All posts for the month December, 2014

Parks ahead? Slow down

So many Orange County commissioners may show up for a tour of potential park sites on Millhouse Road and Twin Creeks on New Year’s Eve that the photo op has been deemed a special commissioners’ meeting. If a majority of commissioners attend an event, state law considers it an official meeting and must give the […]

Burned by Burns?

Such generosity we Orange County taxpayers show. Why, just look at the salary and benefits package we are paying County School Superintendent Del Burns — an annual rate of nearly $300,000. Add up his base pay, health coverage, a monthly car allowance of $250 and another $50 a month toward his cell phone, and we […]

Urban renewal

Don heard that a store in Burlington sold Cheerwine with real sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup, and always one to encourage a healthy lifestyle, I went with him to search. I’d never been to Burlington beyond the outlet stores that used to flourish off the interstate until Tanger Mall lured them away. As we drove […]

Council must govern

Form-based code — it’s everywhere in Chapel Hill these days. First, Town Council approved it for 190 acres in the Ephesus-Fordham area. Currently, Northwood Ravin is trying to get the same liberties offered by form-based code, though it hasn’t used the highly charged term, in its proposed mixed-use development The Edge, at the corner of […]

Assembled governments

County elected officials spent a million dollars of taxpayers’ money on refurbishing a meeting space. You’d think they could have picked out comfortable chairs. Town and county staff and elected officials gathered around the meeting table, as well as those of us in the audience, squirmed and shifted uncomfortably in our seats, not because of […]