All posts in category Lifestyle

Hospitality

Staff at the Durham Performing Arts Center have that hospitality thing down pat. Even if your ticket is for a seat in the very last row of the upper balcony, DPAC staff welcome you as if they are delighted that you’ve accepted their invitation to their soiree. Yet, statistically, a certain percentage of them have […]

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 […]

How to be inclusive

We can’t legislate kindness. If we could, that would have been my answer to a question posed at the candidates forum hosted by WCHL last week. Chapelboro on-air personality Aaron Keck, who moderated the forum, asked candidates: What’s the most important thing Chapel Hill can do to make itself a more welcoming and inclusive community? […]

Feel-good decisions

As I interact with people when I do errands, I often ask them whether they live in Chapel Hill and why. I ask those who live in town what they would like Town Council to know. Usually, I hear the Big Three Issues: affordability, flooding and traffic. Not long ago, I heard a new one: […]

Right on red

One theory has it that if we just make traffic bad enough, people will take the bus. Perhaps that was the rationale behind an item on the Town Council consent agenda coming up this week that would have prohibited turning right at red lights in 16 high-traffic intersections. A former council member proposed the right-turn-on-red […]

Senior housing

Plan ahead. Senior housing consultant Michelle Lytle-Westrom wants you to take that message to heart, above all else. The future will be here before you know it. Lytle-Westrom spoke to a standing-room-only crowd, most of us with gray hair, at the library last Sunday afternoon to run through various options once we were ready to […]

Kneecapping our best intentions

Chapel Hill residents take housing affordability seriously. Are we on Town Council poised to undermine progress we’ve made? The budget we passed last week included a property tax increase that would fund the $10 million bond voters approved last year to be spent on increasing the supply of affordable housing. Some years back, council approved […]

If we build it …

Which came first — residents with a plethora of discretionary income? Or craft breweries, tapas bars and the availability of Starbucks’ White Chocolate Mocha Frappuccino on every street corner? If we build it, they will come, goes the adage. Last Friday morning at the town’s Economic Sustainability Committee meeting, Alisa Duffey Rogers, project manager of […]

Wealth gap

I say this every year at budget time. Call it my annual screed: A flat percentage salary increase across the whole pay scale widens the wealth gap. The rich get richer, and the poor end up with comparatively less buying power. This year, the town’s 3% across-the-board pay raise will put an extra $900 (before […]

Rogers Road victory

The historically black Rogers Road neighborhood crossed the finish line this past week on quality-of-life improvements years in the making. Town Council approved rezoning that would protect the neighborhood from the over-development expected once the sewer line extends into the area. The neighborhood, north of Homestead Road and east of Rogers Road, sits just south […]