Just as I’m trying to figure out how to set up an online tip jar so that Don and I can spend more time on the blog and less time on work that pays money, I read that the Philadelphia city government requires blogs to be licensed. The City of Philadelphia expects bloggers to pay $300 for a business privilege license and, of course, pay taxes on any and all revenue that comes in from the blog.

The law amounts to a tax on free speech.

The city requires that anyone engaged in any activity for profit be licensed, whether or not the business actually turned a profit. Bloggers, and editorial writers across the country, argue that bloggers don’t intend to make a profit. We provide a digital microphone so that voices from the community can be heard. The type of change we seek does not jingle in pockets; ideally, it resonates among voters, who on the appointed day, will go to the polls and make change happen.

Pundits call Philadelphia’s law “management” as opposed to “leadership” and point out that the licensing requirement shows a lack of wisdom among those who make up Philadelphia’s governing body. Many municipalities are scrambling to find the money to meet their budgets. Still, the move seems akin to feeling around under the sofa cushions in hopes of finding enough quarters to go to the Laundromat.

We hope that Chapel Hill’s town council doesn’t latch onto this idea of licensing blogs. But once council meetings resume Sept. 15, we’ll be reading the consent agenda carefully, just in case.
– Nancy Oates

“Technologically impaired” ought to be an official category of disability. With all the world wired for instant access, those of us who are completely flummoxed when we click an icon or a hyperlink and nothing happens are at a true disadvantage.

Last night I wanted to listen to what other people thought about the county’s proposal to raise the sales tax a quarter of a cent per dollar. Behind in my work, I didn’t want to take an hour to drive to Hillsborough and back and sit through the parts of the county Board of Commissioners meeting I wasn’t keenly interested in. I planned to keep the live streaming of the meeting on my computer while I worked and tune in only to the good parts.

So I went to the county website, clicked on the video linked, downloaded the special software required for live streaming and rebooted. I went back to the website, clicked on the meeting link and on the “view event” link, and was met only with silence and a black screen.

I clicked on and read through a few of the documents under the “help” section, but nothing worked. I tried starting from scratch again, rebooting, reloading and rebooting, with no success.

My husband stifled a sigh and tried accessing the meeting on his computer. He got a blue screen with an icon on it, but no audio.

We checked the public access channels on TV to see whether the meeting was being broadcast live. It was not, at least not on the cable channels we get.

I’m not ruling out operator error, that there was some setting I needed to change to be able to watch the meeting on my computer. But the county offered no clues on its website or in its troubleshooting documents.

Not everyone interested in what our county commissioners are up to has the time or child-care arrangements to attend county Board of Commissioners meetings in person. And residents shouldn’t need a technology geek to access what goes on at meetings.

Score one for the commissioners, working harder to keep voters in the dark.
– Nancy Oates

After almost a year of tracking the Chapel Hill Town Council and how it works, I’ve concluded that the folks on the board are not especially smart.

Many times during the year the board members had to decide on an issue, and rather than base that decision on the facts, members chose to vote by how they felt or how they believed the outside world would judge the town. Common sense and the facts of a matter – what I would call being smart about things – didn’t seem to affect the decision as much as personal outlook or inner perceptions.

This is not leadership, and it sure isn’t healthy for the town’s future.

The deer question comes to mind. Sally Greene cast her vote against a much-needed deer cull because she was more worried about how the town would be perceived by non-residents than she was about the obvious environmental impact of the deer and rising tick disease threats. She worried more about the town’s image than the health of the residents and the environment.

The decision to go ahead with the massive borrowing to expand the library is another example of faulty decision-making. Despite the economic slump, a majority of the council voted to borrow the town up to its debt limit just so some folks on the various library committees wouldn’t be mad at them. We have a perfectly fine library. It would be nice to expand it at some point, but I would hope the council would have enough sense to wait until the luxury of an expanded library matches the town’s ability to provide funds without raising taxes to support that facility.

These are not the actions of particularly smart people – they are the actions of people more concerned about what people think of them than of what is best for the town.
Greene said at one meeting that she and her colleagues were elected to make decisions. I would suggest that the council members were elected not just to make decisions, but to make rational decisions based on facts, not on just how a member feels.

Which raises the question: Do the voters elect these folks based on each council member’s record of feelings rather than sound decision making? I’d bet that most voters haven’t a clue about what goes on at the meetings, and if the voters did know, there’d be a whole lot different make-up of the board.

I know it would come as a pleasant surprise to a lot of Chapel Hillians if the council started making decisions based on the facts, not on their feelings.
–Don Evans

About a dozen years ago, while playing in our front yard, my kids and I watched some contractors pour wet cement around a manhole in the middle of the intersection at our corner. After they’d smoothed the cement, the workers barricaded the spot with sawhorses and left. Though they probably worked for the DOT, they did not re-hang the street-name sign that had fallen off its pole and was propped against a low stone wall at the corner.

I went inside to put some water on to boil to start dinner. As I waited at the sink for the pot to fill, I glanced outside and saw my son inside the barricade, digging in the wet cement with the fallen street sign. I flew outside and hauled him back to the house, then climbed inside the barricade in the middle of the intersection and tried to smooth over the cement with the street sign, the only tool I had to work with.

Talk about mortification.

I’m kind of feeling that way now. Don leaves me in charge of the blog for a few weeks; somebody does something unexpected, and I’m left to clean up the mess as best I can.

But the only tool I can fall back on is my seemingly bottomless supply of good advice (just ask Don and the kids). For what it’s worth, here’s what I’ve got for blog readers:

1. Don’t automatically ascribe the worst motives to others. If something can be interpreted two ways, give the commenter the benefit of the doubt.

2. Disagree without destroying.

3. Learn what all fish know: hooks only hurt if you take the bait.

The next Town Council meeting is almost two months away, leaving us little to write about during the recess. And the heat does make everyone testy. Stay cool; we’ll have plenty to argue about come September.
– Nancy Oates

For the past five weeks I’ve felt a bit like the fellows in the kgb commercial. You know, the one in which two men frantically search on their cell phones for a Japanese translation of “I surrender” before the sumo wrestler attacks.

So I have an unbounded sympathy for the poor fellow who is so slow that he can’t access the information he needs to keep from getting squashed. I’ve been taking a course in Chaucer at UNC, an endeavor that comes with plenty of challenges, not the least of which is trying to keep up with the youngsters in the class. I feel like some Medieval scribe scrambling to scratch out answers on parchment as the class accelerates around me.

On any question the professor throws out, I’m always several seconds behind the students at coming up with an answer. By the time I can access the information in my turtle brain and formulate an answer, the others are on to the next challenge like a herd of jackrabbits. They are sharp and quick and eager to learn. More important, they have grown up with instantaneous access to information, and that shows in their classroom accomplishments.

As someone who has not set foot in a classroom since 1979, it is disconcerting to be back rubbing elbows with folks who think nothing of putting together a Power Point presentation or having continuous access to answers via the Internet while sitting at a classroom desk. The professor asks a question and the brisk clicking of keyboards yields the answer almost instantaneously. I feel like a spectator in some fascinating TV quiz.

We will take the final exam for the class on Friday. I fully expect to be the last student to turn in the exam. And while it humbles me to be the last one out the door, it also is reassuring that each of these students will tackle many of life’s problems with a quicker brain than I had at that age.
– Don Evans

An airplane crashed not half a mile from my house, and I heard nothing until the sirens began.

We live underneath the flight path of many planes taking off and landing at Horace Williams Airport. We always know when the Tar Heels are playing football at home because of the increased air traffic, and more jets than usual. Men’s basketball games cause an uptick in flights, too, as do UNC system board meetings.

But most other times, we get a mix of planes. Some of it may be people taking flying lessons. I think one of the tests you have to pass on your way to getting a pilot’s license is to know what to do when the plane stalls. We have several times heard a plane buzzing lazily overhead, then sputter, then dead silence. If that doesn’t get all heads to snap upwards, nothing will.

All due respect to my friend Diane Bloom, a longtime, diligent proponent of closing Horace Williams Airport, I’ve never really felt unsafe living where I do. Bad things can happen anywhere. My kids will be the first to accuse me of being a hypocrite. They can recite chapter and verse my lecture on not tempting fate. A few crashes have occurred at Horace Williams during the years we’ve lived here, always somewhere inside the Horace Williams tract. Yes, they could have happened a half-mile earlier, and there I’d be with a flaming jet in my living room. But of all the things I worry about, I can’t generate any anxiety over waiting for that to happen.

I worried more during the years I worked for the N&O and drove home from Raleigh after midnight on Friday and Saturday nights, when the only other drivers on the road had likely been drinking for the past several hours. I worry as I walk across supermarket parking lots and see frail, elderly shoppers who use their carts as ersatz walkers, then get behind the wheel of a car.

Once the economy gets going, construction will begin on Carolina North, and that will force the closing of Horace Williams. All those flights will be diverted to RDU, and the people who stay in the hotels or work in the restaurants and stores edging the airport or live in the subdivisions oozing ever closer to RDU will have that much more to worry about. But those of us who live near Horace Williams will know that the next time a plane crashes, it won’t be in our backyard. That’s supposed to make us feel better?
– Nancy Oates

What follows is, for all practical purposes, an endorsement, if not an out-and-out advertisement.

My daughter started an internship at The Chocolate Door yesterday. Brainy and beautiful – and I should know, I’m her mother – my daughter is also bookish and reserved. She tends to speak with her eyes more than her vocal chords. So the most difficult part of the job for her probably came before she entered the kitchen – driving through the construction on Rosemary Street, finding a place to park, figuring out how to get in when the store is closed on Monday. I imagine she was somewhat flustered by the time she met Meghan Rosensweet, who owns the confectionary shop along with her husband, Mitch.

The Chocolate Door – so named because its front door looks like a Hershey bar – has set up shop in what used to be a somewhat dilapidated Chinese restaurant across the street from The News & Observer building. The Rosensweets gutted it over the winter and rebuilt it from the inside out. All through the cool months of early spring, they waved to construction workers walking past from Greenbridge to Italian Pizzeria 3 for lunch, but few stopped in.

The Rosensweets’ patience – not to mention their faith in Meghan’s chocolates, cookies and caramels – has paid off. People began moving into Greenbridge a few weeks ago and stopping by The Chocolate Door to celebrate. The Greenbridge condos will open in three phases. Two of the residents who will move in during the final phase by the end of summer are Frank and Kaola Phoenix. Frank is one of the partners at Greenbridge; Kaola is a local artist of note.

With people now living in Greenbridge, the west end of Franklin Street is beginning to come alive. A plan is in place for sidewalks where none currently exist. Even Papa John’s pizza shop underwent a renovation.

So on Monday, after explaining the rules of public cooking to my daughter, Meghan handed her a recipe for fudge and told her to make a batch, in effect, saying, “Show us what you’ve got.”

Tie an apron on my daughter, and her shyness vanishes. Her passion is creating desserts. When she left home three years ago for school in New England, I swear she was more homesick for an oven than for the family.

Her fudge was delicious, and she was immediately promoted to ganache.

The Chocolate Door opens at 11 this morning. Stop by and see what you think. We recommend the fudge.
– Nancy Oates

What does Betty Kenan know that the rest of the moneyed world doesn’t?

Georgia Kyser’s house at 504 E. Franklin St. sat on the market for, what, four or five years, at least. I don’t recall its initial asking price, though I remember thinking when I heard it, “Good luck with that.” As the house lingered on the market, its price slowly dropped. Last I heard, it was listed at about $1.5 million. Its 2009 tax value is nearly $1.6 million.

In April, Betty Kenan bought it for $900,000. A bargain.

The house is a historic gem, albeit one that has had little updating since maybe the 1970s. Built in 1914, it has five bedrooms and an equal number of fireplaces and all the architectural details you’d expect from a lovingly maintained house that is almost 100 years old. Situated on the corner of East Franklin Street and Battle Lane, it occupies prime historic district real estate.

During the recession, real estate prices have dropped most sharply in the high-end properties. As is so frustratingly true, it takes money to make money. If you, too, are of the moneyed set, you should stop reading this and call your Realtor. Time to shift more of your portfolio into real estate.

If Betty Kenan does nothing with the Kyser house other than pay its taxes and mow its lawn, it will, in years to come, be worth at least its tax value, if not surpass it. And some of us will share in her good fortune, and not only through the large sum she pays to the county in taxes. Kenan, owner of Fine Feathers clothing shop in University Square, is the widow of Frank Kenan, who owned Kenan Transport and The Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Fla., and presumably inherited a good portion of his wealth. She is also a noted philanthropist. The more money she makes, the more she gives away.

The legal entity that purchased the house is Playhouse Trio LLC, the same group that owns 708 and 710 E. Franklin St. two blocks away. We don’t know what Betty Kenan plans to do with the house at 504. I was under the impression that she lives in a smaller house across the street and a few doors down. Usually when people move well beyond retirement age, they downsize, not upsize.

I’m hoping she’ll rent the front parlor to The Chapel Hill Museum.
– Nancy Oates

Nothing but bad news came out of the Chapel Hill Museum’s board meeting last night. Monday will be the last day the public can see the exhibits, though the gift shop likely will remain open for another week, said Stephen Rich, the museum’s treasurer. All that inventory must be sold, as well as the museum’s furnishings. The museum has run out of money.

“We got lots of verbal support in the past month and a half, but very little financial support,” Rich said. “It’s tight right now, and nonprofits are the first to get hit and the last to come out of recessions.”

Reducing the museum’s hours won’t buy any time, Rich said, because the museum must still pay all upkeep and operating costs, “even if it’s only open one hour a week.” Reduced hours wouldn’t make much difference in reduced personnel costs. Museum director Traci Davenport and one part-time staffer are the only two names on the payroll. Everyone else is a volunteer.

The museum must continue to pay rent and utilities until the lease ends in June 2011 or until the museum vacates the premises, whichever comes first. Before the town crafted its 2010-11 budget, the museum had asked for an additional $34,000 in operating aid. The town granted only $20,000.

“It’s very unfortunate that we’re closing, and there’s a lot of people sad about it, but we can’t go into debt,” said Rich, a CPA.

At one time, the concept of a virtual museum was bandied about, but information presented at last night’s board meeting dimmed that possibility, Rich said. The meeting on July 21 with the town will only be to air the museum board’s last questions.

The board is in the process of contacting owners of the artifacts donated to the museum to learn whether they would re-donate should the museum find more affordable space. The original museum grew out of a groundswell, albeit in better economic times, and perhaps that will happen again, Rich said.

But at least for the next few days, Rich said, “spread the word that the shop has some good bargains.”

And Traci Davenport is polishing her resume.
– Nancy Oates

While we sat in Kenan Stadium on July 4, waiting for the fireworks display to begin, I was struck by the diversity of the crowd. Not just in race and ethnicity, but in age range and social group – families of mom-dad-kids, grandma-mom-kids, dad-kids, and other mixes; teenagers with their friends; senior citizens in male-female pairs and same-sex or mixed-gender clusters. The crowd could have been lifted directly from a free New York Philharmonic concert in Central Park. It did my heart good.

And I am similarly pleased that the Town Council is not always voting in ways we’ve come to expect. It used to be that when I looked at the agenda, I could fairly accurately pick who would vote which way. But in the June 21 meeting in particular, council members spoke up for and against items in ways that surprised me.

Matt Czajkowski assertively holding town manager Roger Stancil accountable for providing information to council members about selecting a site for the homeless shelter. I gather staff is sometimes lackadaisical about filling council requests for information.

Laurin Easthom likewise insisting that information she requested from staff be delivered, and her new willingness to be the lone holdout on votes as she stands up for her constituents.

Gene Pease turning into a wild card in terms of whom he will throw in his lot with.

Mark Kleinschmidt siding with Czajkowski on some issues.

Jim Ward going over the consent agenda with a fine-tooth comb and voicing concern over the money spent on hybrid buses that have a lifespan of about 12 years. Perhaps he’ll join us in a decade at a booth at the library coffee shop he voted for to ponder how to pay for a new fleet of buses that now cost about $500,000 each.

Even town attorney Ralph Karpinos offered legal counsel on several points.

I know the council meetings run longer than many members and citizens alike prefer. But to hear issues being debated on their merits with very few personal jabs or snide tones of voices is a huge step in the right direction. For that alone, the last council meeting of the year ended on a high note.
– Nancy Oates