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 him for mayor.

Since he was first elected to Chapel Hill Town Council in 2021, Searing has been the adult on the dais. He takes his responsibilities seriously. He has an excellent brain, and he puts its full power to use in approaching issues directly, then analyzing, strategizing and problem-solving to find the best solutions as our town grows.

A nonprofit lawyer and health advocate, Searing has made a career fighting the good fight and helping people passionately on opposite sides of an issue find a resolution. He comes to council meetings having done his homework. He listens to his constituents and colleagues and leverages staff expertise. He screens out the sniping of politics and personalities going on around him and focuses on what matters most to people who live here or want to live here.

Searing is well aware we pay three times the property taxes that homeowners in Durham and Wake County towns pay, yet Chapel Hill doesn’t have enough money to pay for the basics as we grow — firetrucks and street repaving, as well as playgrounds for children of different abilities or those who like to spend their outdoor time skateboarding. He has learned from other municipalities that eliminating single-family zoning increases the cost of housing all over town.

He knows the physical and mental health benefits of having green space, and he wants it available to people who don’t have a car or the budget for membership fees. He knows we don’t have to pit affordable housing against environmental protection.

Searing takes practical stands: Don’t build housing on a toxic coal ash dump without cleaning it up first. Involve UNC in supplying housing for students off campus as the university increases enrollment. Make room for people of all income levels. Work opportunities are spread over a wide pay spectrum; we need housing opportunities to match.

Over the years, Searing has received many awards, including from President Barack Obama, the American Academy of Pediatrics and Indy Week newspaper. Locally, he’s supported by an army of community leaders, including a highly respected former mayor. Searing is a strong leader who amplifies voices others often ignore.

To make the changes we need to see, he’ll need a backup band of council members. Searing has identified four council candidates — Elizabeth Sharp, Breckany Eckhardt, David Adams and Renuka Soll — who will bring diverse perspectives to issues. Sharp is a small business owner, Eckhardt works in tech, Adams is a retired cancer researcher and Soll is an anti-gun activist who chairs the town’s Parks and Greenways Commission.

Please join me in voting for: Adam Searing for mayor; and, for Town Council: Elizabeth Sharp, Breckany Eckhardt, David Adams and Renuka Soll.  

Election Day is Nov. 7. Early voting starts in Chapel Hill on Thursday, Oct. 26. You’ll need to show a photo ID to vote this year.

by on October 25, 2023  •  Permalink
Posted in Elections, Politics
Posted by Nancy Oates on October 25, 2023

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2023/10/25/endorsements-2023/

Bamboozled

Chapel Hill Mayor Pam Hemminger has calendared the Greene Tract resolution for a vote at town council’s Nov. 17 meeting — after the election, so that voters can’t hear candidates’ views on development of one of the last remaining natural areas in Chapel Hill, but before new council members who might be more committed to the interests of people of color can vote on it.

Residents and elected officials have been battling over what to do with the Greene Tract for decades. The 164-acre parcel is jointly owned by Orange County, Carrboro and Chapel Hill and abuts the Rogers Road community, a historically black neighborhood that has been treated shabbily by the municipalities. In 1972, then Chapel Hill Mayor Howard Lee persuaded Rogers Road residents to accept an 80-acre landfill nearby in exchange for paving Rogers Road and for the landfill to be converted to a recreation area once it was full. Instead, the county expanded the landfill in the 1980s, and pollutants from the landfill seeped into nearby wells, compromising the drinking water.

In 2002, Orange County Commissioners Chair Moses Carey led an effort to dedicate 18 acres of the Greene Tract adjacent to the Rogers Road neighborhood for affordable housing while preserving the remaining acres as green space. That was affirmed by the commissioners in 2007. In 2016, the Rogers Road residents crafted a master plan for the Greene Tract, expanding the affordable housing to 20% of the acreage, keeping 80% as natural forest.

In 2019, residents of the area participated in an intensive series of meetings with a consulting firm to decide on the type of development for that 20%, and agreed on gentle density of affordable single-family, row houses and duplexes, along with space for independent small businesses.

Then it got ugly. At a Chapel Hill council meeting on July 15, 2019, after leaders from the Rogers Road community, other adjacent property owners, and environmentalists urged adoption of the Rogers Road master plan, people who had no skin in the game lobbied council for “mixed use” high rises, selling portions to private developers for market-rate housing, and building roads through protected headwaters (state law allows this). Designating a few acres for a school would enable the town to seize land by eminent domain to build a road. Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board chair said the school system had no need for a school there, but if it did in the future, state law would require more land.

During a break in the meeting, council member Jess Anderson huddled with the Rogers Road master plan supporters, pressing them to cede more land for development. When the meeting resumed, a split council passed a resolution to develop 66 acres, with the only vehicle access being through the Rogers Road neighborhood. Council refused to remove the mixed-use high rises from consideration.

Since then, small numbers of elected officials from Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro have met repeatedly behind closed doors, have prevented the public from listening in and have not released any minutes of what has transpired.

Elected officials and town and county staff doubled down on obfuscation at the Nov. 7 community meeting. Elected officials circulated among the large crowd saying there were no plans for a vote in November, despite materials handed out by staff showing the vote scheduled for Nov. 17. Multiple staff members and council member Karen Stegman said it was “too soon” to think about vehicle traffic to the development site. Staff members confirmed that the Rogers Road residents had not been apprised of the traffic impact. Stegman went so far as to say the Greene Tract might not have any development on it at all.

One wonders what elected officials have promised the Rogers Road residents this time. The healthy recreation space they now have access to for free will be destroyed. The roads presented at the July 2019 meeting will make their neighborhood a shortcut to Carrboro. And some council members expect acres to be sold to private developers for high-density development in hopes of sharing the cost of infrastructure.

The newly elected council members might object to this systemic racism. Let’s hold off voting until they can have a say.

Staff will hold a follow-up Zoom meeting tonight, Nov. 8, at 5:30 p.m. Register to attend here: https://www.townofchapelhill.org/Home/Components/News/News/17423/4048

— Nancy E. Oates

by on November 8, 2021  •  Permalink
Posted in Council Members, County business, Ethics, Housing, Land Use, Politics, Social justice
Tagged
Posted by NancyDon on November 8, 2021

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2021/11/08/bamboozled/

You can’t live in good intentions

When it comes to increasing the supply of affordable housing in Chapel Hill, town councils over the years mean well, but little comes out of the ground. Read more in my editorial for The Local Reporter.

by on June 29, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted by NancyDon on June 29, 2020

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2020/06/29/you-cant-live-in-good-intentions/

Enough

If only one police officer at the arrest of George Floyd had said, “Enough.”

That’s all it would have taken to avert a tragedy — this time, anyway.

So many of us across the country are reeling with shock and anger and despair. Six year ago, we were aghast when Eric Garner struggled against getting arrested for a misdemeanor and ended up dead after a police officer used excessive force. But this time — this time, because God help us, I don’t believe this will be the last — with George Floyd, he didn’t even struggle. He was cuffed, lying on his belly, four of them to one of him even if he had managed to get up. There was no need to put a knee on his neck at any time.

If only one of the other officers standing nearby had said to his kneeling colleague, “Get up now. We got this.”

Overall, I’m a staunch defender of police. We ask them to do things we don’t have the training or courage to take on, and we pay them very little for walking into situations that might cost them their lives. And I believe most police officers do the right thing, even under extreme duress.

I feel betrayed when they let us down so egregiously, as they have done in recent weeks with Floyd and with Breonna Taylor, shot to death in her own home by police who burst in without identifying themselves as police.

And this comes on the heels of Ahmaud Arbery shot to death by white men as he jogged through a white neighborhood; and Chris Cooper who, while bird-watching in Central Park, asked a white woman to leash her dog as per city ordinance and she called 9-1-1, feigning panic and claiming she was being “attacked by an African American.”

In cities across the country, people are taking to the streets to say, “Enough.” I don’t condone the violence and destruction of property, even though I understand it. People have protested peacefully for years and have been ignored or punished. Think of pro football player Colin Kaepernick silently kneeling during the national anthem or Rev. William Barber leading orderly sit-ins outside N.C. Legislature meetings on a regular schedule. What changed, other than Kaepernick is deemed unemployable and Barber has a growing rap sheet.

And black men are going public, their own #MeToo movement, with their stories of frightening experiences at the hands of police that have left them understandably fearful whenever police approach, incidents they never reported because what good would it do? They would only have their credibility called into question.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump tweets hate-mongering from a bunker far from the protests, egging on more violence.

Enough. We don’t have to be heroes or eloquent speakers, or start movements or be wealthy enough to donate to causes. We just need to rise and stand together and say, “Enough.”

— Nancy Oates

by on June 1, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Police, Social justice
Tagged
Posted by Nancy Oates on June 1, 2020

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2020/06/01/enough/

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 he protected fully the salaries of town executives making upwards of $170,000 this year.

Read more in my latest column for The Local Reporter: https://thelocalreporter.press/are-we-really-allinthistogether/.

— Nancy Oates

by on May 25, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in Budget, Council Members, Spending, Taxes, Town staff
Tagged
Posted by Nancy Oates on May 25, 2020

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2020/05/25/are-we-really-allinthistogether/

We’re still here

While leafing through a coupon circular in the newspaper in the days leading up to Mother’s Day (don’t judge: we all cope with the stay-at-home order in our own way), I came across a somewhat alarming advertisement come-on: “Make Mom Melt Away.”

In this time of mandated togetherness, I’m sure the ad copywriter for that chocolate company isn’t the only one who wishes household members sharing close quarters would disappear. I feel the same way about Donald Trump.

So much of our normal lives has melted away since mid-March. We’ve worked through all the stages of grief: denial (“Let’s hunker down for the weekend until this all blows over”), anger (“The governor can’t just cancel my haircut!”), bargaining (“Open the store long enough for me to buy a new pair of jeans, and I’ll wear a mask”), depression (“I don’t care if the economy reopens; I’m gonna stay home, alone with my chocolate and Netflix”) and acceptance (“I’ve subscribed to Zoom Premium”).

Yet so much hasn’t. Nationwide, two-thirds of all those still employed leave home to work. Buses still run, though with fewer passengers. Council hasn’t melted away, though watching them on Zoom doesn’t feel like a real meeting. I used to think Town Council would make a good reality TV show, but the Zoom version just seems like Hollywood Squares without the wit.

Council may need a reminder that constituents haven’t melted away, either, though we aren’t as visible as we were in the flesh. I hear from town residents who feel shut out of the decision-making process. Notices about proposed developments arrive two days before a meeting (legally allowable, but it gives residents almost no time to prepare to comment at the meeting). Meetings are open only to those who have internet access at home and computers that can download Zoom. Agendas aren’t made public until right before the meeting.

Increasingly, council resembles a cartoon in The New Yorker in which the boss tells the employee: “We want to include you in this decision without letting you affect it.”

As mere Zoom talking heads, council may feel disconnected from the community, but we’re still here; we’re still talking with one another; and we’re still trying to talk with council. We won’t melt away.

— Nancy E. Oates

by on May 11, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Council Members, COVID-19, Politics
Tagged ,
Posted by Nancy Oates on May 11, 2020

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2020/05/11/were-still-here/

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 the link to the application form: https://www.townofchapelhill.org/Home/Components/News/News/16199/4048

Town ordinance Chapter 2, Article II, Sections 2-23 through 2-28 lay out the procedure for council filling a vacancy with less than 2 years left in the term. Although the ordinance states that the applicant must sign the application, Town Clerk Amy Harvey said that submitting the online application electronically satisfies the signature requirement.

Applicants who prefer to complete a paper form may pick one up at the visitors check-in desk on the ground floor of Town Hall. The signed application must be turned in to the Town Clerk’s office on the second floor of Town Hall by the March 27 deadline.

Council is scheduled to consider the applications at its April 1 meeting.

I have applied, and I have reached out to the sixth- and seventh-placed candidates who ran in the November 2019 election and encouraged them to apply as well. Only 85 votes separated the fourth-placed candidate from the candidate who came in seventh. The three of us “non-prevailing candidates,” as the elections director put it so delicately, have demonstrated our commitment to serve by going through the rigorous campaign process, which included some two dozen forums, debates and candidate questionnaires. Voters have grilled us on the issues and would be happy with any of us, given how tight the final vote tally was.

But any town resident of majority age who is registered to vote in Chapel Hill elections may apply. If you are a fact-based decision maker and care deeply about the viability of our town, the quality of life afforded residents and who we allow to live here, I encourage you to apply, too.

The more people we have on council who make decisions based on factual information instead of political strategy, who look ahead to unintended consequences and consider the impact on all residents, regardless of socioeconomic status, the better off we’ll be.

Oh, and you have to have plenty of free time. Serving on council requires more than attending a weekly meeting. Council members have to bone up on all of the issues that come before them, attend advisory board meetings, divvy up appearances at ribbon-cuttings and community events, and answer dozens of emails a day.

If that sounds like you, please apply. And do so before 5 p.m. on Friday, March 27.

— Nancy Oates

by on March 9, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in Council Members, Elections, Politics
Tagged
Posted by Nancy Oates on March 9, 2020

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2020/03/09/council-vacancy/

2020 Census

Learn more about the 2020 Census from my article in The Local Reporter.

— Nancy Oates

by on February 4, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted by NancyDon on February 4, 2020

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2020/02/04/2020-census/

Greene Tract series continues

I took time out for a lengthy vacation, half of it spent abroad and half among the 85% of Chapel Hill residents who don’t realize Chapel Hill has a town council.

Stepping back gave me a new perspective on town business and how lives are lived by people who feel fulfilled, even if they know nothing about the slippery slope of conditional zoning or the threat posed by the big business of health care to heritage wildlife areas.

The rest of the world has a lot on its mind. The fields that grow our food are flooding or baking. Low-income folks are succumbing to diseases caused by particulate pollutants because they live near coal-burning power plants or high-traffic highways. Wages on the low half of the income range can’t keep up with housing costs.

To ease back into local issues, I went to an Orange County commissioners meeting last week to hear the discussion on the Greene Tract. I was dismayed to hear some commissioners straying from the facts.

A little background: The Greene Tract consists of 164 acres of which 104 are jointly owned by Orange County, Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Orange County independently owns the remaining 60 acres of headwater preserve. Some years back, the three governing bodies agreed that decisions on developing any part of the parcel would be made jointly.

The land is considered part of the Historic Rogers Road Neighborhood. In 2016, Rogers Road residents came up with a plan for low-impact development that would provide some affordable housing, particularly for senior citizens, while preserving natural areas of old-growth hardwoods.

At an Assembly of Governments meeting a couple years ago while I was on council, the county presented three development options to consider — low, medium or high density. No votes were taken; no decisions made; no substantive discussions had; and no community input received.

Last year, Orange County sent a development plan for the Greene Tract to the townships. In February, Chapel Hill Town Council expressed concerns to the board of commissioners but was rebuffed. When the plan was formally presented to Chapel Hill in late spring, the Town Council convened a special meeting in July to discuss it. Rogers Road residents partnered with neighborhoods along the southern edge of the parcel and conservationists to lobby for the 2016 plan developed by the Rogers Road community.

At the July meeting, former, current and aspiring politicians banded against the Rogers Road contingent to lobby for high-density development. Chapel Hill Town Council tried to find a compromise between residents and politicians. Over the next couple of months, a small group of elected officials and staff from all three bodies met to work out differences.

Now, all three governing bodies have agreed to a process for moving forward with development decisions. Some commissioners were reluctant to sign on, but the Rogers Road residents, neighbors, conservationists and an affordable housing advocate talked them into it.

Discussion of developing the Greene Tract will begin at Tuesday’s (Jan. 28) Assembly of Governments meeting at 7 p.m. in the Whitted Building on Tryon Street in Hillsborough. Public comment usually is not allowed, but open eyes and ears are welcome.

See you there.

— Nancy Oates

by on January 27, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Council Members, Environment, Housing, Land Use, Politics
Tagged
Posted by Nancy Oates on January 27, 2020

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2020/01/27/greene-tract-series-continues/

Editorial in The Local Reporter

What can we do to chip away at the intractable situation of homelessness? Begin with the facts. Our solutions will be more effective if we start with the facts.

See my editorial in The Local Reporter, https://thelocalreporter.press/the-facts-on-homelessness/.

— Nancy Oates

by on January 13, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in Uncategorized
Posted by NancyDon on January 13, 2020

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2020/01/13/editorial-in-the-local-reporter/

« Older Posts