All posts in category Town staff

Are we really #allinthistogether?

The Chapel Hill town manager presented a very tight budget for the coming fiscal year. As part of covering core services in a time of noticeably lower revenue, he delays for 6 months the 65-cent-per-hour pay raise for the town’s lowest-paid workers that the town committed to in being certified a Living Wage employer. But […]

Rising above

I landed in London as the British were waking up to Boris Johnson’s landslide victory. Over the course of the ensuing few days, I chatted with people I met about what they thought of the election outcome. Their responses lead me to predict four more years of Donald Trump. Johnson’s wide margin of victory surprised […]

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 […]

Exclusive boards

Consider the irony: At the same time town staff are making considerable efforts to encourage more people to get involved in the town decision-making process by applying to advisory boards and commissions, the Council Committee on Boards and Commissions has proposed limiting the number of people who will actually be considered for appointment. And, after […]

Traffic

Last week I arrived at a meeting after it had started because I had seriously underestimated how long it would take me to drive there. Now that students and professors are back and families have returned from vacations in time for the start of school, some 20,000 to 40,000 additional cars are on the street […]

BRT’s next stop

If you don’t know what NSBRT is as you read this today, you must have taken off for the beach this past weekend. Town staff hosted a blitz of presentations, focus groups and community input meetings over the weekend to introduce North-South Bus Rapid Transit to the public. The bus line, part of Chapel Hill’s […]

The flummox of FLUM

The gavel came down on our final meeting of the 2019 fiscal year at 11:34 p.m. last Wednesday night. Community members packed the auditorium at Town Hall at the beginning of the meeting for various last-minute petitions, and many town residents stayed almost all the way to the end to weigh in on the Future […]

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 […]