Understanding Greensboro's Budget Lawsuit: What the Hartzman Case Means for Your Property Taxes
On June 16, 2026, Greensboro City Council voted 9 to 0 to adopt a budget that raised the city property tax rate to 79.85 cents per $100 of assessed value, up from 67.25 cents. That is a 12.6 cent increase, roughly 18 percent, and it applies to the property values from the county's 2022 reappraisal rather than the higher values Guilford County assigned during its 2026 revaluation.
A longtime Greensboro civic activist named George Hartzman went to court over how that budget came together. He argues that the budget the public commented on at the required hearing was not the budget Council actually adopted, and that residents never got a real chance to weigh in on the version that became law. On July 10, a Guilford County Superior Court judge denied Hartzman's request to immediately block the budget, but also declined to dismiss the case, and set a preliminary injunction hearing reported for July 20.
This post walks through what actually happened, what North Carolina law requires, what jargon like "temporary restraining order" and "revenue neutral rate" actually mean, and concrete steps you can take if you want more say in how Greensboro taxes and spends. Every claim below is linked to its original source so you can read the primary material yourself rather than take anyone's word for it, including mine.
Quick facts
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Old city property tax rate | 67.25 cents per $100 of assessed value |
| New city property tax rate | 79.85 cents per $100 of assessed value |
| Size of increase | 12.6 cents, about 18 percent |
| Budget adopted | June 16, 2026, by a 9 to 0 Council vote |
| Budget took effect | July 1, 2026 |
| Lawsuit filed by | George Hartzman, Greensboro resident |
| First court hearing | July 10, 2026. Judge Michael Duncan denied a temporary restraining order but did not dismiss the case |
| Next hearing | Preliminary injunction hearing, confirmed for July 20, 2026, 10 a.m., Courtroom GB3H, before Judge Tonia A. Cutchin |
Jump to a section
- How your tax bill is actually calculated
- Watch the primary source yourself
- What actually happened
- Who's who in this case
- Jargon buster
- What North Carolina law actually requires
- Timeline
- This is not only a Greensboro conversation
- What short term rentals actually contribute
- The lobbying gap nobody talks about
- The recusal question nobody has to answer
- How to get involved
- Questions worth asking
- Sources
How your tax bill is actually calculated
This is the part that trips people up, so it is worth slowing down on. Your city property tax bill is one number multiplied by another: the tax rate, times your assessed property value, divided by 100. Two separate things went into this year's bill, and only one of them actually changed.
The rate went up, from 67.25 cents to 79.85 cents. That part is a real increase and it is not in dispute. What did not happen is the city also swapping in your new, higher 2026 assessed value on top of that higher rate. Because of the state moratorium, the city applied the new rate to the older assessed value from the county's 2022 reappraisal, the same value your bill was already based on before this year. The table below shows what that means using a home assessed at $300,000 in 2022, along with the scenario that did not happen for comparison.
Worked example: a home assessed at $300,000 in 2022
| Scenario | Rate applied | Assessed value used | Annual city tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| Last year's bill | 67.25 cents | $300,000, the 2022 value | $2,017.50 |
| This year's actual bill | 79.85 cents | $300,000, still the 2022 value | $2,395.50, an increase of $378 |
| What did not happen | 79.85 cents | The new 2026 revalued amount, which ran 40 to 65 percent higher than 2022 in many Greensboro neighborhoods | Would have been substantially higher than $2,395.50 |
This arrangement is temporary, not permanent. Senate Bill 889 only pauses the 2026 revaluation values for this one budget year. Under the bill, counties are expected to phase in the 2026 reappraisal values starting with the 2027 to 2028 fiscal year and continue using them until the next scheduled revaluation cycle. In other words, this year's bill used the old rate formula with a new, higher rate. Next year's bill is expected to use the new value as well, which is a separate increase still to come.
Watch the primary source yourself
You do not have to rely on any summary, including this one. The City of Greensboro records every Council meeting and posts it to its official YouTube channel, which also carries explainer videos on how the budget process works. Below is the actual June 16 meeting where the budget passed, and a short primer on how a city budget gets built in the first place.
City Council Meeting, June 16, 2026
Budget 101: How Greensboro's Budget Process Works
Every regular Council meeting is also broadcast live on GTN and archived at the city's meeting video page, so you can watch any past discussion in full rather than a highlight reel.
Read the actual court filings
George Hartzman, the plaintiff in this case, has made his own working case file public: Hartzman v. City of Greensboro, Case Filings, shared with permission. This is the actual complaint, motions, exhibits, and replies filed in case 26CV014985-400, Guilford County Superior Court, straight from the source. One important note: this is Mr. Hartzman's own live, working folder, not a static archive. He is actively adding and reorganizing documents as the case proceeds, so what you find there may look different from one week to the next as filings are added ahead of the July 20 hearing.
What actually happened
Two things were going on at once, and the order they happened in matters. It is easy to misread if you only glance at two dates side by side, so here is the sequence in full.
The North Carolina Senate passed Senate Bill 889, the Property Tax Reappraisal Moratorium, on May 6, 2026 by a 35 to 8 vote. The House gave the bill final approval on June 10, 2026 by a 70 to 42 vote and sent it to Governor Josh Stein's desk. At that point the bill had cleared the General Assembly but was not yet law. A University of North Carolina School of Government analysis published while the bill was still pending described the real, unresolved question local governments statewide were facing that month: build the budget around the new 2026 property values already on the books, or anticipate that the moratorium would become law and use the older values instead. Governor Stein signed the bill on June 19, 2026, making it Session Law 2026-8, which formally required Guilford County and every city inside it, including Greensboro, to build FY2027 budgets using the property values from the county's 2022 reappraisal instead of the new 2026 revaluation values.
Greensboro's Council adopted its budget on June 16, three days before the governor's signature, while the bill was sitting on his desk after clearing both chambers. City Manager Nathaniel "Trey" Davis addressed that timing directly at the meeting. He told Council the rate he was presenting was "based on the current rates prior to the reappraisal," and that staff had gone back and recalculated once the moratorium's passage through the legislature became clear. The city's own budget announcement frames the resulting 79.85 cent rate as necessary to fund public safety, parks, solid waste, and infrastructure without relying on revaluation values the city could not yet safely assume it could use.
Hartzman's lawsuit does not dispute that math. His argument is procedural: that the version of the budget presented at the public hearing looked different from the version Council ultimately adopted, and that residents who showed up to comment on one budget did not get the chance to comment on the one that actually took effect. At the July 10 hearing, he told a reporter the city could still find a way to "get some transparency in local government." Senior Assistant City Attorney James Dickens argued in court that no statute or prior case law requires more than one public hearing on a budget, and asked the judge to find the case moot since the budget had already taken effect. The judge declined to call it moot, denied the immediate block, and scheduled the fuller hearing later in July.
Neither side has won or lost yet. The preliminary injunction hearing is where a judge will actually weigh the legal merits. Nothing below should be read as a prediction of that outcome.
For a deeper look at the tax rate change itself and what it means dollar for dollar on a Greensboro home, see my earlier post, Greensboro FY 2027 Budget Explained, and the companion piece on the county side, the 2026 Guilford County Revaluation.
Who's who in this case
A few names in this story sound alike or belong to people who are related but not the same person. This directory exists specifically to keep that straight. Colors group people by role: denim blue for judges, navy for city government, terracotta and gold for everyone else. Each name links to an official bio, court record, or obituary where you can see an actual photo and verify these details yourself.
Guilford County Superior Court judge who presided over the July 10 hearing and denied the temporary restraining order.
Confirmed through the court's own official calendar as the judge presiding over the July 20 hearing, 10 a.m., Courtroom GB3H. Appointed to Superior Court by Governor Cooper in 2022, previously a Guilford County District Court judge, public defender, and attorney. Won her seat unopposed in 2024.
Governor's appointment announcementSuperior Court judge appointed in 2025 to the seat Lora Cubbage vacated. The court's own official calendar confirms Judge Tonia A. Cutchin, not Johnson-Tonkins, is presiding at the July 20 hearing. She is the daughter of former Mayor Yvonne Johnson, below, not the same person.
Governor's appointment announcementGreensboro's current City Attorney. A former Superior Court judge herself, she left the bench in 2025 to join the city's legal team.
City Attorney's officeSenior Assistant City Attorney. He is the attorney who has actually appeared in court arguing the city's side of this case.
City Attorney's officeCurrent Mayor of Greensboro, in office since December 2025. Previously ran Mahi's Restaurant for 22 years.
Mayor's biographyLongtime Greensboro civic activist and the plaintiff in this case, representing himself. Shared his own case filings publicly, linked below.
News and Record coverage of the caseGreensboro's first Black mayor, serving 2007 to 2009, later a longtime council member and mayor pro tem until she passed away in December 2024. Mother of Judge Lisa Johnson-Tonkins, above. Not the presiding judge, not currently in office, and not the same person as her daughter.
BiographyJargon buster
Local government and court reporting is full of terms that get thrown around without definition. Here is what the important ones actually mean.
| Term | Plain language meaning |
|---|---|
| Temporary restraining order (TRO) | An emergency, short term court order that pauses an action immediately, before either side has fully argued the case. Judges grant these rarely and only when waiting would cause irreversible harm. |
| Preliminary injunction | A longer lasting court order that can pause an action while a lawsuit proceeds. Getting one requires a fuller hearing than a TRO, where both sides present evidence and argument. |
| Moot | A legal argument that a case no longer matters because the thing being challenged already happened or already changed. The city argued Hartzman's case was moot since the budget had taken effect. The judge disagreed. |
| Budget ordinance | The formal legal document a city council adopts each year that sets tax rates and authorizes spending for the fiscal year. |
| Revenue neutral rate | The tax rate that would raise the same amount of money after a revaluation as the old rate raised before it, calculated by state formula. It is a benchmark for comparison, not a rate any city is required to adopt. |
| Revaluation or reappraisal | A countywide reset of assessed property values to reflect current market conditions. North Carolina requires this at least once every eight years. |
| Moratorium | A temporary, state ordered pause. Here, a pause on using the 2026 revaluation numbers for one budget year. |
| Room occupancy tax | A local tax charged on short term lodging stays, including hotels and platforms like Airbnb. Greensboro charges 6 percent and Guilford County charges an additional 3 percent. |
| Public hearing (statutory) | A formal meeting where the public is legally entitled to speak on a proposed budget before it is adopted. North Carolina law requires at least one. |
| G.S. (General Statute) | Shorthand for a numbered section of North Carolina law passed by the General Assembly. |
What North Carolina law actually requires
This is the heart of the legal question, so it is worth reading in the state's own words rather than a paraphrase. Under North Carolina's Local Government Budget and Fiscal Control Act, General Statute 159-12(b) says that before adopting a budget ordinance, a governing board must "hold a public hearing at which time any persons who wish to be heard" may speak. The statute does not require a second hearing if the board changes the budget afterward, and it does not require the adopted version to match the version presented at that hearing. That is the plain text Dickens was pointing to in court.
Interestingly, some state lawmakers already think that standard is too thin. A bill tracked by the University of North Carolina School of Government's Legislative Reporting Service would amend General Statute 159-12 to require at least two public hearings on separate dates for most local governments, with at least one hearing required to disclose specific revenue detail like the prior two years of tax rates and collection rates. That bill has not become law in Greensboro's case, but it shows the one hearing standard is an active, live policy debate in Raleigh, not a settled question everyone agrees is sufficient.
Hartzman's broader constitutional claim rests on Article I, Section 19 of the North Carolina Constitution, often called the law of the land clause, which protects against being deprived of property except through lawful process. Whether a single statutory hearing on a materially different budget satisfies that protection is exactly what the July 20 hearing will address. It is an open legal question right now, not a settled one in either direction.
Timeline
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| January 1, 2026 | Guilford County's new 2026 property revaluation takes effect, raising assessed values significantly across Greensboro |
| May 6, 2026 | The NC Senate passes Senate Bill 889, the Property Tax Reappraisal Moratorium, 35 to 8 |
| June 10, 2026 | The NC House gives the bill final passage, 70 to 42, and sends it to Governor Stein. The bill has cleared the legislature but is not yet law |
| June 16, 2026 | Greensboro City Council votes 9 to 0 to adopt the FY2027 budget with the 79.85 cent tax rate, while the bill awaits the governor's signature |
| June 19, 2026 | Governor Stein signs Senate Bill 889 into law as Session Law 2026-8 |
| July 1, 2026 | The new budget and tax rate take effect for fiscal year 2027 |
| July 10, 2026 | Judge Michael Duncan denies Hartzman's request for a temporary restraining order but declines to dismiss the case as moot |
| July 15, 2026 | Hartzman files his reply in support of the motion for preliminary injunction, electronically filed and clerk stamped that evening |
| July 17, 2026 | A reader raised a question about who is presiding over the July 20 hearing. Hartzman confirmed directly that Judge Lisa Johnson-Tonkins is not presiding, and shared his own case filings publicly with permission to link them here |
| July 18, 2026 | The court's own official hearing calendar, checked directly through the NC eCourts Portal, confirms Judge Tonia A. Cutchin is presiding, 10 a.m. in Courtroom GB3H |
| July 20, 2026 | Preliminary injunction hearing, 10 a.m., Courtroom GB3H, before Judge Tonia A. Cutchin |
This is not only a Greensboro conversation
Budget transparency questions are coming up in city halls across North Carolina and the country right now, though the specific issues are different in each place. Seeing them side by side is useful context, not a claim that Greensboro's situation matches any of these.
| City | What is happening there | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Cary, NC | Council raised taxes 8 percent after the town's former manager was accused of misleading Council for years about the town's finances. Mayor Harold Weinbrecht called it a "breach of trust" that had kept the tax rate artificially low. | CBS17 |
| Asheville, NC | Council held a public hearing on a proposed tax increase, then adopted a lower final rate of 37.69 cents in a split 4 to 3 vote after resident pushback, with the mayor citing state limits on local revenue tools. | 828 News Now |
| Fresno, CA | A judge ruled in May 2026 that the city council violated California's open meetings law by negotiating budgets for five years in a closed committee that never posted agendas or allowed public attendance. No penalties were issued. | GV Wire |
What short term rentals actually contribute, with the real numbers
Because short term rentals are part of my own business, I want to be precise here rather than repeat a vague number, and I want to link every figure to where it actually came from so you can check it yourself rather than just trust me.
The tax rate itself
Greensboro charges a 6 percent room occupancy tax on short term lodging stays, and Guilford County adds another 3 percent on top of that, for a combined 9 percent. This is not a local invention. State law, General Statute 105-164.4(a)(3), sets the underlying sales tax base that occupancy taxes ride on, and General Statute 160A-215 is the specific law that authorizes cities, Greensboro named among them, to levy a municipal room occupancy tax at all. Platforms like Airbnb are required by this same body of law to collect and remit both taxes on behalf of hosts for bookings made through the platform, which means the tax gets paid automatically on nearly every platform booking, whether the guest ever thinks about it or not.
Do traditional and mid term rentals pay this too
This is a fair and specific question, and the statute actually answers it. Under G.S. 105-164.4(a)(3), an accommodation rented to the same person for 90 or more continuous days is exempt from both state sales tax and local occupancy tax entirely. A 12 month traditional lease clears that threshold easily, which is why a traditional rental like Idlewood House or College Hill Brownstone generates no occupancy tax at all. It is governed by ordinary landlord tenant law instead, a completely different legal framework.
Mid term rentals sit in the gap. A stay under 90 consecutive days, even a 60 day corporate housing booking for a travel nurse, is legally treated the same as a short term rental and is subject to the full 9 percent combined occupancy tax plus state and local sales tax. Only once the same guest passes 90 continuous days does that specific booking become exempt going forward, and any tax already collected before hitting that threshold is required to be refunded to the guest. The UNC School of Government's own explainer on occupancy tax confirms this and lists Greensboro by name among the roughly 200 North Carolina local governments authorized to levy one.
How many short term rentals actually exist here, and who counts them
When Greensboro's short term rental ordinance took effect, the city hired a third party vendor specifically to identify and track them. That vendor is Host Compliance, a product of Granicus, the same company that hosts Greensboro's compliance hotline portal. Reporting at the time the ordinance rolled out found roughly 800 active short term rentals operating in the city, at a point when only a few hundred had actually applied for the required zoning permit. I was not able to find a publicly posted dollar figure for what the city pays Granicus for this service. That is a specific, answerable question, not a vague one, and the way to get the real number is a direct request through the city's public records request portal or a look through the Greensboro e-Procurement System, where city contracts are supposed to be searchable. I could not locate the contract there myself in the time I spent looking, which is itself worth noting.
Separately from the city's own vendor, the market research firm Airbtics tracks active Airbnb listings in Greensboro directly. It counted 864 listings in November 2024 with typical annual host revenue of $29,109, and 789 listings in October 2025 with typical annual revenue of $33,159.
A transparent estimate, not an official figure
| Snapshot | Listings | Avg annual revenue | Est. gross STR revenue | Est. city occupancy tax (6%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Airbtics, Nov 2024 | 864 | $29,109 | $25,150,176 | $1,509,011 |
| Airbtics, Oct 2025 | 789 | $33,159 | $26,162,451 | $1,569,747 |
Treat both rows as rough estimates built on third party market data, not published city figures. Average revenue varies enormously by property, and a citywide average will not describe any one listing. Here is why I am showing you the range rather than one clean number: the city's own FY2026 Tourism Development Authority budget ordinance puts total city occupancy tax revenue, from every hotel, motel, and short term rental in Greensboro combined, at $1,644,000. Subtract either estimate above from that total and the number left over for every hotel in Greensboro is somewhere between $74,253 and $134,989. Greensboro has multiple chain hotels operating well above that combined revenue level, so that implied remainder is almost certainly too low to be real. The honest conclusion is not that short term rentals are secretly outpacing every hotel in the city. It is that the average revenue figures in market research data like Airbtics likely skew high, probably pulled up by a smaller number of very high performing listings, which means the true STR share is real and substantial but almost certainly lower than the math above suggests. Nobody outside the city and county finance departments can resolve that uncertainty, because the hotel versus short term rental split is not broken out anywhere in the published budget documents. That gap, not knowing the channel breakdown of a tax that is otherwise fully documented, is the real, specific, and fair transparency question to raise, and it is the one I would ask Council to answer directly.
Where the money is legally required to go, and who oversees it
This part is public, it is just scattered across documents most residents will never open. Guilford County's room occupancy tax was created by the General Assembly through Session Law 1983-988, amended by Session Law 1989-39, with Greensboro's separate city level tax added by Session Law 1991-22. Under that framework, the county remits 70 percent of its net occupancy tax proceeds to the Greensboro and Guilford County Tourism Development Authority, with the remaining 30 percent going to the City of High Point. The Authority is a public body created under the Local Government Budget and Fiscal Control Act, made up of thirteen appointed members, including a county commissioner, a Greensboro City Council member, and several owners or operators of hotels, motels, or other taxable accommodations in the county, appointed jointly by the county commissioners and Greensboro City Council. Its current President and CEO, per the Authority's own public notices, is H. Fourrier.
The exact split is set by statute, not left to discretion. Guilford County keeps 70 percent of its net occupancy tax proceeds for the TDA and sends 30 percent to the City of High Point. Greensboro's own separate city occupancy tax, added by Session Law 1991-22, splits the other direction: 80 percent goes to the city to finance renovation and expansion of the Greensboro Coliseum Complex, and only 20 percent goes to the TDA for tourism promotion. Whatever reaches the TDA from either source is then split again by the Authority's own budget ordinance: 80 percent to marketing, a fixed $170,000 each year to specific tourist related events, and the remainder to capital improvements. The diagram below shows the full path.
You do not have to take a single year's word for it either. Here are the Authority's own published, adopted budget ordinances for the last three fiscal years, each one a public document the Authority is legally required to post before adoption.
| Fiscal year | County occupancy tax | City occupancy tax | Total General Fund | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY 2023 to 2024 | Not separately published | $1,260,000 | $6,671,450 | City of Greensboro public notice |
| FY 2024 to 2025 | $6,141,000 | $1,533,000 | $8,578,650 | TDA public notice, FY2024-25 |
| FY 2025 to 2026 | $6,463,000 | $1,644,000 | $9,410,100 | TDA budget ordinance, FY2025-26 |
A caveat worth being precise about: these are the Authority's adopted, legally binding budget ordinances, the amount it is authorized to spend, not a final independently audited actual figure for money already spent. Getting to true audited actuals would mean pulling the line item from Guilford County's own Annual Comprehensive Financial Report, which is published here if you want to go that far. Even without that extra step, three consecutive years of adopted budgets show real growth: the city occupancy tax figure is up roughly 30 percent from FY2023-24 to FY2025-26, and the county figure rose about 5 percent in just the one year of data available for comparison, which lines up with the growth in short term rental activity discussed above.
So the honest answer to where this money goes is not that nobody knows. It funds tourism marketing, specific cultural and tourist events, capital improvements, and historically the Coliseum Complex, overseen by a named public authority with named leadership, and it is reported quarterly by law. The real problem is accessibility. Finding that answer meant reading a 1983 session law, a 1989 amendment, a 1991 amendment, and three separate standalone PDF budget notices the Tourism Development Authority posts on its own website, none of which are linked from the city's main budget page. A resident with a full time job and no legal background has almost no realistic way to piece this together. That is worth raising with Council directly: not "where is the money going," which has an answer, but "why isn't there one page that shows it," and separately, why doesn't anyone publish the hotel versus short term rental split.
The lobbying gap nobody talks about
I was paying close attention when Greensboro's short term rental ordinance was first being drafted and debated. In my own experience, Airbnb's involvement on the ground here was minimal to none. Nobody from the company reached out to me with talking points, encouraged me to show up to a hearing, or coordinated anything on my behalf. I was one host, reading agendas and showing up if I could, on my own time.
This is not an abstract debate for me, and I want to be specific about my own track record rather than speak generally. In the entire time I have operated short term, mid term, and traditional rentals here, I have never received a single neighbor complaint about any of my properties, at any length of stay. What I have heard directly from neighbors is the opposite. Several have told me they are glad to see previously blighted, rundown homes on the block rehabbed, maintained, and occupied instead of sitting empty or deteriorating. That is one host's experience across my own properties, not a claim about short term rentals citywide, but it is worth naming plainly since so much of the public debate assumes a short term rental is automatically a neighborhood nuisance.
That is worth sitting with next to something Mayor Nancy Vaughan said publicly when Council was later forced to remove part of the ordinance over legal concerns. Speaking about pressure from the state legislature to preempt local STR rules entirely, she said representatives from Airbnb and Vrbo "have got a presence up in those hallways just about every day" in Raleigh. Both things are true at once. A platform can run a serious, well funded operation protecting its own regulatory interests at the state level while doing essentially nothing for the individual host who is actually filling out the $200 zoning permit application and dealing with a neighbor's noise complaint.
The numbers back up how real that institutional gap is, on both sides of this fight, using nonpartisan federal lobbying disclosure data.
| Organization | Lobbying spend | Period |
|---|---|---|
| American Hotel and Lodging Association | $2,040,000 | 2025, federal, through September |
| Entire lodging and tourism industry | $14,835,000 | 2025, federal |
| Airbnb Inc | $1,000,000 | 2022, federal, a record year for the company at the time |
| Airbnb Inc, state level | $651,000 across nine states | 2023 |
Neither of those companies is fighting for the host down the street. The hotel industry's spending is aimed at containing STR competition broadly. Airbnb's spending, by its own lobbying disclosures, tends to focus on issues like tax reporting thresholds and content moderation liability, protecting the platform's own business model, not the individual owner operator navigating a local zoning permit. A small, non corporate Greensboro host has no lobbyist on retainer in Raleigh or Washington representing either side of this. That gap between institutional money and the person actually paying the permit fee is real, it is documented, and it deserves more attention than it gets.
The recusal question nobody has to answer
Here is a structural gap worth naming plainly, without pointing at any specific person. North Carolina law, General Statute 160D-109, requires a city council member to sit out a vote when the outcome is reasonably likely to have a direct, substantial, and readily identifiable financial impact on that member specifically. The North Carolina Supreme Court set the same standard for zoning decisions in County of Lancaster v. Mecklenburg County. But the UNC School of Government's own guidance is direct about the limit of that rule: a council member must not vote on a small, individual rezoning of their own property, but that same member is required to participate in adopting a citywide ordinance, like short term rental regulations, even though it also affects their own property, because it applies broadly rather than singling them out. A council member who owns a rental property can vote on STR rules covering every rental in Greensboro without ever being required to disclose that ownership, entirely within the law, regardless of their intentions.
This is not a new tension in Greensboro specifically. The UNC School of Government's own history of this issue traces back to a 1919 case over the authority of Greensboro's own city council to vote itself a pay raise, which is where North Carolina courts first articulated that public officials should not act on matters affecting the public when they have a direct personal financial stake. A century later, the same basic question, who gets to vote on rules that touch their own pocket, still turns on whether the vote targets one person's property specifically or applies to an entire category of owners citywide. STR ordinances fall on the side of the rule that does not require disclosure.
I tested this limit myself in 2024. I filed a public records request asking what outside income Greensboro's council members reported. What came back showed council salary and nothing beyond it, no evidence of the rental income I had suspected. I want to be straightforward about that result rather than move the goalposts: I looked, and I did not find what I was looking for. But a records request for reported income does not show whether a member holds rental property inside an LLC with a registered agent, which is a legal and common way to hold real estate that also happens to make ownership hard for the public to trace back to a name. That is not evidence of anything improper. It is evidence that the tool available to a resident trying to check this does not actually answer the question, which is a real transparency gap regardless of whether any current member has anything to disclose.
There is a real difference worth naming between how an HOA changes its own rules and how a city does. If a homeowners association wants to amend its bylaws, North Carolina law and the association's own governing documents typically require specific notice and a defined vote threshold, often a supermajority of the actual owners affected, before the change takes effect. A city ordinance that changes how you can use property you already purchased only requires a council majority, elected to represent the whole city, voting on your behalf rather than requiring your direct consent the way an HOA amendment does. North Carolina does offer one narrower protection, vested rights under General Statute 160D-108, which lets a property owner continue a specific use or finish a project already substantially underway even after the rules change. It does not protect a general future use the way an HOA amendment threshold protects a member from a rule change no supermajority approved. I wrote about hitting this distinction directly, including the 750 foot spacing rule the city adopted and later dropped after a lawsuit, in Landowner Rights in Greensboro NC.
How to get involved
1. Find your Council member
Use the city's official district lookup tool to confirm your district, then reach your representative through the official Council email directory. Any message you send is a public record.
2. Watch or attend a Council meeting
Meetings are held most Tuesdays at 5:30 p.m. in the Katie Dorsett Council Chamber at the Melvin Municipal Office Building, 300 West Washington Street. They are broadcast live on GTN and streamed on the city's YouTube channel. Sign up to speak in advance through the city's speaker sign up page. A small unexpected upside from going in person during the STR ordinance debates: I met genuinely good people from my own neighborhood I would not have crossed paths with otherwise. Whatever side of an issue someone lands on, showing up puts you in a room with your actual neighbors.
3. File a public records request
North Carolina's public records law is strong, and city budget worksheets, internal memos, and occupancy tax figures are generally accessible. Start at the city's public records request page.
4. Attend the hearing in person
The preliminary injunction hearing is confirmed for July 20, 2026, 10 a.m., Courtroom GB3H, before Judge Tonia A. Cutchin, at the Guilford County Courthouse, 201 South Eugene Street, Greensboro. This is a public hearing. No RSVP, ticket, or advance notice is needed, you can simply show up. Court hearings are a matter of public record regardless of which side you find more persuasive, and it is confirmed directly through the court's own official calendar, not secondhand.
Before you go
| Bring | Leave behind |
|---|---|
| Photo ID | Cell phone, camera, laptop, or any recording device. These are prohibited inside the courthouse entirely unless a judge has issued a specific permit. Leave it in your car. |
| A paper notepad and pen, if you want to take notes | Pocketknives, scissors, or any tool with a blade or shaft over 4 inches |
| Cash or a few quarters for metered parking | Anything metal you do not want to remove at security, belts and coin filled pockets will slow you down |
Getting there and through security
Courthouse hours are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Metered parking is available in the lot at the corner of Washington and Eugene Streets, with a city parking deck one block away on Green Street as a backup if that lot is full. Everyone who is not a courthouse employee goes through a metal detector at the entrance, the same as airport security in spirit: wallets, belts, and metal items go in a bin. Arriving by 9:15 or so gives you a comfortable buffer for screening and finding the courtroom before the 10 a.m. start.
Once you're inside the courtroom
You are there as a member of the public, not a participant, so you will not be able to speak or ask questions during the hearing. Standard courtroom conduct applies: dress reasonably, silence your intentions to talk entirely once the judge is on the bench, no reacting audibly to what is said, and follow the bailiff's instructions on where to sit. Seating for a high interest hearing like this one can fill up, so earlier is better.
Want to double check anything before Monday? The NC eCourts Portal is free, requires no account for a basic search, and works around the clock, search by case number 26CV014985-400 under "Search Hearings" to see the calendar yourself.
5. Review the current budget yourself
The full adopted budget document is posted at the city's Adopted Budget page. Reading the source document beats reading any summary, including this one.
Questions worth asking
- Why did the version of the budget adopted on June 16 differ from the version presented at the public hearing, and would a second hearing have been possible given the SB 889 timeline?
- How much room occupancy tax revenue did the city collect from short term rentals in the last fiscal year, and how is that revenue allocated?
- Would Greensboro support the pending state proposal to require two public hearings before budget adoption?
- What would it take for the city to publish proposed and amended budget versions online with a plain language summary of what changed between them?
Greensboro's strength has always been its neighborhoods and the people willing to show up for each other, whether that is at a Porchfest, a City Council meeting, or a courthouse. Cities genuinely need revenue to function, and this year's revaluation moratorium put every North Carolina city in an unusual, compressed timeline. Understanding how the process actually works, and where residents have real leverage to ask questions, is worth more than picking a side before the July 20 hearing even happens.
Sources
- Greensboro News and Record, coverage of the July 10 TRO ruling
- FOX8 WGHP, budget adoption coverage
- WFMY News 2, budget adoption coverage
- City of Greensboro official budget announcement
- Rhino Times, budget adoption coverage
- North Carolina General Assembly, Senate Bill 889 bill history
- Guilford County official update on SB 889
- UNC School of Government, SB 889 and FY2027 budget adoption analysis
- General Statute 159-12, budget hearing requirement
- UNC School of Government, pending bill on two hearing requirement
- North Carolina Constitution, Article I
- CBS17, Cary budget coverage
- 828 News Now, Asheville budget coverage
- GV Wire, Fresno open meetings ruling
- WFMY News 2, city vendor count of Greensboro short term rentals
- Granicus, Host Compliance product page
- Airbtics, Greensboro Airbnb listing and revenue data, October 2025
- Airbtics, Greensboro Airbnb listing and revenue data, November 2024
- General Statute 105-164.4, accommodation sales tax and 90 day exemption
- General Statute 160A-215, municipal room occupancy tax authorization
- UNC School of Government, Occupancy Tax 101
- Session Law 1983-988, Guilford County occupancy tax
- Session Law 1989-39, occupancy tax amendment
- Session Law 1991-22, Greensboro city occupancy tax and Coliseum financing
- Greensboro/Guilford County Tourism Development Authority, FY2026 budget ordinance
- Guilford County, Tourism Development Authority board information
- Hartzman v. City of Greensboro, Case Filings, shared by George Hartzman
- NC eCourts Portal, official hearing calendar for case 26CV014985-400
- Governor Cooper, Superior Court appointment announcement for Tonia Cutchin
- Governor Stein, Superior Court appointment announcement for Lisa Johnson-Tonkins
- Greensboro News and Record, on Johnson-Tonkins' appointment and family background
- Yvonne Johnson biography
- Marikay Abuzuaiter biography
- General Statute 160D-109, conflicts of interest in zoning decisions
- UNC School of Government, Conflicts of Interest guidance
- UNC School of Government, Bias and Conflicts of Interest in Land Use Decisions
- General Statute 160D-108, vested rights
- City of Greensboro, FY2023-24 Tourism Development Authority budget notice
- Tourism Development Authority, FY2024-25 budget notice
- Guilford County, Annual Comprehensive Financial Report
- Greensboro News and Record, Mayor Vaughan on state STR lobbying
- OpenSecrets, American Hotel and Lodging Association lobbying profile
- OpenSecrets, Airbnb federal and state lobbying spending
Want more on the numbers behind your own tax bill? Read Greensboro FY 2027 Budget Explained and browse more posts on the Joy Watson Real Estate blog. For the local professionals I trust for everything from plumbing to insurance, visit my Preferred Vendors page.
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