In an effort to improve our chances of recouping through tax revenue the $10 million taxpayers invested in infrastructure in the area now known as Blue Hill, Town Council members considered options for increasing the amount of commercial space in the district. At our June 27 council meeting, we talked about changing the form-based code […]
All posts in category Politics
Do We Want Diversity?
Posted by Nancy Oates on July 9, 2018
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/07/09/do-we-want-diversity/
2018 Season Finale
As the bad news piled up — cruelty and crassness at the national level and callousness from state legislators — a friend commented: “I no longer feel proud to be an American.” I know the feeling. At last Wednesday’s Town Council meeting — our last of the season — we treated the public to 5 […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on July 2, 2018
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/07/02/2018-season-finale/
How Generous Can We Afford to Be?
Richard Jenrette snagged his dream job right out of college — sportswriter for the N&O. A few years into it, though, he looked around and noticed that newspaper people didn’t make much money. He enrolled in Harvard Business School to learn a more lucrative trade. Jenrette, the “J” in the enormously successful brokerage firm DLJ […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on June 11, 2018
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/06/11/how-generous-can-we-afford-to-be/
Honor Council
Not long ago, a few members of Duke University’s Honor Council spoke with students at McDougle Middle School about the roles of morals and ethics in making good decisions. Honor Council members set up a scenario for the moral dilemma all of us have faced more than once in our lives — You see someone […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on May 21, 2018
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/05/21/honor-council/
Indy loses its independence
Was a time when Chapel Hill and Orange County had a good selection of news providers to advise voters in the candidate selection process. With the elimination of The Chapel Hill News and Chapel Hill Herald and the weakening of The Daily Tar Heel, the town has lost great resources. Now it appears that The […]
Posted by Don Evans on May 14, 2018
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/05/14/indy-loses-its-independence/
Autopsy of a vote
After my colleagues on Town Council blew off applying for a quarter million dollars of free money toward the purchase of the American Legion property at the April 18 meeting, I was so disheartened I went out and got #NeverAgain tattooed on my chest. (Just kidding, Mom.) So when I walked into the April 25 […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on April 30, 2018
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/04/30/autopsy-of-a-vote/
Our chance at the gold — gone
Chapel Hill should bid on hosting a Winter Olympics. Sure, we’d need to build a couple of ski slopes, one with fancy rails and jumps. We would have to retrofit the Dean Dome into an ice-skating rink. And we’d need to build a housing complex for the athletes, though we could repurpose it into affordable […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on February 19, 2018
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/02/19/our-chance-at-the-gold-gone/
Honor MLK Jr. — Speak Out
Never have I felt so alone and afraid as when the border patrol in El Salvador pulled me off the bus as I headed to American-friendly Guatemala because I had not stayed the three consecutive nights the Salvadoran regime required of tourists to that country torn by civil war in the early 1980s. I watched […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on January 15, 2018
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/01/15/honor-mlk-jr-speak-out/
Lessons of War
Sometimes you can find words to live by where you least expect it. In a war movie I saw recently, a SEAL unit came under fire. “I’ve been shot!” one SEAL cried, whereupon his ranking officer replied: “That’s in the past. Don’t live in the past. Let’s move.” Stay with me here for what that […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on December 18, 2017
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2017/12/18/lessons-of-war/
A win for Chapel Hill
Who won last Tuesday’s municipal elections? The residents of Chapel Hill did. Chapel Hill voters elected four newcomers to the four Town Council seats. (Mayor Pam Hemminger, whose only opponent was a write-in candidate, won re-election.) The council members-elect are younger than the incumbents they are succeeding, and for the most part, seem less entrenched […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on November 13, 2017
http://chapelhillwatch.com/2017/11/13/a-win-for-chapel-hill/