All posts tagged Central West

New faces in town races

Last week I put my money where my mouth is — $5, to be exact. I filed to run for a seat on Town Council. For the six years I’ve been writing Chapel Hill Watch, I’ve tuned in every Monday night during Town Council season and sat on my couch cheering on various council and […]

Ask a planner

This being the time of year to give thanks, I must acknowledge how grateful I am to my children, both of whom inherited their father’s lawyer gene, for the training they put me through during their teenage years. If I had not had those years of intensive practice asking laser-like questions to get to the […]

Limits on listening

I never thought I’d say this, but I miss those all-nighter council meetings. Town Council had a rich agenda for its Oct. 21 public hearing – a discussion of whether to add large swaths of land north of Chapel Hill, which included the Historic Rogers Road neighborhood, to the ETJ; Central West’s controversial proposal; and […]

Seeing red

About 200 taxpayers turned out for the open house last Tuesday night that showed off the four plans for Central West Focus Area that we got for the nearly quarter of a million dollars we paid to Rhodeside & Harwell. Or as Jim Ward framed it in an email on the Central West listserv: a […]

To be rather than to seem

Elections in Chapel Hill are when the esse meets the videri. The election filing period opened in Orange County last Friday, and residents have until next Friday to register their intent to run for public office. Chapel Hill will elect four Town Council members and a mayor in November. Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt has filed for […]

Invite them where?

I listened to a panel discussion on WCHL yesterday afternoon as I drove around doing errands in the rain. Local residents who held various leadership roles in Chapel Hill and Carrboro talked about their vision for the town. One comment in particular stuck with me. Delores Bailey, executive director of Empowerment, said she would like […]

Transportation meeting tonight

I don’t envy Kumar Neppalli, Chapel Hill’s traffic engineer-in-chief. Estes Drive will get a new traffic light where Library Drive T’s into it. NCDOT will cover the costs. Neppalli will work out the logistics. Everyone who has ever tried to turn east on Estes after leaving the library knows the risk of making that left […]

Who chooses?

The Central West Focus Area steering committee starts work next week, on Dec. 19. Only 16 members will gather in the first-floor conference room at Town Hall that night at 6 p.m. Seventeen people were recommended for appointment, but a little political gerrymandering went awry, and council members, in a vote by secret ballot, approved […]

Table talk

John Ager is a member of the Planning Board and co-facilitated the recent Central West Focus Area meetings. Here’s what he has to say: A fundamental challenge lies at the heart of the “Central West Focus Area” debate. This area contains some of the town’s oldest and loveliest neighborhoods. No one is surprised when the […]