to disrupt community violence – and the claims by CEO and founder George Taylor, Jr. that unfair media coverage led to the company’s demise.
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On this episode, we break down one of the most complicated and troubling stories we’ve covered recently: allegations that New Hanover County Chairwoman Julia Olson-Boseman made a $50 million quid-pro-quo offer to Coastal Horizons to silence their criticisms of The Healing Place, the county’s planned peer-led drug and alcohol recovery facility.
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County manager Chris Coudriet acknowledged that he knew about the allegations of a $50 million offer; the county said its earlier comment about not knowing about the offer was intended to mean Coudriet and staff had no direct evidence of the offer being made.