Month: January 2011

  • Comprehensive Plan Refresh, A New Toolbox

    Probably the best Council comment during Monday’s Comprehensive Plan discussion came from Ed Harrison. Ed, who often relates how his neighborhood straddles the Orange/Durham county border, explained how Durham has newly integrated a set of tools in its comprehensive plan to guide both developers and staff. The effort was spurred, Ed said, primarily by the […]

  • AAA Bond Rating: Don’t Bet Against Clemson

    Chapel Hill’s AAA bond rating is noteworthy. The care our elected folks have taken to maintain it over a decade laudable. But is it fair to say, as Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt did yesterday, “it is almost, but not quite, as rare for a town our size to have a AAA rating by Standard & Poor’s […]

  • Comprehensive Plan – Compromise or Consensus?

    Last night Mike Collins and George Cianciolo (current and former heads of the Planning Board) laid out an interesting plan of action to move the Town’s planning process forward. Most importantly, they underlined the need for a more measurable, nuanced plan that works as an adjunct to the current Comprehensive Plan. Their plan also emphasized […]

  • Affordable Housing – Preferences and/or Priorities

    Big agenda this evening. I also commented on the proposal for creating a range of housing options as a consequence of implementing the inclusionary zoning ordinance. Other folks commenting included Anita Badrock, Operations Manager of the Community Home Trust and Rob Reda, the local director of Habitat for Humanity. For the last 6 years, I […]

  • Comprehensive Plan Refresh, Long Overdue

    The former and current Planning Board chairs made a concerted call for a long overdue refresh of the Town’s Comprehensive Plan. This refresh and elaboration on the existing plan is long overdue. I started calling for a re-evaluation 6 years ago when the original plan had an already scheduled a review of the underlying assumptions […]

  • Parking Confusion

    Once again an item with significant budget implications appeared on the consent agenda. This evening’s dealt with buying 40 more pay stations to finish covering Downtown’s on-street spots and increasing the cost of parking %25 to $1.25 an hour. The discussion has been rather disturbing because two efforts have been conflated: the staff led Downtown […]

  • Purest Form of Democracy: Raging Grannies to the Fore

    First big meeting of 2011 and, pre-meeting, an example of how Chapel Hill’s community expresses democracy in one of the purest forms as ten Raging Grannies filed in singing “We will not be moved…”. They and about 20 other supporters are here to remind Council that concerns over the Clark-Bigelow dismissal. This concerted effort sends […]