Citizen Will

Category: Ruminations

  • Southern Village: So Long Six Stories

    One of the projects on tonight’s agenda was D.R. Bryan’s six story Southern Village hotel. The hotel was to be plopped down in Southern Village’s central “square”. At 75+ feet, it would tower over the nearby United Methodist Church. Local residents were concerned that this 6 story project wasn’t human-scale or compatible with the existing […]

  • East 54’s Virtual Chapel Hill

    Do you recognize the following scene? This is East West Partner’s revisionist view of Chapel Hill as improved upon by their East 54 project. They have provided a cool animation of the eventual East 54 living experience. One small problem. Their Chapel Hill doesn’t match reality. What is it about big time developers and their […]

  • The Greatest Lie of the Greatest Generation?

    Chapel Hill is filled with talented, thoughtful folks whose stories – personal and professional – often open new avenues of personal discovery. Eric Muller, UNC Law professor and, lately intermittent, ‘blogger (Is That Legal?), is a Chapel Hillian I’ve spoken of before. His personal history, finding out what happened to his great-uncle during Germany’s Holocaust […]

  • Northern Heads South

    Not a great day for local tech companies in RTP. Nortel (Northern Telecom) is shedding another 1,300 jobs in an effort to stay afloat. I worked at Northern for nearly seven years (I started at Team10 for any old-timers out there). Back then it was an incredibly vibrant can-do company with a really nice and […]

  • Lifting all of us up…

    Orange County Commissioner Mike Nelson posted this small poem on his ‘blog in celebration of the Obama blowout: Rosa sat so Martin could walk. Martin walked so Jesse could run. Jesse ran so Barack could win. Barack won so our children can fly. Nice. Ellie, Elijah and I stayed up past midnight tracking the close […]

  • Persons Out of Place

    In my application for Bill’s seat on Council, I mentioned my concern (“Walking is not a crime.”) that the recently announced Orange County Community Safety Partnership program, which trains Town staff and the general public to identify and report criminal activity or other public safety related issues, needs to be careful in discriminating what is […]

  • Voting Nov. 4th: I’m Not Worried

    Ellie, Elijah and I go to the polls Election Day (it deserves to be both capitalized and a holiday) – it is a family tradition. Even though I’ve voted in every major and almost all primary elections since 1980, I still get excited on Election Day (doubly so when I was running). While I’ve worked […]

  • Oct. 30th: Downtown Parking Forum

    As a member of the Town’s Downtown Parking Task Force I lobbied vigorously for a baseline study of parking conditions Downtown. Why? The data covering typical parking patterns was spotty at best. Further, there was no adequate model to plug any data into to analyze suggested improvements. A year on the Downtown Partnership is rolling […]

  • Jim to David: $700 Billion, No How, No Way!

    I write my ‘blog knowing full well that there are many folks more eloquent, more on-point than I will ever be. Jim Protzman, former Chapel Hill Councilmember, BlueNC’r sent this simple request to Representative David Price about the Bush Administration’s $700 billion long con. Dear Congressman Price We were told last week that the world […]

  • Transfer Site: Sept. 16th Live ‘Blog

    [UPDATE] The meeting started out with a set of criticisms, especially from Barry Jacobs, about the consultant’s work product and process. “This is not the process we agreed to…” sums up the majority’s concerns. I called for a reworking of both the process and the criteria used to determine the siting of the transfer facility, […]

  • Yearly Constitutional

    Fred reminds us that tomorrow, Sept. 17th, 2008, is Constitution Day. 221 years ago our Founders ratified a vision which carried this Nation to greatness. Over the last 10 years, much of our national leadership, motivated by partisan zeal and political gamesmanship, have done their best to besmirch and diminish that awesome achievement. As long […]

  • Council Oblivious: How Long Must This Go On?

    There’s been racial tensions within Chapel Hill’s public works department for many years. During the last ten years I’ve heard and read about some quite troublesome behavior. I faulted former town manager Cal Horton’s “silo” style of management for covering up rather than resolving some rather nasty bits of racism. With Roger Stancil coming on-board […]

  • Obama and Jones

    Barack Obama swung by Chapel Hill tonight in his on-going attempt to clinch his party’s nomination. As David Price noted, for the first time in decades North Carolina is relevant – and we have an opportunity to push Obama over the top. As with many political events, the rally, scheduled for 9:30pm kicked off promptly […]

  • Somewhere I Read….

    Forty years since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. As you might guess, I’ve been encouraged by his words and his actions for more than four decades. The night before his death Dr. King observed a nation in distress: The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land. Confusion all around. That’s a strange […]

  • Murder does not come often to Chapel Hill?

    “Murder does not come often to Chapel Hill” sums up what I’ve heard frequently today in the wake of Eve Carson’s tragic death. The Mayor said it. WCHL’s Ron Stutts and Natasha Vukelic repeated the sentiment on my drive home. Chief Curran, at the 5:30 CHPD, said it was one reason Eve Carson remained unidentified […]