For a problem 35 years in the making, the push to finalize the site of the transfer station seems precipitous. To echo Mark Chilton’s letter, until a county-wide assessment is made, setting a timetable now is not prudent.
It would be nice to see a concurrent push to reduce, reuse and recycle (even more) of the waste stream that paralleled the implementation of the transfer site irrespective of where it is sited.
For instance, a plan to effectively utilize the biomass to produce bio-diesel, methanol or methane to supplement other centralized sources of energy should go hand-in-hand with our transition to a new waste site (wherever it is sited).
To lead off, here’s one of the newer developments, a letter from Carrboro’s Mayor Mark Chilton speaking not from his official capacity but as a concerned citizen:
Dear Mr. Chairman and Commissioners;
The Carrboro Board of Aldermen has not collectively come to a conclusion about the proposed Transfer Station, but realizing that you may be making major decisions on March 13, I am writing on my own behalf solely, rather than as a voice for the entire Board. I have struggled a lot with the question of locating a Solid Waste Transfer Station on Eubanks Road, as I know you have as well. Here is what I have concluded about this idea:
1. I do not believe that any genuine commitment was ever made to have the Landfill be the last solid waste facility ever located on Eubanks Road. However, the fundamental fairness issues that are raised by the proposed Transfer Station site are valid. It is clear that at least unconsciously the race and income of the neighbors were factors in siting the landfill on Eubanks Road. To build the Transfer Station there without a systematic site search or any compensation would be eating the fruit of the same poisonous tree, as they say in criminal law.
2. Although the County staff has clearly done a lot of homework on some possible sites, a systematic search has not been made. A site along I-40 or I-85 is obviously desirable, but there must be more possibilities than have been given serious consideration to date. For me, it might be possible to conclude that Eubanks Road is the only feasible site IF a systematic site search came to that conclusion. So far as I can see, that has not happened.
3. The County and Towns have not yet accomplished all of the Compensation Items that were agreed to by the Assembly of Governments in 1997. As a community we need to revisit the issue of compensation for the impacts of the existing landfill. Discussion of a further facility there without having provided the compensation we already agreed to ought to be totally out of the question.
4. If the County Commission decides to proceed with the Eubanks Rd. Site, then I believe that the County needs to undertake an additional round of compensation negotiation with these same neighborhoods and that the County needs to be meaningfully generous in such negotiations.
Finally, I do not want to imply that the above conclusions are easily drawn. I know that all of us are trying to find the best, practical solution for our entire community and I am not writing to criticize anyone who may come to a different conclusion about this matter, but the County Commission asked for my opinion and so, here it is. In short, I respectfully believe you have a lot more homework to do.
How do you solve the homeless problem? Give them a home.
That almost sounds like a bad joke, doesn’t it? But it’s what the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness Steering Committee is about to propose in its Ten Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness. The partnership includes 60 community leaders representing dozens of organizations working on a local plan in response to a federal homelessness initiative.
Included among the partnership’s recommendations is a plan to move chronically homeless from the streets into permanent housing accompanied by intensive services.
The program is a relatively new idea called Housing First. It’s a federal initiative based on the principle that some people — the chronically homeless — need the stability of a residence before they can overcome the issues that led to their homelessness. The traditional model has required people to become “housing ready” before getting their own place. Housing First turns that model on its head.
So who are these chronically homeless? They are a group born of a federal definition: individuals, homeless for at least a year, or consistently homeless over several years, with a disability (often substance abuse or mental illness). These are folks who haven’t just been hit with problems. They have become part of their problem.
The chronically homeless are a minority of the homeless population (39 were counted in Orange County last year). However, they are among the most visible. Current treatment and care programs haven’t proven very effective. This group uses a disproportionate share of services, draining limited resources. They are costly to our hospitals and are more likely to draw police attention. They are often the ones who invoke the unfortunate vituperation of some residents, businesses and visitors.
Housing First will take a commitment from the community to succeed, especially since we don’t want to divert funds currently assisting the transitional and non-chronically homeless. Indeed, Housing First is just one of multiple strategies in the Ten Year Plan to End Chronic Homelessness to address the continuum of housing needs in our community.
I hope this proposal will engage our community in productive debate, for there is one point on which both advocates for and detractors of our homeless population agree: We should get these folks off the streets. Whatever else you may think about it, Housing First promises to accomplish that.
Checkout the whole column to see how Mark’s thinking change over the course of his investigations.
Cross-posted from Terri Buckner’s (TerriB’s) ‘blog LocalEcology
Orange County Homelessness Fact Sheet February 2007
Total Number of Homeless People Counted in January 2007: 224
Homeless people staying in temporary shelter: 199
Homeless people without shelter (i.e. on the streets): 25
Homeless families: 23
Homeless people in families (including children): 60
Homeless children: 35
Homeless individuals (not in families): 164
Homeless people with a history of domestic violence: 23
Chronically homeless people: 71
These figures do not include numbers of people who are “doubled up,†that is without a legal residence of their own and temporarily staying with another person. Furthermore, the data does not account for people who are at-risk of homelessness for any reason including unemployment, foreclosure, eviction, chronic or sudden illness and domestic violence. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, 40.5% of renters in Orange County pay 35% or more of household income toward rent which qualifies as at-risk of homelessness.
In Orange County:
A minimum wage earner (earning $5.15 per hour) must work 117 hours per week, 52 weeks per year, to afford the fair market rent (FMR) for a two-bedroom unit, which is $785 per month. An SSI recipient (receiving $603 monthly) can afford monthly rent of no more than $181, while the fair market rent for a one-bedroom is $603 (Out of Reach Report, 2006).
In order to afford FMR for a two-bedroom unit ($785), without paying more than 30% of income on housing, a household must earn $2,617 monthly or $31,400 annually. Assuming a 40-hour work week, 52 weeks per year, this level of income translates into a Housing Wage of $15.10 (Out of Reach Report, 2006).
In 2006, the Inter-Faith Council served 85,055 hot meals; provided 7,726 bags of groceries to 7,187 members of the community; granted 3,500 requests for food, cash, and help with utilities and other service needs representing more than 2,100 households; and offered 813 homeless individuals a place to sleep through its Community House and HomeStart program.
Neighbor House, Inc. distributed at least 17, 680 dinners to members of Northern Orange County through its Food for All Program in 2006. They are currently serving an average of 85 meals per night, four nights per week.
In 2005, the Community Initiative to End Homelessness received approximately $275,000 to provide permanent housing to homeless and disabled individuals or families. The funding is shared among OPC Area Program, the Chrysalis Foundation for Mental Health, Inter-Faith Council for Social Service and UNC Horizon’s. The CIEH applied for additional homeless assistance funding in 2006, but award letters have not been received as of 2/13/07.
I’m trying to find how the $275,000 in Community Initiative to End Homelessness funds were actually dispersed.
I was struck by a conjunction between the following image from the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization 2035 Long Range Transportation Plan Socio-Economic projections I mentioned earlier and the debate currently raging over siting a trash transfer station on Eubanks Road.
35 years ago the Orange County landfill currently blighting the Rogers Road community was sited close to Chapel Hill/Carrboro communities because they constituted the predominant source of garbage.
Now, with projections of dramatic population shifts 30 years hence, it seems like the center of gravity for Orange County’s trash production (creation?) is shifting North.
The Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization 2035 Long Range Transportation Plan Socio-Economic projections are in and, as Sally notes, they forecast a whopping increase in population.
Table 1: Draft 2035 Plan Socio-Economic Projections
Jurisdiction
Population
Employment
2005
2035
% inc.
2005
2035
% inc.
Chatham County*
34,629
153,362
343%
8,196
16,953
107%
Durham County
229,796
370,007
61%
172,825
308,886
79%
Carrboro
21,328
26,879
26%
4,320
6,751
56%
Chapel Hill
52,394
81,297
55%
35,314
81,227
130%
Hillsborough
12,651
22,613
79%
5,762
14,606
153%
Orange County**
43,739
55,537
27%
3,946
7,255
84%
*Includes the portion
of Chatham County that is in the Triangle Regional Model area.
55% increase in population, 130% in employment! 81,297 folks living in Chapel Hill with employment at 81,227 seems to indicate quite a few folks will be coming from out of town. If you review their maps, it also appears that UNC’s Carolina North plays a huge role in that projected employment increase.
Whatever the reliability of the projections, and coming on the heels of Council’s dreadful and precipitous decision to create a TC-3 zone allowing 120′ tall buildings, I hope our fair Downtown doesn’t end up looking like this:
As you might remember from my recent posts, the area is coming under closer scrutiny by Chapel Hill, which stands poised to annex the area.
Whether through deliberate environmental racism or just plain old callousness, the Rogers Road community, backing up to the Orange County landfill, has had to deal with the consequences of our garbage woes for decades while original promises, such as keeping the landfill north of Eubanks, fell to expediency in the mid-’90s.
Instead of treating this traditionally black community with the due courtesy and respect they deserve – deserve doubly for both dealing with the noxious detritus of our modern life and the many unfulfilled obligations our leaders made on our behalf – our community continues to give short shrift to our northern neighbors.
In December I attended the kickoff meeting for the Rogers Road Small Area Plan. That meeting cemented my concerns that, once again, the Rogers Road community would be getting the short end of the stick.
Why? Money, of course. From the Rogers Road corridor east towards Martin Luther King (Airport) Road is going to be prime development land. If Chapel Hill annexes the neighborhood before the landfill closes the tax valuations will race ahead of the land resale value. A developer, though, could pick up tracts for a song – sit on them waiting for the landfill to close up shop – and turn a pretty penny.
To avoid that our Council needs to promise to coordinate the annexation time table with the closing of the landfill. Let’s be fair.
Shorter term, the Rogers Road community faces the prospect of a garbage transfer station being sited on Eubanks.
Now, in many respects I’m proud of the strides our community has made in dealing responsibly with garbage.
Strategic operations by the Orange County Solid Waste Management Department, along with our community’s strong recycling efforts, have extended the life of the existing landfill while redirecting various waste streams into beneficial uses – mulching, composting, recycling, etc.
With the anticipated 2010 closure, transferring waste will become a necessity. Shipping it in or out of county entails another set of environmental consequences. Our community must take a leadership role in responsibly dealing with the 25,000 tons – 29% of the total waste – formerly going into the landfill.
Maybe the most effective site for the transfer center is the existing Eubanks road location. And maybe you can make it look “Greek or Roman temple”.
But if the Rogers Road community says “we’ve had enough” then we’re obligated to find an acceptable solution.
Earlier this year, I asked the Carolina North Leadership Advisory committee to do an environmental assay of the highest caliber. It will be interesting to see this phase of Biohabitats’ research.
And kudos to UNC for scheduling two (2) sessions to accommodate the public. Yes, they’re both on the same day 😉 but progress all the same. Well done Linda and crew…
Subject: Carolina North Community Meeting, December 13
Dear Friends and Neighbors,
Many of you have expressed interest in Carolina North. I am writing to invite you to a review of the draft ecological assessment recently completed as part of the discovery phase of our planning process.
Chancellor Moeser has said that Carolina North will be a model of sustainability. As one of the first steps to that goal, Biohabitats, Inc. has produced an ecological assessment to inform our planning. We are eager to get your input to help us shape effective plans for sustainable development at Carolina North.
To accommodate different schedules, we will hold two sessions. The information reviewed at both will be the same so attend whichever is most convenient for you.
Both sessions will be on Wednesday, December 13th in room 2603 of the School of Government:
3:00 – 5:00 PM. Parking available in either the Hwy 54 Visitor Lot or n the Rams Head deck.
6:00 – 8:00 PM. Parking available in the School of Government parking deck.
Information on transit service to the School of Government is below.
If you are a neighborhood or community contact, please forward this to your group as well as any others who may be interested. We hope for extensive participation from the community. My apologies in advance to those who may receive duplicate emails.
Although an RSVP is not required, it would help with meeting logistics if you would contact Tiffany Clarke at tclarke@email.unc.edu. If you have questions about the review session content, please contact Mary
Jane Felgenhauer at mfelgenhauer@fac.unc.edu.
As always, please feel free to contact me if you would like more information. We know there is great community interest in Carolina North and look forward to working with you at this early stage.
Best,
Linda
The School of Government is served by numerous bus routes, including the FCX, HU, V. S and the RU. The U and G are available for the early session only. Please check the Chapel Hill Transit site at www.townofchapelhill.org <http://www.townofchapelhill.org/> for details.
If you’re interested in working with the Rogers Road community to correct these longstanding problems, Monday would be a great time to turn out and let your views be heard.
This is still very raw, but I thought I’d put out this demo to stir some thought within the community. Visualization tools like GoogleEarth (GE) can help remove some of the difficulty in assessing the visual impact of new development.
Our town’s planning department has the raw data needed to create a GoogleEarth representation of our town which I plan to massage and then release into the public domain for other citizens to elaborate on.
Why GoogleEarth?
While GE is a proprietary tool, the datasets it uses are exportable. So, Google owns the tool, not the data.
Our planning department should be creating GE or NASA Wind World representations of Chapel Hill as a matter of course – it would help both them and the community create a common visual-based framework for development discussions.
The Rogers Road community has taken it in the chin for way too long. The promises extended these residents when the landfill expanded into their backyards have never really been fulfilled. Decades old problems with sewage and other infrastructure continue to persist.
Finally, a structured process is being developed to deal with some of Chapel Hillian’s closest neighbors:
11/30/2006 — The public is invited to an open house from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 7, at the Faith Tabernacle Oasis of Love located at 8005 Rogers Road to discuss planning for the Rogers Road area.
In the coming months, the Town of Chapel Hill will launch the discussion to begin the process of drafting the Rogers Road Small Area Plan, which is expected to involve intensive community participation. The plan would provide a vision and guidelines for the future development of the area, including the Greene Tract, and take a detailed look at the impacts of providing public services, especially sewer, and of developing an affordable housing site.
The Greene Tract is jointly owned by Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Orange County. In 2002 the Chapel Hill Town Council adopted a concept plan for the Greene Tract which stipulated that about 18 acres of the 170 acres in the Greene Tract would be set aside for affordable housing and about 86 acres would be set aside for open space.
The Chapel Hill Town Council is soliciting residents to serve on the Rogers Road Small Area Plan Task Force. The composition of the task force, to be approved by the Chapel Hill Town Council, will include residents from the Rogers Road area, elected officials from Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Orange County, non-profit housing representatives, and other citizens of the greater community.
Planners anticipate that the Town Council will appoint members to the task force in January 2007, with the first meeting to be held shortly thereafter. The process to develop the Rogers Road Small Area Plan may take approximately 17 months to two years. Residents interested in serving on the task force are encouraged to call the Chapel Hill Planning Department.
Anyone unable to attend the open house may contact the Town of Chapel Hill Planning Department to express their views, to gather more information, or to apply to serve on the task force.
Contact Frost Rollins at (919) 968-2728 or e-mail frollins@townofchapelhill.org.
While there I had the pleasure of meeting the Herald-Sun’s Robert Ashley.
Poor guy. He probably wouldn’t have sat next to me if he’d known I was going to give him an earful about the Herald-Sun’s on-line linking policy.
As I recently wrote, cutting the community off from their historical narrative is not only selfish, it is bad business. Robert disputed my “bad business” assertion, telling me the HS makes plenty from their archival content.
Ouch! I’ll bet whatever paltry sum they’re making from paywalling, the ill will they’re generating amongst both their on-line readership and those, like myself, that are FREELY steering customers (“eyeballs”) their way far outweighs the traditional business value of hiding content from the greater ‘net-world.
Already folks who want to reference HS articles are either, one, skirting fair-use provisions excerpting enough of the content to bolster their points or two, turning to other media outlets with far friendlier community-service oriented policies.
Doc Searls, always an entertaining and insightful commentator on new media, wrote recently about the cracks forming in the paywall and why, sans community service, paywalling is dumb business:
That’s why I’ve tried to limit the argument to the real trade-offs involved. This has nothing to do with “citizenship.” It has everything to do with the facts of publishing life, where the Web is a larger and larger context. Newspapers and magazines make some money by selling old stories through Lexis-Nexis and Dialog. But they make most of their money from advertising and subscriptions, which might both increase if archives are exposed to the Web.
Robert, if you’re reading this, I want to emphasize that I’m your ally.
I want to strengthen all our local journalistic enterprises – to help your institution make the leap from a manufacturer of paper and ink products to a valued community service provider. But you need to make the move soon…new media is moving at Internet speeds and it won’t be long before your backwards policy is irrelevant.
At the end of it all, if the Herald-Suns and News Observers of the world want to cut off their “long tail”, so be it…
Covered Hogan Farms from 6:45am to 9:45am. BOCC candidate Jamie Daniels was handing out material until roughly 9am. Stein supporters covered the precinct from 7ish on. The Democrats staffed a table handing out sample ballots the whole time I was there…
As of 9:35am, 300 confirmed voters with another 10-15 milling about waiting to go. When I called in to report the numbers to O.C. Democratic headquarters, was told the 10am figure was 369.
Hogan Farms has a nice setup – including hot coffee. A welcome bit of hospitality considering the temperature and rain began falling in earnest as I left. Judge Baddour was getting some good support. So to folks voting NO on the districting referendum. A welcome surprise.
The rain has let up a bit. I’m hoping most of it has swept through by 4:30pm when Elijah and I start working Chapel Hill library (Estes Hills – my home precinct).
Battle Park precinct votes at the Chapel Hill Senior Center 400-A S. Elliott Road Chapel Hill for the November 7, 2006 Election only.
Coles Store precinct have been split into two precincts. The School Districts divider line determines your precinct and voting location:
If you live in the Orange County School District (to be known as Coles Store 1 Precinct), you will continue to vote at the Union Grove Methodist Church, 6407 Union Grove Church Road, Chapel Hill, NC 27516.
If you live in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro School District (to be known as Hogan Farms Precinct), you will now vote at the Lake Hogan Farms Clubhouse, 101 Commons Way Dr, Chapel Hill, NC 27516.
This time last year I was catching 14 winks in preparation for election day.
Earlier in the evening I had made the rounds collecting my outlying signs for redeployment. About 3 hours from now, I was leaping out of bed to fill some balloons, say a hasty goodbye to the family and rush to pick up local activist Tom Jensen ( thanks again Tom for kindly assisting with the last round of sign deployments at every municipal polling station).
It was the start of one of the longest days in my life. Exhilerating, enjoyable, extraordinary, engaging – the hospitality and good cheer of the citizens of Chapel Hill made the long hours fly by.
