Where we go from here

Silent Sam made sure that town manager Roger Stancil did not go gentle into that good night. Stancil wrapped up his more than 12 years in Chapel Hill town staff’s top post on Saturday and was working nigh until midnight on his to-do list. The many hours of meetings to coordinate with UNC Police and strategize public safety necessitated by protests after activists yanked the statue down on campus slowed his progress a bit. But not much.

(And how fortuitous that Stancil’s successor, Maurice Jones, with his hard-earned experience in Charlottesville last year, clocked in the very day the troubles started and could share his counsel from the get-go.)

After Stancil announced his retirement last year, council came up with a list of priorities — 27 of them, along the lines of “Fix the downtown parking shortage,” and “Get the LUMO rewrite and new future land use maps going,” and “Draft a development agreement for the Municipal Services Center.” Darned if he didn’t make significant progress on almost all of them.

Council met with Jones last week in closed session to talk about priorities moving forward. I expect it may take a little while before he is sufficiently comfortable to push back and give us guidance. Put I hope he won’t take too long. We need help.

Yes, I know, council is the town manager’s boss. But none of us on the dais knows city planning. Unless staff tell us, we don’t know when we’re making a decision we’ll regret later.

My sense is that Jones and Stancil have quite different styles, just as Stancil and his predecessor, Cal Horton, did. I didn’t have any dealings with Horton directly, but from what I’ve heard, he ran the show. Some community members say Stancil did, too, but I think he just knew how to count to five.

When I think back on the most objectionable initiatives in the past decade, they can only be blamed on council — the lack of affordable housing in Ephesus-Fordham, Carraway Village and any other new construction approved; the Blue Hill form-based code that did away with requirements for trees and allowed building in the Resource Conservation District; the luxury high-rises blanketing every buildable parcel. Those came about because each project had at least five council members voting for it.

I stopped by Charlottesville over the summer and wandered around its downtown area for a couple hours. (Try that in Chapel Hill. Strolling campus doesn’t count.) There was quite a bit to see: a pedestrian mall, heavily weighted toward independent businesses, not all of them restaurants; historic buildings, though almost all housed businesses; a school repurposed into artists’ studios open to the public; transitional housing apartments; a really good chocolate shop; and townfolk welcoming to a sweaty stranger.

And the diversity of people — to the point that I grew suspicious Jones had called ahead to make sure there would be an interesting mix.

Stancil led us through some rocky times, including the recession, and kept us on a path of fiscal stability. Now Jones takes the reins. I’m looking forward to seeing what paths we choose with his guidance.
— Nancy Oates