Two very different parts of Monday's Charlotte City Council meeting landed close to Fourth Ward: a proposed youth curfew prompted partly by shootings and large gatherings elsewhere Uptown, and the next step for a historic house on North Church Street.
The curfew is not law. The landmark matter is not finished. City government kept both the present and the past on the calendar.
The proposed curfew would begin at 9 p.m.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Chief Estella Patterson asked council to move Charlotte's youth curfew to 9 p.m. every day and extend it to everyone younger than 18.
Patterson cited recent shootings and large youth gatherings at Romare Bearden Park, as well as a separate gathering in University City. She said the city could not sustain the concentration of officers used to manage major events and needed another intervention tool.
She also drew a line around the request.
"We are not proposing to criminalize our youth," Patterson said.
Council members wanted more evidence. They asked what data supported 9 p.m. instead of 11 p.m., where youth programs and recreation facilities are located, how parental liability would work and whether teenagers had safe places to go after dark.
No vote occurred. For Fourth Ward residents, that means the existing ordinance remains in place unless and until council adopts a revision.
The surveillance argument belongs Uptown, too
Council's other long public-safety discussion concerned the federal Model Cities Initiative. The U.S. Department of Justice is offering nearly $300 million to two to four jurisdictions through three-year cooperative agreements.
Charlotte's proposal could include regional data sharing, real-time intelligence, analytics and other public-safety technology. Council members questioned federal oversight, immigration-related conditions, data retention, surveillance and the city's cost after the grant ends.
That is not an abstract concern for an Uptown neighborhood living beside major events and public-safety infrastructure.
Council did not approve or reject the application. City Manager Marcus Jones asked for time to let CMPD consult the organizations it had recruited as partners. Charlotte's first phase is due Sept. 1.
The Charlotte Mercury's full review of the Model Cities terms is here.
The Liddell-McNinch House is already a landmark
City records show that Charlotte designated the Liddell-McNinch House at 511 N. Church St. as historic property in 1976. The Queen Anne Shingle house is stop 39 on Fourth Ward Charlotte's walking tour.
Monday's meeting transcript records council setting another public hearing for the house on Sept. 28. The agenda labels the item a historic-landmark designation, but the available meeting record does not explain how that action relates to the 1976 designation. Bureaucracy occasionally develops a taste for sequels.
The transcript also records a Sept. 28 hearing for the Jefferson-First Union Tower elsewhere Uptown. Both hearing dates remain provisional until Charlotte posts the final action record.
The Liddell-McNinch hearing gives Fourth Ward a specific item to watch. The house is already part of the neighborhood's historical record and Charlotte's landmark record. The next question is what, precisely, the city proposes to change or reaffirm.
Monday's meeting did not settle the curfew, the federal grant or the landmark proceedings. It did establish the order of operations: more evidence for the curfew, more scrutiny for Model Cities and another public hearing for one of Fourth Ward's most recognizable survivors.