There we go again. Dipping into our savings to pay for nonessentials. Living beyond our means. Our new town manager presented his recommended budget, a 3.7% increase over what we spent the prior year, which would require only a 1.6-cent property tax increase (per every $100 of property valuation). The hiring process for our town […]
All posts in category Council Members
The cost of appearances
Posted by Nancy Oates on May 20, 2019
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/05/20/the-cost-of-appearances/
The New Historic District
As the Town Council’s liaison to the Historic District Commission since the 2015 election, I’ve had a front-row seat to many redevelopment proposals by people who have no clue what value historic neighborhoods add to our community. The presentations follow a form so uniform that it appears to be an Internet download. The presentations apparently […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on May 13, 2019
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/05/13/the-new-historic-district/
Generous to a fault
Someone needs to cut up Town Council’s credit card. In recent weeks, our new town manager has been educating council on various aspects of the budget. In our work sessions, he has set the expectation that we will need to authorize a tax increase to cover the cost of all the things we want to […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on March 18, 2019
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/03/18/generous-to-a-fault/
Operating at a loss
The old joke goes that a naïve business owner admitted he lost money on each product sale, but said, “I make up for it in volume.” Chapel Hill town staff are familiar with that business model, and after the Town Council retreat this past weekend, we are, too. We learned that for the past couple […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on January 28, 2019
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/01/28/operating-at-a-loss/
Flooding and the FLUM
At our Jan. 9 work session, Town Council took up the topic of the Future Land Use Map. Council must approve the FLUM before the Land Use Management Ordinance can be rewritten. Toward the end of the evening, Alisa Duffey Rogers, hired by the town to lead the LUMO rewrite, cajoled us into a game. […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on January 14, 2019
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/01/14/flooding-and-the-flum/
Views across the board
When my computer failed last month, I spent a few hours at the Apple Genius Bar, a sort of emergency room for digital devices in distress. As I waited for new software to install itself very slowly, I got to hear snippets of people’s lives as told through their troubled phones and iPads and MacBooks. […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on November 19, 2018
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/11/19/views-across-the-board/
What happens in Lawrence …
At the very last session on our intercity visit to Lawrence, Kan., participants stood up, Quaker meeting style, to say thank you to someone or to commit to something. It had been a jam-packed, eye-opening, exhausting three days, and we were trying to synthesize all we had learned before climbing back aboard the bus and […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on October 1, 2018
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/10/01/what-happens-in-lawrence/
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 […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on September 3, 2018
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/09/03/where-we-go-from-here/
Quintessential Chapel Hill Fan
When friends and I would go to baseball games at Yankee Stadium, we always scanned the crowd for nominees to our Quintessential Yankee Fan Hall of Fame. Yankee fans were quite different from Mets fans, I noticed on my very rare trips to Shea Stadium. Perusing crowds became a habit, and when I’m out and […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on July 23, 2018
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/07/23/quintessential-chapel-hill-fan/
ICE on Ice?
An email circulated recently asking elected officials to sign a letter in support of abolishing ICE, the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. I read it and sighed. Once again, pressure is on us to perform some gesture that maybe looks like we are doing something for a righteous cause but in reality would do […]
Posted by Nancy Oates on July 16, 2018
https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/07/16/ice-on-ice/