Month: June 2006

  • Summer Soulstice

    I’ll be off-line for awhile. By the time I return Chapel Hill will probably have a new town manager, I will have been appointed to zero or more additional advisory boards and Chapel Hillian’s – especially those on the wrong-side of the digital-divide – hopefully, will have a new muni-networking task force to take that […]

  • Copyright Comic Book

    Local IndyWeek reporter Fiona Morgan covers the story of a “copyright comic” in the tech-oriented magazine Wired. Fair-use is an important tool for online activisim, as is copyright. Many online authors, for instance, use a Creative Commons content license to ensure widest dissemination of their message. To make the issue a bit more digestable, three […]

  • Haven’t we heard that before?

    Council once again reviewed local businessman Michael Rosenberg’s (Health Decisions Inc.) Meadowmont palace Castalia. Castalia is a proposed mixed-use building, currently sited prominently in Meadowmont. Tonight’s discussion focused on visibility. Councilman Cam Hill gave a bit of a mixed message, saying in part that if the building really would be as hard to see from […]

  • Free Gas

    I asked the Council to look into LFG two years ago and then made it part of my environmental proposals for the 2005 Council campaign. Recently, UNC has suggested using the old 35 acre Horace Williams landfill site to produce clean energy for Carolina North. Now, from the June 17th Chapel Hill News, comes this […]

  • Town Manager Stegall?

    I’m impressed with what I’ve read by and about Sean Stegall. With Sean we have a candidate for town manager that celebrates openness, wants to make community a cornerstone of his efforts and recognizes Chapel Hill’s need for some “conflict resolution”. He has a flexible management-style – a trust in the folk working at all […]

  • Session closed under North Carolina General Statute 143-318.11(a)(6)

    OrangePolitics (OP) is covering Council’s (injudicious?) final sprint to hire a new manager. OP’s Ruby Sinreich commented June 2nd on the quick narrowing of the field to a handful of white males. Robert Peterson, June 5th, put on his tin foil hat and, I believe with some accuracy, laid out a scenario where one of […]

  • 7:30am Wake Up Call for Downtown Partnership Members

    Are you an early morning person? Interested in Downtown’s evolution? Like to interact with political heavy-hitters? Chapel Hill’s Downtown Partnership, a confederation of UNC, Town and business interests, is looking for two new members. ALL CALL The Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership has two available board positions beginning July 1, 2006. The first is a Town […]

  • Council’s Conflict of Interest? Maybe just a slight edge….

    Following up on my earlier post on RAM Development’s “425 Hillsborough Street” 335 condo megaplex, today’s HeraldSun reports: Foy acknowledged that a good prior experience with the town might give a developer a slight edge. “If we’ve had a good experience in the past, then we might know we can negotiate in good faith,” he […]

  • Council’s Conflict of Interest?

    RAM Development, our town’s partner in an increasingly troubling downtown development project, is now looking to build the largest condominium project in Chapel Hill’s history. Sited along Hillsborough Rd. on the current Townhouse Apartment parcel, the project would include 335 condos in 6 story blocks. Without a site proposal, it’s hard to envision how such […]

  • How low can Moeser go? Transit, transportation and parking lots.

    [UPDATE:] Please excuse the draft of this post, with broken links, that was earlier erroneously posted. During my 2005 Council run, I was advised by “folks in the political know” that my optimistic call to UNC to put their 2003 Carolina North development plans aside and start anew would fall on deaf ears. “Don’t waste […]

  • One nation controlled by the medium…

    Those who control the present control the past. Those who control the past control the future. – Orwell, author 1984 Those who control our modern means of communication are free to manipulate the past, recast the present and shape the future. Powerful, greedy, immoral – the masters of our converging media/medium empires already trample heavily […]

  • Greene on Ending Chronic Homelessness in Orange County

    Council member Sally Greene is passionately pursuing a ten year plan to end local homelessness. Her participation, along with other valiant volunteers, gives me hope that the goal is achievable. Tonight, she reports on the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness’ efforts. Of note, they’ve agreed to “emphasize the chronically homeless in our planning (but […]

  • Hedgehog & Fox: Mayor Foy Honors Robert Brown

    Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy wrote a nice piece for the IndyWeek on friend and local civil rights activist Robert Brown. I’m not sure whether Robert Brown was a hedgehog or a fox, but I know that he thought about it. He probably had an opinion, although I never asked him which he thought he […]

  • 06/06/06 Hill Hail Hell

    When: 6:06PM, 06/06/06. Where: Mid-town Chapel Hill. What: Horizontal sheets of blueberry-size hail. A rapid moving storm front dumped up to an inch of pea to blueberry size hail in our yard. Not wanting to bike MLK in a tonight’s downpour, I called my wife for a ride home. While on the phone with her, […]

  • The N&O on Internet Time

    Acknowledging the futility of broadly (and blandly) reporting stock and bond closing prices, today the N&O announced: “Starting Tuesday, The News & Observer is changing the way it provides information on the stock market.” The good news? They plan to deepen and expand both local coverage and general analysis. I’ve been wondering how long the […]