Dear Ms Ryan,

I voted for you because I saw you as an earnest and considered individual.  It appears that this impression is coming into stark focus as the Council moves toward review of the housing complex proposed at Estes and MLK from Texas-based Trinsic.

 

I returned to Chapel Hill after a 22 year absence and I continue to be mystified by a Chapel Hill that continues to grow uniquely unattractive.  My children, born and raised in Chapel Hill – both have remarked that their hometown looks and feels increasingly degraded and that they have no interest in returning.  

 

Aesthetics embodied and codified by the University have been abandoned to apartments best described as Soviet-inspired.  The Town, in its choices, appears to be encouraging a population of transients and renters, rather than home ownership and a stable citizenry.

 

Stewardship of our environment is challenged with unenforceable promises made by Trinsic—developers who will sell this project at the first opportunity. Their plan looks only to 25-year floods and will degrade a 15 acre property and surrounding neighborhoods as they distract with an argument of solar vs gas in the proposed units.  Meanwhile, the storm waters will increase and our network of creeks and streams irretrievably damaged. 

 

Chapel Hill is no longer at a crossroads, the planned damage is unfolding around us. But perhaps Town leadership could look to the original Central West Plan of 2013 that included a low density, low environmental impact proposal and stem this tide.

 

I would respectfully request that you, as a Council member and part of the Town leadership then and now, recall the Town’s official Central West Plan and its history and step away from AURA which is not the right thing to do for Chapel Hillians and the residents of the Central West area — but clearly enriching Texans.

 

Regards,

Rita M May