All posts in category Elections

Endorsements 2023

I’ve been wracking my brain all afternoon trying to find a way to make “Searing” and “no drama” rhyme. But that sort of whimsey wouldn’t impress Adam Searing, and that touches on what’s so quietly impressive about the man. Searing’s fact-based, pragmatic approach to solving problems is only one of many reasons I’m voting for […]

Council vacancy

At its Feb. 19 meeting, Town Council officially announced the vacant seat on council and agreed to accept applications through 5 p.m. on March 27. Any town resident who is registered to vote in Chapel Hill elections and will be 21 by the date he or she is to take office may apply. Here is […]

Speak for the trees

When development proposals came before Town Council, Jim Ward, council member from 1999 to 2015, could be relied upon to speak for the trees. When I joined council and he did not get re-elected, I took on that mantle. Now I’m leaving council, and no one has emerged to protect our environment in this fundamental […]

VOTE!

Over the past few weeks that I’ve walked through neighborhoods, canvassing voters, I’ve seen some truly lovely homes. Places that are sanctuaries from the problems and corrosive encounters with the world at large. Beautiful views; lush greenery; maybe a bubbling fountain to calm and rejuvenate one’s spirit. When the going gets tough, these folks have […]

Look before you vote

I flat out enjoy canvassing. When else can I knock on a stranger’s door and start a conversation? After weeks of traipsing through neighborhoods all over town, I feel confident about giving directions to any Amazon Prime driver. Regardless of what part of town I’m in, someone on whose door I’ve knocked will ask me, […]

Endorsements

When I sat in the audience, mining Town Council meetings for material for my Chapel Hill Watch blog, solutions to the problems council members wrestled with seemed so obvious. Once I was elected and shifted my seat to the dais, the answers weren’t so black-and-white. The job requires more nuance, discernment, balance and patience than […]

Too simple to understand?

Solutions to town problems seemed so much simpler when I sat in the audience at Town Hall covering Town Council meetings for my Chapel Hill Watch blog. After I was elected and moved to the dais, I learned there are no easy answers. Running for re-election this year, I was disheartened to receive questionnaires from […]

Civil discourse

A bit of unpleasantness broke out at a nonprofit board meeting recently. An elected official (no Chapel Hill Town Council member or candidate), clearly frustrated by the discussion, behaved unprofessionally, using what in our family we call a “swear word.” I blame Trump. Politics at the national level has become a free-for-all, and the incivility […]

Why I’m running

Last week we held one of the oddest council meetings I have seen in the decade I have been keeping tabs on council business. Odd that we called a special meeting in the summer to revote on something we had voted on five months earlier. Odder still the number of politicians and political advocates lobbying […]

Parents aim to teach board a lesson

To celebrate National Professional Social Work Month this month, a large metropolitan hospital showed its appreciation for its overworked social workers by inviting them to participate in a blood drive organized in their honor. Rather than treating them to lunch or even a cake, one social worker noted, the hospital “asked us to give our […]