One theory has it that if we just make traffic bad enough, people will take the bus. Perhaps that was the rationale behind an item on the Town Council consent agenda coming up this week that would have prohibited turning right at red lights in 16 high-traffic intersections. A former council member proposed the right-turn-on-red […]
Right on red
Posted by Nancy Oates on September 9, 2019
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/09/09/right-turn-on-red/
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 […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on September 2, 2019
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/09/02/traffic/
Too simple to understand?
Solutions to town problems seemed so much simpler when I sat in the audience at Town Hall covering Town Council meetings for my Chapel Hill Watch blog. After I was elected and moved to the dais, I learned there are no easy answers. Running for re-election this year, I was disheartened to receive questionnaires from […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on August 26, 2019
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/08/26/too-simple-to-understand/
Civil discourse
A bit of unpleasantness broke out at a nonprofit board meeting recently. An elected official (no Chapel Hill Town Council member or candidate), clearly frustrated by the discussion, behaved unprofessionally, using what in our family we call a “swear word.” I blame Trump. Politics at the national level has become a free-for-all, and the incivility […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on August 19, 2019
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/08/19/civil-discourse/
Managing growth
I had forgotten how many, many stars abide in the sky until this past week when I went to a place dark enough to see them. Light pollution wipes them from visibility. When I lived in Manhattan, I never saw a star outside of the planetarium. Over time, light pollution has crept into Chapel Hill, […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on August 12, 2019
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/08/12/managing-growth/
Senior housing
Plan ahead. Senior housing consultant Michelle Lytle-Westrom wants you to take that message to heart, above all else. The future will be here before you know it. Lytle-Westrom spoke to a standing-room-only crowd, most of us with gray hair, at the library last Sunday afternoon to run through various options once we were ready to […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on July 29, 2019
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/07/29/senior-housing/
Why I’m running
Last week we held one of the oddest council meetings I have seen in the decade I have been keeping tabs on council business. Odd that we called a special meeting in the summer to revote on something we had voted on five months earlier. Odder still the number of politicians and political advocates lobbying […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on July 22, 2019
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/07/22/why-im-running/
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 […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on July 15, 2019
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/07/15/brts-next-stop/
Next party will be better
Give us another chance. We had to make a comparatively last-minute change of venue for the fireworks that for years had been at Kenan Stadium on July 4th, and we faced a steep learning curve. When Mack Brown returned to UNC as its football coach at the end of last year, he insisted on swapping […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on July 8, 2019
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/07/08/next-party-will-be-better/
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 […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on July 1, 2019
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/07/01/the-flummox-of-flum/