Monthly Archives: October 2006

ChapelHill, CitizenWill, Community, Ruminations, Transportation

Chapel Watch, Larkspur Connector Kibosh

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Developers and neighbors don’t always see eye to eye but sometimes they do

Caught between neighbors’ wishes and town policy, the developers of Chapel Watch Village off Eubanks Road have sided with the neighbors.

N&O

Larkspur connectivity was a big deal in last year’s Council race. A candidate (now council member) even tried to duck discussing alternatives (not surprisingly, the same candidate, who “came around” during the race has been awful quiet on ensuing developments).

I support an appropriate level of connectivity between neighborhoods but inflexibly applying our town’s policy in every case to preserve some concept of absolute consistency makes no sense.

As Larkspur neighborhood activist Dmetra Vlachos of Larkspur Safety First observes

“It’s more than a simple connection between two residential neighborhoods because of the commercial activities,” Vlachos said Thursday at a public information session on the Chapel Watch project. “It goes beyond an issue of simple connectivity.”

N&O

Why does this go beyond simple connectivity? As today’s News and Observer article outlines

Her group formed last year to protest the extension of Maywood Way in Chapel Watch, which they say would create a cut-through from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Weaver Dairy Road to a planned Town Operations Center and other big employers along Eubanks Road.

Some of my strongest supporters were Larkspurians – I told them I’d keep an eye on this issue until it was satisfactorily resolved.

Though not a done deal, as of today, they’re well on their way to getting an acceptable solution.

Hey, maybe they can get that council member I mentioned earlier to jump on board and help shepherd this initiative through the several committees he serves on as Council representative.

CitizenWill, Community, LocalPolitics, OrangeCounty, Ruminations

Wonk Heaven: Discussion on BOCC to Max Debt Capacity with County Campus

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Yes, local forum SqueezeThePulp often loses its value when “noise drowns signal” and discussions devolve into vitriolic snarkiness (of which, I admit, I have cast a stone or two).

Sometimes, though, there’s a hopeful sign that this “alternative to OrangePolitics” online community is growing in maturity and utility.

A case in point, a Mark Peter’s spawned thread on the recent Board of Commissioner decisions potentially harming our county’s debt rating. The thread, BOCC to Max Debt Capacity with County Campus, draws contributions from former OWASA board member TerriB and apophthegmatic Brian D. Voyce on governmental debt service, debt ceiling and debt oversight.

I believe most residents of Chapel Hill haven’t internalized the consequences of our current long-term financial obligations, the impact of a reduced bond rating and the imprudence of further acquisition of unnecessary debt.

Simply, bonds aren’t “free money” and we’re going to have “to pay the piper” sooner (and greater) than most folks understand.

BTW, TerriB has an interesting rant on public meetings that’s worth a quick check.

CitizenWill, CivilLiberties, Community, Government, Ruminations

Greensboro’s Chief Problem: Transparency?

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One of the more interesting aspects of Greensboro’s Chief Wray debacle involves a report (the RMA) prepared by outside consultants for internal consumption by Greensboro’s leadership. Questions swirl around both the legality of releasing the full report on the conditions leading to Wray’s firing and the public necessity of those revelations.

A number of GSO bloggers, current ‘blogger and former Council candidate Dave Hoggard for instance, have called for a redacted version to be released. As the Hogg points out,

After reading the whole thing I’m convinced our City Council should call a meeting and vote to release at least the first 31 pages of the report (Section 1).   From my non-legal view, that section of the report confirms Bledsoe’s Rhino reported investigations and presents all of the justification needed for the public to understand why David Wray is no longer employed as our Chief of Police.

Others, like Greensboro’s newest ‘blogger (but longtime commenter), The Conservative Alternative, question the assertions that legal action can and will be taken against GSO ‘bloggers publishing the report “in toto”. The grounds for doing so, at least based on her/his analysis, seem pretty shaky.

My interest is more than academic. As a local citizen working on governance issues, the extent to which I can publish or provide documentation of governmental malfeasance hinges on the legal determinations at play in cases like those exposed by Greensboro’s RMA report.

This is one of the reasons I support the Electronic Frontier Foundation and their efforts to preserve and protect the online community’s First Amendment rights.

ChapelHill, CitizenWill, Community, Media, Ruminations

Greensboro’s Chief Problem

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An update from Ed Cone on my reference to the release of a report on Greensboro’s Chief Wray, his behavior in managing his department, and the eventual breaking of trust between him and the Council. The fall and rise and fall of the leaders of Greensboro’s police force are well documented in Jerry Bledsoe’s Rhino Times series (nicely collated by Ed).

Why do I care about what goes on Greensboro?

To learn how a community, a government and individuals within both groups grapple with a serious and controversial problem. The crux of Wray’s problem appears to have been trust – the lack thereof…

I’ve also followed last year’s Durham City Manager debacle and this year’s Durham DA’s handling of the Duke lacrosse case for a similar reason: to learn how leaders, elected or otherwise, and “lowly” citizens grapple with crippling problems at the highest echelon of their civic structures.

What will I do with Greensboro’s and Durham’s “lessons well-learned”? Well, I believe it has helped sharpen my understanding of internal politics within a governmental organization, helped me focus on the relevant and salient actions of those at the top and, I hope this never happens, helped prepare me, an individual citizen, to step-forward and work with others to sort out similar messes should they ever occur in Chapel Hill.

BTW, it was nice seeing Greensboro’s ‘blogging Council rep Sandy Carmany yesterday at ConvergeSouth. Her community outreach, including her comments on the Chief Wray case, set a standard for elected officials.

Ruminations

ConvergeSouth 2006 – Wrap Up

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[UPDATE]

Back from a great meal at Ganache. Fantastic conversations with quite a few participants, GerryC, Anglico, SouthernDem, MisterSugar, Josh, Zabouti, Pam, AE, DB, Ed Cone, Anonymoses and so many others. A highpoint of the day was hearing during dinner the incredible backstory of local ‘blogger Serbian Bora Coturnix – Red-State Serbian Jewish atheist liberal PhD student posting on BlogAroundTheClock. It started with his narrow escape just one week from pre-war Yugoslavia. Bora’s story was initiated by Philly.com’s Daniel Rubin Blinq tale of high journalistic adventure following the fall of Milosovich.

It also appears the GSO “secret report” on police chief Wray’s discharge is out in the public domain. A very interesting story in civic discourse. Dave Hoggard says “What I can tell you is the report is complete, disturbing and damning and city manager Mitch Johnson did what had to be done.” Wow! Strong stuff.

More starting here.

[ORIGINAL POST]

Ed Cone starts by announcing that the “confidential” report floating around Greensboro about their police force will surface on a ‘blog sometime today. A special add-on session is being proposed for after the wrap-up to discuss the release.

As far as ConvergeSouth (and I haven’t eaten yet), it’s been fun but there are a couple criticisms I’ve heard from more than a few folks – criticisms I share of what was basically a good conference.

One, that there wasn’t enough “UN” in this unconference. Folks, including myself, were surprised that room wasn’t made for more ad hoc sessions (at BarcampRDU – time and space was allocated for sessions that each person had to pitch to the whole group).

Two, that while last year there were too many interesting sessions concurrently scheduled, this year it felt a bit threadbare.

There was some excellent give-n-take during the sessions, so some of the “UN” was restored.

If one thing comes out of this years ConvergeSouth, I hope it’s the bit of “social networking” I facilitated during the MySpace session results in an under-served GSO community getting free gear and free access.

Now, off to some beer and then dinner. I’ll follow up with any interesting tidbits coming out of our dinner with Ed Cone.

My dinner partners:

Community, Ruminations, Technology

ConvergeSouth 2006 – Social Networking, MySpace

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Walked in on Bora Coturnix ( BlogAroundTheClock ) discussing his use of MySpace to identify folk by common Yugoslavian last names and then reach out through th “Add to Friend” function of MySpace to contact them…

Nearly every one contacted joined. He goes on to describe, given the youth of those folks responding, how his profile makes it absolutely clear he’s 40 years-old, a parent, a husband and not some freakish MySpace stalker.

OK, this post got lost in the ether. I’m reconstructing from memory.

Several comments on privacy on social networks. Jen – “as soon as you put your private information in it becomes public…”

Ed Cone – taught kids to treat the ‘net like the local mall – your kids know not to wander off with strangers – real problem is folks don’t understand that interacting on the ‘net is just like the “real” world…

Audience member – it isn’t like the “real” world…when someone is reviewing a college grads history they probably know there’s a good chance that person had been drunk once or twice – that’s OK – it doesn’t disqualify them – BUT if a picture of them drunk shows up on MySpace – that’s it….

Moderator starts a digression on rural Internet access up Edenton way…”there should be an effort like rural electrification to bring Internet to everyone” – I point out that the telcos have been collecting surcharges since 1996 (specified in the 1996 Telecommunications Act) but that they hadn’t fulfilled their obligation and squandered 100’s of billion dollars. I mentioned our Chapel Hill effort to create a muni-network – to bridge the digital divide. A professor at NC A&T asks “what about computers?” I mention that it’s connectivity not computers that we’re short of – that we’re awash in cast-off computers. She says “I want those computers”. Turns out she was part of an organization of 90 GSO churches trying to get computers into the community. They’d tried everything.

Cool thing happens. Several GSO tech people jump in and offer to coordinate getting free gear and free access for her group! There’s about a 10 minute side-bar where various GSO folk do a quick ad hoc plan to make things happen.

I kid the group saying “for the young folk, what you just saw was some old-style social networking”. I really hope the GSO folk rise to the challenge.

Moderator steers the discussion back to social networks. Anonymity, privacy and identity discussion ensues.

Moderator: as soon as everyone can log into MySpace a bunch of “illegal immigrants will flood the MySpace nation” . Audience picks up on dilutive effect of opening flood gates – diminishment of special quality of MySpace.

Student: While she was working with Turner (? Broadcasting) this summer they had their interns search MySpace to report back on prospective employment candidates. They farmed out the job to students because the company didn’t have direct access to MySpace [kind of sleazy, ethically questionable on the company’s part].

Pretty good session. I had more notes that got truncated. Hopefully someone else took good notes.

Community, Ruminations, Technology

ConvergeSouth 2006 – Building a Media Culture within the News Organization

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A room chock-full of “real” journalists. Followed by media/PR consultants and then a sprinkling of citizen activists.

So far, introductions.

Local political whiz, former Council member, Gerry C is here – I look forward to meeting him face to face.

Anglico (Jim Protzman) and SouthernDem are here for BlueNC. SouthernDem is a great, citizen journalist.

Zabouti (George Entemann) , Kirk Ross (ExileOnJonesStreet), GSO’s Lex Alexander, Dave Hoggard (Hogg’s Blog) – former GSO Council candidate and now general pain-in-the-side of the current GSO political apparatchik.

It’ll be interesting to see if the conversations are dominated by the producer-side (media/journalism side of the house) or the consumer-side (folks like myself, the BlueNC’rs, etc.)

Ed Cone – the people that own news organizations are not interested in putting out high-quality journalism – the people working there want the highest quality product but are stymied by the “business”-side of journalism

WillR – “not here to kill traditional journalism” – want to strengthen journalistic institutions. I added my rant on how limiting the community’s access to their story – access to the “long tail” (i.e. paywalled archives of former articles) only serves to weaken the institution.

Jim P. (Anglico) – who watches the watchers – he jumps in on the benefit of ‘blogs as watchdogs of the journalistic institution.

Allen Robinson (N&R) – on managing comments on the N&R – starts with story on how the SBI contacted him ecause a commenter had threatened to blow up the civil rights memorial – moves on to comments in general – Mr. Sun argues they have an overly bureaucratic approach to managing comments – Allen argues that it requires too much staff time to weed out vulgarities or “name calling” – Mr. Sun can’t believe that they spend as much time – that they need to open up comments

The audience joins in an speaks about “wisdom of crowds” type solutions to the comment problem.

Democratic Underground approach of putting a “think button” on their blog to let the community notify the admins of questionable content. Allen says their email would overflow. I think of Slashcode that runs Slashdot – it allows the community to vote comments up-or-down based on the community’s own standards (and also a peppering of “special” designated users). I suggested this to John Hood of the John Locke Foundation last year when he expressed concern about allowing folks to call out his Pope supported think-tank on their own website. I suggested that the critical mass of their “type” readers could squelch dissent quite fine 😉

Kirk Ross – the business of journalism is not willing to fund R&D – every other type business invests money in developing new technology and strategies to meet change head-on – traditional media organizations, especially print, is not willing to invest money or time in developing methods to deal with new trends.

Killian –

Doug Fisher – newsrooms are manufacturing operations – Allen is talking cost not profit – the big hump is to understand they’re in a service business not a manufacturing business….journalism is a cottage industry…
newspapers as aggregators…

Audience – comments as profit centers – some newspapers take the LTE’s and online comments – put them on paper – wrap them in ads and turn them into profit centers

Fisher – let’s change the term from newspaper to newsroom – newspaper implies manufacturing

Wendy – driving attention to your site – do a stunt – get on Romanesko – get A-listers to jump in – “money,stroking,money,stroking” – when the hits go through the roof your publisher might pay attention [ I think it might take the ‘blog-o-sphere breaking a story and making lucre on it time after time before they’ll pay attention]

Gerry – he knows that politicos read ‘blog entries, comments, etc. and send them on to their staff to find out about – that this new medium is having current and direct influence on the political sphere…

Audience – “we’ve been dealing with this since the days of Compuserve” – there’s been this tension with commenting for a long time – moderated vs. unmoderated discussion groups – the group that would succeed was the one with the highest “signal-to-noise” ratio.

John Hall – John Locke rep. – newspapers aren’t interested in local content – reporting what the community wants – instead they report/print what the editor wants…

Roche – problem with purchasing ads online – email Roanoke Rapids paper publisher couldn’t get a rate card, took weeks to get rate cards from others, Charlotte.com turned it around right away – someone in the audience comments “they must like making money” – utility of ‘net escapes folks that are interested in profit but don’t how to understand monetization…

Community, Ruminations, Technology

ConvergeSouth 2006 – Elizabeth Edwards

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First session of ConvergeSouth just wrapped. So far the “UN” part of conference hasn’t really kicked in…probably too early on a Saturday morning to do total engagement.

I had the opportunity to be the first non-“Ed Cone” questioner of Elizabeth. I put a tough one to her, asking if she had had a conversation with her communities on the “monetization” problem. Specifically, with her book, etc. , had she discussed with her online communities the fine line between commercialization/monetization and activating her community.

I believe her motives online have been “pure and true” , as I told her, but it surprised me that she hadn’t thought to broach the subject – especially considering her high-profile book campaign – with her communities.

More thoughts later – moving on to “Creating a NORG” – a new news organization staffed mainly with News Record journalist.

ChapelHill, Community, Ruminations, UNC

A Healthy Sign, Robert Seymour Appointed to UNC Health Care Board

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From Kirk Ross’ ExileOnJonesStreet, the fabulous news that UNC Health Care is beginning to take action to live within their charter and restore some humanity to their service delivery mission:

This morning, the UNC Board of Governors approved the appointment of Rev. Bob Seymour, who served as minister of Binkley Baptist for 30 years, to the UNC Health Care board. Seymour was picked for the post by UNC President Erskine Bowles after complaints about the hospital system’s treatment of elderly patients and agressive collection tactics. Bowles agreed with petitioners that a citizen rep was needed on the board.

You might remember Bob’s comments on the aging of Orange County from my recent post Robert Seymour on Our Community’s Fit, Frail and Fragile

More from Kirk.

[UPDATE]

Kind of a bookend to this report from today’s N&O Under the Dome:

Much to the chagrin of the state-supported UNC Health Care system’s critics, the budget year that ended June 30, 2006, yielded a financial windfall for health system managers.

The UNC system paid out more than $2.5 million in bonuses based on financial performance, achievement of quality benchmarks and employee and patient satisfaction.

Health system chief executive Dr. William L. Roper led the pack with a bonus of $110,010. UNC Hospitals CEO Gary Park wasn’t far behind with a $103,632 bonus. Dr. Marschall Runge, president of the UNC physician practice, received a bonus of $101,246.

Scores of lower level managers received bonuses ranging from about $1,300 to awards in the tens of thousands of dollars. Bonuses are based partly on the health system’s financial performance, partly on quality and partly on employee and patient satisfaction.

How about this? Let’s keep the mega-bonuses down for the top administrators while folks are going without health care and the pay for the average UNC Health Care worker underwhelms.

ChapelHill, CitizenWill, Community, Ruminations, UNC

Two Neighborhoods Revisited, Church St. Mugging Victim Recovering

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Not quite sure where on Church St. Eric Dawkins was when he was assaulted but the location caught my eye reading Wednesday’s Chapel Hill News police blotter. According to the blotter, the two attackers (since described as two black males, 5′ 10″ wearing black hoodies) beat Dawkins when he resisted and then fled in a light colored sedan.

I work on the corner of Church and Franklin streets – this feels close to home. Last year I wrote a post, Two Neighborhoods, about safety on my corner of downtown – and the difference between my perception and others (like my Aveda neighbors).

Since then the town has increased police patrols downtown. But, between the recent rash of car break-ins, assaults and this third gun-related crime in a month, one wonders if we’re seeing a trend that belies my old assertion that downtown is basically safe.

I hope not.

The good news is Eric is recovering from his pistol whipping.

Community, Government, Media, Orthogonal, Ruminations, Technology

ConvergeSouth 2006

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I really enjoyed Greensboro’s first ‘blog-con ConvergeSouth, an “unconference” that attracted quite a few interesting and/or notorious folks. Good conversation (no surprise as Anton “Mr. Sugar” points out that ‘bloggers are usually good conversationalist), good food and a chance to learn by interaction.

Tomorrow’s promises to be even better.

Elizabeth Edwards will keynote on “Building On-line Communities”. I imagine she’ll be talking about her just released book Saving Graces and her experiences ‘blogging on One America Committee‘s ‘blog.

Beyond that, there’s an interesting list of other “known” guests.

I plan to get some feedback from the news-oriented folk on how to break the perma-link mess our local ‘blog community has with the HeraldSun and News Observer.

ChapelHill, Government, MunicipalNetworking, Ruminations, Technology

Easthom, Stancil Breath a Little Life Back into Municipal Network Initiative

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From Council member Laurin Easthom’s ‘blog The Easthom Page:

At our last council meeting, I read the above history of wireless in town, and gave our new town manager, Roger Stancil, the opportunity to begin a process. He appointed a staff committee headed by Flo Miller to keep the process alive in exploring a municipal wireless system within the context of a technology master plan. Additionally at that meeting, when the Town was discussing the timing of the fiber optic traffic signal system, Kevin Foy reminded David Bonk of our desire to study and consider the laying of fiber along with our upgraded system (for a possible future municipal broadband network backbone.) Now we have a council discussion of wireless and our master technology plan scheduled to be on our agenda at our next council meeting.

Phew! After a recent discussion with some local citizens about the majority of Council’s rather tepid and slow response to reconstituting the municipal networking initiative, I was ready to join with Laurin and start beating the drum for both a exploratory task force and a renewed effort to implement a strategic technology plan for our town.

Looks like Laurin went ahead without me 😉

She also reports that Mayor Foy hasn’t forgotten our strategic opportunity to “tag-a-long” with NC-DOT’s efforts to lay fibre to each of our nearly 100 signalized intersections. This community-owned high-speed networking loop would thread its way through every commercial district, lie along almost every University boundary and penetrate deeply into several underserved residential areas.

Long time followers of my efforts to promote municipal networking will remember that former town Technology Board member Terri Buckner and I focused attention on this once in decades opportunity nearly 3 years ago.

Thank you Laurin for keeping hope alive.

Monday’s agenda will be published here.

Carrboro, ChapelHill, CitizenWill, CivilLiberties, Community, LocalPolitics, Ruminations

Here comes the judge: The Forum – Anderson’s Question

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Chuck Anderson asks how the current system for selecting our judges (by election) might be modified to better serve the public.

Carl Fox and Chuck Anderson were omitted because I ran out of juice for my camera.

And then the last of my batteries went kaput. I apologize to Carl and Chuck for not capturing their last answers of the evening. My notes of their answers:

Fox – appellate selection – most current appelate judges haven’t served as superior judges, electing of judges then have a retention election

Anderson – unlikely we can change the way NC selects judges – legislative actions – how many folks of high quality are discouraged form running? the current system kind of screens out good candidates – don’t want to expose themselves to election – %85 of electorate (Timson) doesn’t know candidates or issues in current election….

Carrboro, ChapelHill, CitizenWill, CivilLiberties, Community, Government, Ruminations

Here comes the judge: The Forum – Fox’s Question

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Carl Fox starts with the observation that 9 out of 10 people sitting in his court audience are young African-American males.

“What are we doing wrong that is causing so many males to end up in court and what can we do to fix the situation?”