Let’s say you live in Phoenix Place, near the intersection of Rogers Road and Purefoy, and you wanted to ride Chapel Hill’s prepaid buses into town. Maybe you don’t have a car or you embrace the walkable community ideal we hear Town Council members and developers talk about. Because bus service along Rogers Road is […]

While on vacation last week, I spent quite a bit of time on mini-golf courses, where I had ample opportunity to observe how parents and grandparents dealt with children who could not putt a ball into a hole if their life depended on it. Time after time, adults would use their own club or their […]

Red flags went up for me when I got the email about a meeting to introduce an initiative called “Neighborhood Character Standards.” Not so much because of its title that evoked right-wing conservative ideology, and not because of anything in the standards themselves. What caught my attention was that the email, in a chipper tone, […]

So many Orange County commissioners may show up for a tour of potential park sites on Millhouse Road and Twin Creeks on New Year’s Eve that the photo op has been deemed a special commissioners’ meeting. If a majority of commissioners attend an event, state law considers it an official meeting and must give the […]

Compromise, a concept not usually synonymous with Town Council, ruled the day during the approval of a plan for Central West. Council members did so many things right during last Tuesday’s meeting that it’s hard to know where to begin. Town staff set the stage by reconfiguring the room to allow increased occupancy of 130; […]

The Friends of Downtown held a sneak preview of the candidates for Town Council last Thursday. I sat in the audience next to Julie McClintock, which didn’t seem like a mistake at the time, until Mark Kleinschmidt, running unopposed for mayor, got up to speak and made mention of the “constant contrarians.” And suddenly, all […]

The IFC has a Good Neighbor Plan and a lease for its Homestead Road facility. And Lee Storrow came into his own at last night’s Town Council meeting, standing up tentatively but tenaciously for certain safeguards to be added into each document. Homestead Road neighbors have held IFC’s toes to the fire throughout the process […]