What! Chapel Hill isn’t the only election this year?
The League kindly allowed me to post Carrboro’s forum to googleVideo. Interesting overlap in themes this year….
Category Archives: ChapelHill
Morris Grove Elementary School
Mia Burroughs is reminding folks that they have until October 31st to help name the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools (CHCCS) newest elementary school out on Eubanks Road, near the Rogers Road neighborhood
The newest school is located adjacent to the former Morris Grove elementary school, a school created to serve the educational needs of the local black community.
The Morris Grove school was created in the late 1800s by Morris Hogan, son of a female slave and her owner. A farmer and local statesman, Hogan put his own land and money into the one-room wooden schoolhouse. The state paid the salaries of two instructors, who, depending on the decade, taught six, seven or three grades.
Patrick Winn, Chapel Hill News, Feb. 10th, 2007
Morris also had a long-standing passion for education as a passport to a better life for his own and other black children. Yet in the late 1800s, the Orange County school board had few funds for school construction and operation. To fill the void, the board sanctioned the opening of many simple, usually one-room, segregated schools that were built and operated by local individuals or groups.
Morris won permission to create the Morris Grove Elementary School, using his own land and funds, at what is now 402 Eubanks Road. It is remembered as a simple frame structure with only pump water, outdoor toilets and a Spartan interior heated by a wood stove in cold weather. Instruction for six grades was taught by one teacher. The school probably stayed in operation from the 1880s to the 1920s, until tax-based public schools took over. All of the Hogan children and some of the grandchildren attended it.
Doug Eyre, Chapel Hill News, Nov. 17th, 2006
Naming the new school Morris Grove would not only honor a slice of our community’s history but serve as an excellent educational reference point for students. Even in the supposedly progressive environs of Chapel Hill, we’re still working to bridge historical divides.
And only knowing where you’ve been can you get where you are going.
Please cast your vote in favor of Morris Grove by answering this CHCCS online survey.
Election 2007: League Of Women Voters Forum
A big thank you to the local chapter of the League of Women Voters for an excellent forum this evening. Vicki Boyer, who occasionally posts on OrangePolitics kept the show moving along with a variety of audience questions.
Unlike the Sierra Club forum, the environmental and social justice issues surrounding our neighbors out on Rogers Road (of which I have spoken about numerous times) got a fairly decent airing. The $8 million Downtown Development boondoggle merited one round.
The forum’s format, a round of answers with some opportunity for give-and-take, suited tonight’s questions. I hope the public and the local media take some time to mull over our responses.
There were a few surprises from the non-incumbents: Kevin Wolff bringing up voter-owned elections, Penny Rich suggesting punishing Downtown landlords who wouldn’t fill their storefronts, Matt Czajkowski’s excellent point that Chapel Hill has become introverted.
Of course, the incumbents tried to take credit for all the successes over the last four years while trying to dodge any responsibility or account for any of the mistakes.
Some of the successes – hiring an economic development officer, developing a strategic economic development plan, the Town’s new fiber network – were issues I brought forward first.
As far as surprises from the incumbents, I appreciated Mayor Foy’s complementary observation that I have an eye for efficiency.
Jim Ward’s bit of criticism (Incumbency Is Not Enough or Nineteen Seconds Is Too Long) about the 19 seconds I went over my time on one response provided some humor.
And Cam Hill, one of the negotiators on Lot #5, quoting a citizen outlay about $1 million short of the actual figure (CHN). I’ve been up since 6am and can understand a fumble –
hope fatigue explains his sloppy accounting.
The League graciously allowed me to assist them in posting tonight’s video on the web.
I’m preparing for upload now and expect the full video to be available by tomorrow evening (I’ll post a new article when it’s done).
Oh, and the Sierra Club has since declined my offer to post their forum on the Internet. They plan to do it themselves. I’ll keep an eye on their progress and will announce its availability.
Visions of Avalon
Last night there was an unfortunate and possibly gang-related incident at Rosemary Street’s Visions nightclub.
At approximately 1:00 a.m. this morning officers responded to a report of gun shots at Visions Night Club located at 136 E. Rosemary Street. Multiple shots were reportedly fired from a handgun by an unidentified black male suspect after a fight occurred inside. Six victims were treated for non-life threatening gunshot wounds at area hospitals. Some of the victims identified have known gang affiliations. Due to the low lighting and the confusion associated with the large crowd, the suspect exited the night club shortly after firing the shots.
Lt. Kevin Gunter, CHPD
I was relieved to hear no one suffered grave injury.
I was also struck by the timing – it was just one year ago that then Police Chief Jarvies issued this memo [PDF] enumerating the reasons for closing Avalon, a similar venue on Rosemary St. I work close to Avalon and saw the escalation of minor problems into what became the culminating event leading to its closure – the July 30th, 2006 fatal shooting of Kevdrian Swan.
This was not the first incident at Avalon or, as Chief Jarvies noted, 136 East Rosemary St., the then location of Player’s, the current location of Visions.
My first thought was: “What should we have learned from the Avalon mess? Why didn’t our Town do more to prevent another outbreak of violence?”
Chief Jarvies pointed out the Players had the second highest incidence of serious offenses. The plan was to meet with the owners of that club and try to prevent another Avalon type outcome.
Why, a year later, are we dealing at the same location with what could have been a worse tragedy? Couldn’t the Town intervene earlier? Why didn’t it?
Both citizens and the media report that problems – including violent behavior – had been escalating at Visions (and spilling over into the nearby neighborhoods). The pattern was established but the Town failed to act.
As a University town, night clubs are a act of life. The Town should be able to foresee, especially with the growing influence of gangs in the Triangle, that venues like Visions can attract a dangerous crowd. Why don’t we have a standard mechanism for working with club owners to forestall these issues? Why aren’t we monitoring these flash points?
As far as Visions, I’d like to hear more about the incident. The knee-jerk response is to call for its closure – to go into reactive mode – something our Council is quite adept at.
Since we apparently missed an opportunity to learn some lessons from Avalon, I’m asking Council to make an effort to learn from Visions. If these venues are going to be allowed to operate, we should damn well be proactive and be ready to clamp down when we see a pattern of problems developing.
I’ve supported the CHPD’s efforts to become more “gang savvy” (here’s what I said about funding on WCHL).
I called on Council to provide a little “helper” funding to help make the recent Governor’s Crime Commission grant a bit more effective (didn’t happen).
Whether I’m elected or not, I will be asking Council again to support adequate gang education for both our police force and our community. And, as I said one year ago, we need to do more than deploy officers Downtown. We need to re-balance our force to nip issues before they escalate.
That is why I’m encouraged by an objective our Town Manager set our new new police chief, Chief Curran, to “expand the community policing efforts of the department so that community policing becomes a belief system within our department”.
Finally, Office Gunter asks:
Anyone with information about the shooting, please call either the Chapel Hill Police Department at 968-2760 or Crime Stoppers at 942-7515. Calls to Crime Stoppers are confidential and anonymous, and the caller may be eligible for a cash reward up to $1,200 for information that leads to arrest.
Forewarned, supposedly, is forearmed. We obviously missed a few lessons from the Avalon mess, hopefully we won’t miss the lessons of Visions.
Hail to Our New Chief: Brian Curran Takes the Helm
[UPDATE:] Not 15 minutes went by before I got the chance to congratulate Chief Curran in person. He was making his rounds through the Northside neighborhood (I noticed him rolling around Town before – he doesn’t seem to be much of a desk jockey).
[ORIGINAL]
I’ve had an opportunity to meet Brian in a few different venues these last few months and my initial impression that he was a talented officer capable of leading our department through transitional times has only been strengthened.
When he was initially appointed to take Chief Jarvies position I did a little research and was impressed by the commitment he has shown our Town.
When Town Manager Roger Stancil cast a wide net seeking a new Chief, I was hoping that our own law enforcement folks would be considered fully. With the failure to secure Roger’s first choice (due to the candidate’s failure to pass a health exam), I was looking forward to a re-evaluation of our home team bench.
Today Roger announced the permanent appointment of Brian to Chief.
Concurrently, Roger set some specific goals that will keep Brian busy over the next couple years.
To: Mayor and Town Council
From: Roger L. Stancil, Town Manager
CC: Senior Management TeamDate: September 24, 2007
Subject: Appointment of Brian Curran as Police Chief
I am proud to appoint Brian Curran as the Chief of Police of the Town of Chapel Hill. This appointment is effective immediately.
Since April 1, 2006, when Chief Gregg Jarvies retired, Brian Curran has served as our Interim Chief. During that time, he has exhibited the qualities that our community said they wanted in a chief during a series of community focus groups. As I made my decision, I reviewed the notes of those focus groups carefully. The words they used describe the behaviors and characteristics I have seen in Brian: Fair, honest, well-rounded law enforcement experience, understanding Chapel Hill, experience with University relations, understanding of neighborhood needs and concerns, leads by example, decisive, team player, experience with managing large gatherings of people, ability to relate to everyone in the community, good manager, approachable.
Having seen those behaviors, I have decided Brian is the best person to lead our Police Department and become a part of the Town’s Senior Management Team as we work collaboratively to make Chapel Hill an even better place to live.
Brian has worked for the Town of Chapel Hill since 1982. He began work in the Parks and Recreation department. He then served as a non-sworn communications specialist with the Police Department before becoming a Public Safety Officer in 1987. He has served in various roles in the department that give him a broad view and an understanding of the department and the community. I have attached his resume for your information.
The process.
As stated above, I carefully reviewed the characteristics of a chief of police as stated by the various community, employee, management team and Town Council focus groups earlier this year. I also reviewed the matrix of leadership characteristics that evolved from those focus groups. I reviewed the remaining finalists in the original round of applications as well as the applications received since we readvertised the position in July. I assessed the behavior of Chief Curran since he became interim chief in April. I asked the interview panel from our assessment center, supplemented by other assessors, to interview him and provide feedback. Based on the behavior I observed in his interim role and the feedback from the interview panel, I determined that Brian has demonstrated the characteristics sought by our community and is the best person to lead our police department.
The charge.
I have charged Brian with the following goals:
- Assess the department, involving our employees and the community to tell us what we are doing well and where we have opportunities for improvement.
- Create a leadership development program for our officers and our non-sworn employees to develop our future leaders internally.
- Take positive steps to create a diverse command and supervisory structure that represents the various cultural faces of Chapel Hill.
- Expand the community policing efforts of the department so that community policing becomes a belief system within our department.
- Take the lead in innovation and teamwork to find solutions to community issues.
I look forward to working with Chief Curran.
As so do I, Roger. I especially like the goals Roger has set our new chief. Community policing needs to be a reflexive ethic of our department. Developing AND RETAINING our young turks will serve the Town well over the next few decades. And working to encompass the diversity of our community should make our law enforcement officers task smoother.
Congratulations Chief Curran.
Election 2007: Recycle, Reuse
Recycle and reuse are two environmental principles our local community follows fairly well. In that spirit, I believe our citizens will appreciate my putting frugality over novelty.
Signs are sprouting up around Town. Several of mine, it appears, were saved by some of my 2005 supporters and trotted out a little early. Thanks folks for showing some early enthusiasm.
My specialty, since 2001, is to round-up campaign signs after the election. No reason to clutter our road-sides after the deed is done.
In 2005, as I wrote here, I managed to pickup all but two signs of my signs by 7:21 am the day after the election – the final two by 9:30am.
I said then:
Why the quick pickup?
I said early on in my campaign, win or lose, my signs would not linger throughout our Town.
If there’s one discriminator the electorate takes away from this election, I hope they recall that I said it, then I did it.
I said it and then I did it. If you look at my activism on behalf of our community, you’ll see a clear track record of “walking my own talk”.
In 2006 I managed to pick-up over 2,000 signs (and several bags of adjacent litter – unfortunately, I’ve already filled two this year!).
Every year I offer to pickup any candidate’s sign and, once again extend that offer to everyone – my colleagues in the Town Council race – Carrboro races – the school board (contact signs AT citizenwill.org ).
It’s a fun way to do my part to keep our community attractive.
A common question I get is “Who designed your sign?”
I actually did, using a variety of free software tools – including GImp (Gnu Image Program) and OpenOffice. These are the kind of tools I’ve been asking our Town to adopt for the last six years. Using OpenOffice, for instance, would save hundreds of thousands in Microsoft licensing fees, something our Council is well aware of, something our Town continues to drag its feet doing.
Rogers Road Community’s Petition for Redress
Kirk Ross posted Neloa Jone’s request for governmental redress (“the setting right of what is wrong”) over on the Carrboro Citizen’s ‘blog:
The Rogers-Eubanks “Coalition to End Environmental Racism†(CEER)
Background
For nearly one hundred and fifty years, African-American families have lived in what is now known as the Rogers-Eubanks Community. In the late 1800s, Rogers Road was a wagon-track through black-owned family farmland and sawmills that stretched from Homestead to Eubanks and Millhouse Roads. There was once a school on Eubanks Road, Morris Grove, founded by a former slave, for black children not allowed to attend school elsewhere. As decades passed, this land was passed down to children, to grandchildren, to great-grandchildren, and in some cases, to great-great grandchildren. Some land was lost to debt, some simply sold. However, African Americans continued migrating to this community; they purchased land and established homes. Today, this community is a predominantly low-income neighborhood, but it remains socially cohesive and culturally rich in spite of the solid waste facilities that have worked to destroy it.
In 1972, when the Town of Chapel Hill decided to use 120 acres of land on Eubanks Road for the first landfill—this was a thriving community, and it was strongly opposed to having a landfill near them. However, Mayor Howard Lee convinced this community to accept the landfill for ten years, promising that afterwards no other landfills would be opened near them and a park and other basic amenities would be provided when the landfill closed.
That was 35 years ago.
And inspite of the fact that Orange County prides itself on being aggressively opposed to social and environmental injustice, it has refused to honor decades of broken promises made to the Rogers-Eubanks Community. Local governments continue to expand solid waste facilities in this area: since 1972, two municipal solid waste landfills have been opened; two industrial waste landfills have been opened. We have yard and hazardous waste collection sites, recycling and garbage drop-off centers, a Materials Recovery landfill (MRF), and let’s not forget about that toxic, smelly leachate pond (1/3 of an acre) right next to Mrs. Gertrude Nunn’s property. The newest proposed addition to these ever-expanding solid waste facilities is the transfer station. And even though some people believe that closing the landfill and building a transfer station will improve conditions in the community, WE contend that it will not. Along with the transfer station, garbage collection trucks, and 18-wheelers we will still have the vermin, the stench, more air pollutants, and more noise. We will also have increased traffic that poses increased danger to our children and other citizens.
So our question tonight is this: why are low-income communities and communities where people of color live always the most vulnerable to solid waste facilities?
The National Environmental Justice Advisory Council has concluded that “WTS are sited disproportionately in areas adjacent to poor communities and communities of color.†The New York Times recently reported that “low-income communities . . . shelter most of America’s polluting facilitiesâ€; African Americans are “79 percent more likely than whites to live in areas where air-pollution levels pose health risks.†Professor Robert Bullard of Clark Atlanta University contends that “the people who live closest†to waste facilities are those “who have the fewest resources,†but that “doesn’t mean [they] should be dumped on.â€
On March 3, 2006, the Solid Waste Advisory Board (SWAB) passed a resolution recommending that the transfer station be located on Eubanks Road. Why? Because Eubanks Road is convenient, because the County can put the transfer station here cheaply, because the County will be saved the hassle of having to search for another site, AND because there was a GOOD chance that THIS community that has been dumped on for 35 years would not object TOO LOUDLY. On March 27, 2007, the Orange County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to accept this recommendation from SWAB to locate the transfer station on Eubanks Road.
What we are asking for tonight?
This community wants Orange County to stop dumping garbage and toxic waste in their backyard.
The Rogers-Eubanks “Coalition to End Environmental Racism†(CEER) supports this community in its demands for environmental justice. And these are our demands:
• We want you to eliminate immediately the Rogers-Eubanks Road Community as a site for the proposed solid waste transfer station.
• We want you to halt all solid waste activities in this community no later than November 2009.
• We want you to honor the promises made to this community over the past 35 years for having endured the negative impacts of having garbage dumped in our backyard.
• We want you to address quality of life issues immediately by providing this community with municipal water and sewer services and other community enhancements to ensure the health and safety of the residents.
All of us here tonight have a lot of work to do, and we are certain that having heard us tonight, you will do what’s right and bring environmental justice to the Rogers-Eubanks Community. Thank you.
Rogers Road Community: Honor the Promises!
Speaking on behalf of her neighbors, Neloa Jones made an unprecedented plea to the Orange County Assembly of Governments to “honor the promises!”
I cannot do justice to Ms. Jones passionate eloquence in trying to condense her statements but if I was forced to summarize, I would simply say her and her neighbors are demanding deeds and not words.
Free Prostate Exams Thursday Sept. 20th
[
From today’s Daily Tar Heel
Prostate cancer will kill 27,000 men in the U.S. this year who might have survived with early treatment.
So UNC urologists will be giving free prostate screenings today as part of Prostate Cancer Awareness Week. The screenings will be from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. at UNC Hospitals’ Urology Clinic on the second floor of N.C. Memorial Hospital, [MAP] and no appointment is needed.
“The hardest thing is getting people a setting where they can get checked,” said Eric Wallen, a urologist at UNC Hospitals, which has sponsored free screening events for 14 years. “We want to make it convenient for patients to get checked.”
Because prostate cancer is a slow-spreading disease, if it’s caught at an early stage, there is almost a 100 percent chance that it will be cured in five years.
Like a lot of men, I don’t really relish the old prostate exam, but considering the good prognosis if caught early, it’s something well worth doing.
I’m 45 and have younger friends that have dealt with prostate cancer. One of my dear neighbors is dealing with prostate cancer caught further into the progression. Modern tests can help catch this disease well before it becomes untreatable.
African-American men from eastern North Carolina have the highest rate of prostate cancer incidence in the country, Wallen said.
“The main importance of the week is to get men screened,” said Heather Eichhorn, director of Prostate Cancer Awareness Week.
Although an N.C. law requires insurance companies to provide coverage for prostate screenings, Wallen said free exams are important because uninsured men often are deterred by the costs and hassle of finding a doctor for the test.
Without insurance, the tests cost between $50 and $150, he said.
Last year 460 men received free prostate exams during UNC’s awareness week, and 56 tested abnormal for the prostate-specific antigen blood test. Elevated PSA levels can indicate a problem in the prostate that isn’t necessarily cancer.
The digital rectal exam is a way to verify that a patient has cancer, and of those 56 men, two also tested abnormal for the DRE.
If you’re in the target age group, have been avoiding the old “bend over for me”, please, please, please avail yourself of this free service.
Election 2007: Sierra Club Interview
X-Posted from Will Raymond for Town Council 2007:
The local Orange-Chatham Sierra Club participates in the local election process two ways: endorsing candidates and sponsoring a forum.
Last Sunday, Chairman Bernadette Pelissier, Political Chair Loren Hintz and member Matthew Scheer interviewed me on behalf of the Sierra Club to determine if I qualified for an endorsement.
Questions spanned local zoning policy, a discussion of good and bad infill, personal commitment to environmental protection and Carolina North.
Folks that read CitizenWill already have a good idea about where I stand on many of these issues.
Surprisingly some issues, like local waste management, the trash transfer station and Rogers Road community’s complaints, our storm water utility policy or in-town open space preservation didn’t make the list. Of course, you can only fit so much into a 45 minute interview.
I appreciate these members taking the time to review my thoughts on Carolina North, zoning policy, pragmatic carbon reduction strategies, transit, etc. (I tried to cram way too much into my answers and digressions).
The Chapel Hill forum takes place next Tuesday, September 25th, 7-9pm at the Chapel Hill Town Hall. The event will be broadcast on our local public access channel.
In 2005 I did secure the local club’s enthusiastic endorsement. Here’s what they said two years ago:
Will Raymond has been one of the most outspoken and effective citizen activists in Chapel Hill in recent years. We look forward to him using his talents to advocate for the environment as a member of Town Council. In particular we are excited about his initiatives to promote energy efficiency in town buildings. He will also work to protect lesser known creeks in the Chapel Hill area and to minimize the number of single occupancy vehicles causing air pollution and traffic congestion at Carolina North.
We strongly encourage Sierra Club members and any residents of Chapel Hill who care about the environment to support these four candidates in the November 8th election. They are the best hope for a Town Council that will always make reducing environmental impact a top priority as Chapel Hill grows bigger.
We’ll know by mid-October if the work I’ve done since – on Carolina North, as a member of the Horace-William’s Citizen Committee sub-committee on environment, tracking and publicizing the landfill/transfer site problems on Rogers Road – will secure an endorsement in 2007.
Election 2007: The Chamber’s Yes, No and Unsure Questionnaire
X-Posted from my 2007 Campaign web site.
Even though the Chamber made it clear that extended replies where not welcomed in the 2007 questionnaire ( Election 2007: The Chamber’s Yes, No, Unsure – Again!), I took the opportunity to answer each of their questions beyond the constraints of “yes, no, unsure”.
The questions are broad, open to interpretation and, on occasion, leading. How would you answer the Chamber’s questions?
In case the Director omits my business background, as he did in 2005, I worked for Northern Telecom for many years, winning a couple President’s Awards and a Chairman’s Award for Innovation (the first IT person to do so). I have been a CIO/CTO of a couple successful startups, including Reged.com which sold to FiServ for millions. As an entrepreneur I was part of the crew that guided those companies to multi-million dollar revenues. I currently work for Tibco, an enterprise application integration company, specializing in XML technology and distributed Java application architectures.
Here is the questionnaire and my extended answers. You’ll note I wasn’t unsure at all:
4. Is increasing the commercial tax base in Chapel Hill an important priority for you?
YES
Even before my run for office in 2005 I was agitating for a Economic Development Officer to help develop strategic and tactical approaches to increasing our commercial tax base. Council finally hired an officer, now we need leadership with business acumen to make the best use of his services.
Continue reading Election 2007: The Chamber’s Yes, No and Unsure Questionnaire
Rogers Road Community: A Unified Front
 Rev. Campbell |
 David Richter |
 Tracy Coleman |
 Jeff Kingman |
 Jeanne Stroud |
 Nancy Ignia |
 Sharon Cook |
The Rogers-Eubanks Coalition to End Environmental Racism, a coalition of the
- Chapel Hill -Carrboro Branch of the NAACP
- Environmental Justice Network
- West End Revitalization Association
- Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom
- Orange County Progressive Democrats
- and members of UNC-CH Faculty, Students, and Staff
are calling for folks to turn out at the Thursday, Sept. 20th Joint Assembly of Governments Meeting, 7:30pm at the Southern Human Services Center [MAP]
Support the Residents of the Landfill Neighborhoods*
at the Joint Assembly of Governments Meeting (Orange Co., Hillsborough, Carrboro and Chapel Hill)
• No to the proposed transfer station
• Shut down the stinking landfills
• Safe water hookups
• Safe and cheap sewer servicesImprove the quality of life for Landfill Neighborhoods.*
Thursday, September 20, 2007 at 7:30 p.m.
Southern Human Services Center
2501 Homestead Road, Chapel Hill*The predominantly Black neighborhoods along Rogers Road and parts of Eubanks Road were seen as politically impotent to stop the placement of stinking landfills and other waste products of the more powerful white residents in the recent past. This is called Environmental Racism.
For more information: camko@bellsouth.net
What issues does the Rogers Road community want addressed?
Here’s a quick overview from some of my posts covering our neighbors continuing plight:
- Is the Rogers Road Community Worth $53,000?
- Rogers Road: Unify the Community With A Back To School Bash
- Trash Talk: I Like Vinegar on My BBQ
- Trash Talk: Systematic is the New Watchword
- Trash Talk: Do You Have A Minute? How About 17 Years Worth? [selected minutes over 17 years documenting the continued inability of our local governments to deal with the Rogers Road community’s issues]
- Trash Talk: March 13ths Board of Commissioners Review
- Trash Talk: If Not Eubanks, Where?
- Trash Talk:Media Steps Up to the Plate
- Trash Talk: SqueezeThePulp Led Online
- Trash Talk:Aarne Vesilinds History[good historical overview]
- Trash Talk: Promises Unmet
- Trash Talk: The Ticking Clock
- Trash Talk: Mayor Chilton’s Letter
- 2035: Orange County’s Garbage Center of Gravity
- Rogers Road Trashed Again? Carrboro Board of Alderman Weigh In
- Trashing the Rogers Road Community, Again!
- Rogers Road: Mapping Out the Future
- Rogers Road Small Area Plan, It’s About Time…
Hat tip to OrangePolitics.
Triple the Fun at Shearon-Harris
Coming on the heels of last month’s $65,000 NRC fine, Progress Energy continues to promote two more reactors at their Shearon-Harris site.
There are several unresolved issues involving Shearon-Harris that makes siting further reactors more than problematic. Until waste disposal, security, adequate fire protection, safe storage and a slew of other issues are dealt with, furthering a development proposal for Shearon-Harris makes no sense.
The NRC, the industry’s partners in the nuclear mess, is holding an initial public hearing Sept. 18th in Apex.
In preparation for the Progress Energy license application for Harris, the NRC has scheduled a public information meeting on Tuesday, September 18, at the New Horizons Fellowship at 820 E. Williams Street in Apex, NC. An open house will be held from 6 to 7 p.m., followed by a NRC presentation at 7:00 p.m., after which the public will have an opportunity to ask questions. (A copy of the meeting notice is attached.)
Earlier posts on Progress Energy’s Shearon-Harris
The complete notice follows Continue reading Triple the Fun at Shearon-Harris
Software Freedom Day 2007
As long time readers know, I’ve been trying to get our Town to adopt free/open source software products for the last 6 years.
There’s been some success but not enough.
FOSS (free/open source software) is a low cost alternative to the Microsoft Monopoly (the Town could’ve saved between $500-700K by now if it had adopted some of the recommendations of the now defunct Technology Advisory Board). Beyond driving cost out of the process, many of these products use (heck, celebrate) open standards which will preserve our information assets over the long haul and prevent costly proprietary lock-in.
Tomorrow, the Carolina Open Source Initiative (COSI), an organization dedicated to promoting and supporting Open Source software, principles and practices at UNC-CH will sponsor Software Freedom Day 2007.
Check out their FAQ “to learn more about Open Source software, and why you should get involved!”
Thanks to UNC’s Free Culture folks for the tip.
Speakers and Participants
10am Max Spevack from Red Hat.
Max is the Fedora Project Leader
11am Amit Bhutani from DELL. Amit is a Sr. Linux Software Engineer
12, noon – Pam Sessoms, University Library
Pam will be giving a talk on how her team customized the Pidgin chat client for use by librarians at UNC-CH. Multiple librarians can seamlessly answer questions using the ‘davisrefdesk’ IM nickname, and evening questions can be routed to librarians at Duke and NCSU as part of the Night Owl chat feature. Such customization would not have been possible if Pidgin had not been released under an Open license.
12:45pm Mark Finkle of Mozilla.
Mark is a Platform Evangelist at Mozilla Corporation. His primary job is to make it easy for people to develop extensions for Firefox. He also provides support for developers building applications on XULRunner and embedding Gecko in native applications.
1:45 Joseph Mack of AustinTek
Joseph will be discussing the Linux Virtual Server for people who are unfamiliar with the project and for those who would like to get started but want some background.
I’ll be banging the drum, once again, this year for wider adoption of these technologies by the Town to improve service delivery, preserve our information assets, promote greater transparency in the governance process and DRIVE COST out of the system.
National Conversation on Climate Action: A Local Perspective
As I mentioned in my post “The Climate Heats Up AND The Mayor Has A Website?”, the Town is hosting an all day “conversation” on climate change (as part of our Town’s ongoing commitment to sustainability).
The program is sponsored by ICLEI US (Local Governments For Sustainability) and the local Chamber of Commerce’s “green” coordinating arm, Foundation for a Sustainable Community.
The advertisement on the Mayor’s (www.chapelhillmayorsoffice.com) website says the program is FREE but the link takes you to this Chamber of Commerce signup page that only lists an October 4th Sustainability Workshop costing $30 for non-members.
I’ve sent an email to Director Aaron Nelson asking for a clarification.
Here’s the program:
Speakers:
Part I:
- Lyle Estill, Piedmont Biofuels (biodiesel, sustainable community design, sustainability movement)
- David Lee, Bland Landscaping
- Tobin Freid, Triangle Clean Cities Program
- Eric Henry, T.S. Designs
- Greg Overbeck, Chapel HIll Restaurant Group
Part II:
- Kevin Foy, Mayor of the Town of Chapel Hill
- Anne Waple, National Climatic Data Center, NESDIS
- Cindy Pollock Shea, Director of UNC Sustainability of Office
- Tom Jensen, North Carolina Sierra Club
Program:
Part I:
2007 Sustainability Workshop
Location: Town of Chapel Hill Public Library, 12:00 pm – 4 :00 pm
To register and see the Part I Workshop schedule click here
Part II:
2007 National Conversation on Climate Change
6:00-7:30 pm National Conversation on Climate Change Workshop
Program Agenda: TBA
This program is free and open to the public.
For additional information about this event please email the Mayor’s Office, crobustelli@townofchapelhill.org.
An interesting program, though it’s not clear from the schedule when or how the “conversation” will occur. We’ve had some great local success using an unconference format to stimulate, educate and inform the public on technical issues.
Maybe the evening program could be reserved for a “conversation” built around and directed by the attendees?