Citizen Will

Month: March 2007

  • Lot #5 Downtown Development: Do you smell gas?

    As we know, There are known knowns. There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say we know there are some things We do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don’t know we don’t know. — Donanld Rumsfeld, Feb. 12, 2002, […]

  • Lincoln Center Arts Program Needs a New Home

    Karen Fisher’s Feb. 21st letter to the Chapel Hill News: The Lincoln Arts Center has to find a new home or risk closing its door permanently. The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools administrative offices will be expanding into the space that the Lincoln Arts Center pottery studio has leased for 30 years. Chapel Hill is in […]

  • NCWARN to Shearon-Harris: Come on Baby Light My Fire! Not!

    Following up on my Sep. 2006 post “Shearon-Harris Offline: Who tripped over the wire?”, the North Carolina Waste Awareness and Reduction Network (NCWARN) is holding another public hearing Mar. 22nd, 2007 on the 14 years of fire violations at the Shearon-Harris nuclear plant. FIRE VIOLATIONS AT SHEARON HARRIS NUCLEAR PLANT Thursday, March 22nd, 7pm The […]

  • Trash Talk: Waste Not Methane, Want Not Energy – Additional SWAB Conversations

    To try to get the conversation caught up to date (and put the notes in a format Google, Yahoo, etc. will index), I’m republishing the further conversations the Orange County Solid Waste Advisory Board (SWAB) has had on land fill gas utilization. Current membership (as of January 2007) and contact list for the SWAB includes: […]

  • Trash Talk: Waste Not Methane, Want Not Energy, A Few Examples

    I quoted in my post Trash Talk: 1 Megawatt of Waste Not Methane, Want Not Energy… a February, 2006 GeoTimes report titled Recovering Landfill Gas for Energy. Two of the authors, Amarjit Riat and Wayne Blake-Hedges work just North of us at Virginia’s Fairfax County I-95 landfill complex [MAP & INFO]: Riat, a professional engineer, […]

  • Trash Talk: 1 Megawatt of Waste Not Methane, Want Not Energy, April’s SWAB Report Reveals Opportunity

    To flesh out my earlier post “Trash Talk: Waste Not Methane, Want Not Energy” here’s a few comments from the April 6th, 2006 Orange County Solid Waste Advisory Board (SWAB). There’s a few inline comments demarcated by [CitizenWill:…]. Landfill Gas Preliminary Report (discussed after item 1) Tipton [BJ Tipton – member ] states that other […]

  • iRack

    Another back and forth between Orange County Democrats over the Iraq debacle, local Representative Price’s efforts to scale it back and the party’s local leadership communicating that effectively (OrangePolitics Art on Weaver and Nudge Price, No More War Funding). On the cusp of Bush’s Iraq “surge” the moment has come for the Democratic Party, and […]

  • UNC’s Carolina North Lurches Ahead

    [UPDATE] Allison Gunn posted the same notice over on OP, with this additional note: “For further information about campaigns to alter the development, see the Friends of Bolin Creek website: www.bolincreek.org” . Also, I contacted Tiffany Clarke to see if they could video the proceedings. She’s currently looking into that – maybe the folks at […]

  • Mar. 25th: Community Gang Awareness Presentation

    “An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.” During last year’s WCHL 1360 [mp3] forum I suggested our community would be better served by allocating our tight police resources more to gang awareness and remediation than parading (or Segwaying) up and down Franklin St. Sometime soon after thhe Police Department was awarded […]

  • Trash Talk: Systematic is the New Watchword

    The commissioners asked county staff to do a more exhaustive search of sites, citing solid waste management director Gayle Wilson’s statement that the process of looking for a transfer station site hadn’t been as “systematic” as previous searches for landfill space. From today’s N&O report on last night’s (Mar. 13th) BOCC meeting. After reviewing the […]

  • Municipal Networking: St. Cloud Soars Above Chapel Hill

    As longtime readers and local voters know, I’m a strong advocate for bringing community-owned information infrastructure to Chapel Hill. Simply, to create a truly free new Town Commons benefiting our citizenry. I’ve been working the issue now for over three years – banging the drum of strategic economic stimulus, social improvement – bridging the “digital […]

  • Easthom Update on Chapel Hill WiFi

    In case you don’t subscribe to Council member Laurin Easthom’s ‘blog The Easthom Page, she has an update on some possible forward motion on implementing a municipal network. Updated staff report on wireless with council discussion is tentative but hopeful for April 23. Such a report will be pretty inclusive and give us the staff’s […]

  • Chapel Hill’s Public Forum on Information Technology

    If you would like to see our Town use technology to more effectively address social issues, improve operational efficiencies and drive the cost of doing government business down, then make a date to attend the rescheduled Public Forum on Information Technology 7-9pm Mar. 21st, 2007. The event will be held in the Conference Room of […]

  • Robert Seymour: UNC HealthCare Ombudsman?

    Last Oct. 14th, 2006 Kirk Ross (Carrboro Citizen) first reported on Rev. Robert Seymour’s appointment as a citizen advocate to UNC’s HealthCare system board. As I noted then (A Healthy Sign, Robert Seymour Appointed to UNC Health Care Board) it was fabulous news. This morning, the UNC Board of Governors approved the appointment of Rev. […]

  • Trash Talk: Waste Not Methane, Want Not Energy

    One of the “planks” I ran on for Town Council involved inculcating a conservationist ethic within our local government. Besides practicing energy efficiency (Leather Seated SUVs), I suggested we could start using both energy recovery and decentralized energy production technologies to help make our Town’s operations more sustainable and economical. One such technology is methane […]