Guidelines Matter

In its quest to increase the commercial tax base, the Town Council in 2014 approved form-based code for the Ephesus-Fordham, now Blue Hill, district. FBC shifted approval for development projects from council to the town manager in that defined area around Rams and Village plazas and Eastgate. Council drew up some guidelines about maximum building height, block length and types of street frontage, but eliminated other expectations, such as providing some affordable housing and not building in stream buffers.

The intent was to make development faster, cheaper and more certain. But developers paid greater attention to what the FBC did not say. The council at that time did not make any building height minimums — thus, developers built single-story fast-casual restaurants popular along four-lanes all across the country, including a couple miles down the road in Durham, just on the other side of I-40.

And the 2014 council consciously chose not to include an affordable housing expectation. As a result, the area became a magnet for luxury apartments, whose developers no longer had to consider pesky requests to contribute to workforce housing.

At the March 23 council meeting, staff presented an update on how development in Blue Hill was progressing. The data offered few direct comparisons about how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go. Staff agreed to work up charts for tax value, as well as square footage of retail, office and residential, that would lay out what we had when we started, what we expected at buildout, where we are now, and where we thought we would be at this point.

The glut of market-rate apartments came through clearly in the numbers. The original plan anticipated 1,000 units, and we already have approved or built 1,015, not including the 700 additional units Park Apartments plans to build.

The 2014 council aimed for a total of 300 affordable units in the area, and expanded Blue Hill to encompass 149 subsidized units DHIC had received permission to build on the former cemetery land. The 2014 council made noises about incorporating an affordable housing density bonus on parcels across Elliott Road from Village Plaza but put nothing in writing. Now it turns out that the topography is too steep for developers to make it worth their while to consider any sort of housing discounts. The prospect of getting those additional 150 units of affordable housing looks pretty grim.

It is up to this council, in 2018, to amend FBC to correct some of these oversights.

At our March 14 meeting, council passed a resolution, a hastily drawn-up missive we received a couple hours earlier. We didn’t have time to digest it, nor did we discuss it. The resolution punted the problem back to staff to come up with suggestions. Ideally, we will take the time in the future to think through all the ramifications.
— Nancy Oates

by on March 26, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Council Members, Economic development, Housing, Land Use, Roads
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Posted by NancyDon on March 26, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/03/26/guidelines-matter/

Joint Investment

Let me see whether I have this right – a developer can come into town, get town approval to build a project of high-end apartments and condos that displaces residents who have trouble affording living here, and we as taxpayers have to pay to make housing available to the displaced residents?

That’s pretty much what the proposal to float a multimillion-dollar affordable housing bond adds up to. It’s a problem created mostly by developers and could end up costing taxpayers.

Town Council discussed a $10 million bond issue during its March 14 meeting. (Some advocates asked for $15 million.) Council is to vote March 21 on whether to put the issue on the ballot in November.

The proposed bond would ask taxpayers to dig deeper into their own pockets to pay for a crisis that was created by developers and previous councils that pretty much gave builders a pass on contributing substantially to the town’s stock of affordable housing. The town’s inclusionary zoning ordinance, which requires developers of owner-occupied units to provide anywhere from 10 percent to 15 percent affordable housing in their projects, went into effect in 2011 and aimed to mix affordable units into more expensive neighborhoods in Chapel Hill. But prior councils typically waived or watered down developers’ obligation to contribute.

Projects such as Shortbread Lofts, with more than 100 apartments, paid only $25,000 to the town payment-in-lieu fund and the $100 million-plus Carolina Square contributed only $250,000. Many developers were allowed to pay a vanishingly small amount in order to build their projects without including any affordable units.

Developments in all quadrants of town put the squeeze on affordable housing to the point where affordable apartment complexes have been snapped up and renovated and put back on the market at much higher rent.

With more than 5,000 apartments being built in the recent past and near future, we should have ample affordable units. Instead, we have come to see a bond issue as the only way to address the affordability problem.

What this all comes down to is paying one’s fair share. When a developer plans a project for Chapel Hill, he is looking at making a sizeable profit. You cannot go wrong building in Chapel Hill. When a project is finished, the developer leaves taxpayers and the town to deal with the increased costs for town services, school needs, traffic congestion and added pollution.

Affordable housing policy experts agree that taxpayers alone can’t provide enough subsidy to meet the need for low-cost housing. For-profit developers have to invest as well. We can’t expect taxpayers to continually bail us out.
— Don Evans

by on March 19, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Council Members, Housing, Taxes
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Posted by Don Evans on March 19, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/03/19/joint-investment/

Noisy Neighbors

Chapel Hill’s noise ordinance aims to ensure reasonable peace and quiet for residents in their homes. Typically, people use the law to rein in loud parties or construction projects that go on into the wee hours of the morning. Does that mean people who work from home or cover night shifts and sleep during the day are out of luck?

At the March 7 Town Council meeting, homeowners on the East 54 homeowners association board petitioned council to consider these issues. A boxing gym had opened in a storefront underneath the Community Home Trust condos, and homeowners had since endured loud music, shouting, rattling chains and thumping on punching bags from 5:30 in the morning until 8 at night. Even a deaf homeowner had been disturbed by the incessant vibrations.

Homeowners had called the police, who agreed the disturbance was loud, but they could do nothing because mixed-use developments are exempt from the noise ordinance.

That exemption caught my attention. Developers of large apartment buildings routinely include a small retail space in order to qualify for mixed-use zoning, which allows a significantly higher floor-area ration than multifamily residential zoning. That is, they can build much more densely and have many more residential units if they propose even one small retail space than if they were to build only apartments.

But at what price to quality of life?

Neither the landlord at East 54 nor the boxing gym as tenant is required to put in extra soundproofing, so both washed their hands of homeowners’ complaints.

Council can’t prohibit certain types of legitimate businesses, nor would we want to. A boxing gym adds diversity to our commercial mix.

The solution seems to lie in adding soundproofing to noisy businesses. Perhaps it could be addressed in the rewrite of our land use management ordinance, which is at the start of a three-year process.

That won’t help the East 54 homeowners in the short term. Council asked staff to come back with solutions.
— Nancy Oates

by on March 12, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Business, Community life, Housing, Land Use, Lifestyle, Police, Town staff
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Posted by Nancy Oates on March 12, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/03/12/noisy-neighbors/

Consensus? Maybe Not

Every time I hear someone on Town Council urging us to come to a consensus, I can’t help but think of the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s definition: “The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes but to which no one objects.”

We are in the process of selecting a new town manager, a very important decision in the council-manager system of government Chapel Hill follows. In that set-up, the council hears from residents about what the town needs; council considers that input in making policies and decisions; the town manager leads the staff in putting those policies and decisions in action.

Trust is the bedrock of this way of doing things. Council and the community must trust the manager so we don’t feel the need to look over his or her shoulder.

To help us make the right decision, council is seeking input from town residents about the challenges the town will likely face in the next several years, and the experience and talents the new town manager must have to effectively deal with them.

Town residents will have many different priorities and ideas of what we, as a town, need. We council members will have our own list. By the time the information-gathering phase is over, we will have plenty of ideas and criteria; we won’t have a consensus.

At least, I hope we won’t.

Part of what makes Chapel Hill so enticing is our diversity of thought and the freedom to express views outside of convention. Every opposing view is an opportunity to think about a situation differently. If we make the time and effort to understand what others want and why, we get a glimpse of another vision of Chapel Hill. Maybe it’s one the rest of us hadn’t thought of; and maybe it has some features that would make our town even better.

But if we strive for consensus, we tamp down that creativity. We end up taking the well-worn path or following what’s trending. We resign ourselves to becoming Anytown, USA. We forfeit the ability to pick and choose and customize a town that works for us.

So please weigh in on what you think is important in a new town manager. Take an online survey http://www.empliant.com/survey/FA22A6728-E24B-AE79-29A4/ or come to one of three community meetings:

• Sunday, March 4 – 3 to 5 p.m. at Hargraves Community Center Gymnasium meeting room, 216 N. Roberson St.
• Monday, March 5 – 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Christ United Methodist Church Youth and Young Adults Building, 103 Market St. in Southern Village. (First floor meeting room; enter from the parking lot)
• Tuesday, March 6 – 1 to 3 p.m. at Chapel Hill Public Library Meeting Room B, 100 Library Drive
The meetings will be live-streamed on the @ChapelHillGov Facebook channel, and you comment there. You may also email your ideas to: townofchapelhill@developmentalassociates.com

Your ideas matter. As Thatcher would caution us: No great causes have been fought and won under the banner of “I stand for consensus.”
— Nancy Oates

by on March 4, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Council Members, Town staff
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Posted by Nancy Oates on March 4, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/03/04/consensus-maybe-not/

Move in

At last Wednesday’s Town Council meeting, the town’s Housing & Community staff presented an innovative plan to encourage municipal employees to live in Chapel Hill. Stronger communities result when people live in the town where they work, and work in the town where they live. Not to mention the improved functioning of the town in inclement weather if critical employees can get to work more easily.

The Housing & Community staff adopted a professional market-study approach, sending out surveys and conducting focus groups to learn what their target market wants.

Fully half of the survey respondents said they would like to live in town. A third of all town employees commute more than 30 minutes each way. The vast majority of the town’s 750 employees draw middle-class salaries or less. No wonder 84% of those who live out of town cited Chapel Hill’s out-of-reach housing costs as the reason they do not live here.

The Housing & Community staff’s multi-faceted proposal included options for renters and for homeownership. Master leasing (where the town rents the units and sublets to employees), rents discounted by apartment complex owners, and assistance with security deposits and utility connections fees were some ideas posited to help renters. For those wanting to buy a home, the town could potentially provide down-payment assistance or match savings put aside for buying a home.

Council weighed in on details that still need to be worked out. Should the incentives be tied to length of time employed by the town? What, if anything should the employee reimburse the town upon moving out of town or leaving the town payroll? Would that change for employees terminated for cause?

One of my colleagues on the dais suggested that the incentives be applied to housing anywhere in Orange County. Forget that the purpose of the incentives is to enable more employees to live in town, not encourage modestly paid workers to stay out. Forget that those town employees who commute more than a half-hour away already live in Mebane and Efland because housing is more affordable there. Forget that it makes no sense to incentivize someone who commutes from Mebane but not from Pittsboro or Durham.

Federal housing grants given to Chapel Hill must be spent in Chapel Hill. Perhaps legally Chapel Hill could use its own taxpayers’ dollars to outsource workforce housing to another town. But why would we? How would that benefit us as a town to ensure that low-wage-earners live outside our borders?

The Housing & Community staff are off to a good start. Their model presumably could be expanded to include school system employees and those who work at the hospital or university.

Let’s hope council, in our well-meaning way, doesn’t muck it up.
— Nancy Oates

by on February 26, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Council Members, Housing, Lifestyle, Town staff
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Posted by Nancy Oates on February 26, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/02/26/move-in/

Our chance at the gold — gone

Chapel Hill should bid on hosting a Winter Olympics. Sure, we’d need to build a couple of ski slopes, one with fancy rails and jumps. We would have to retrofit the Dean Dome into an ice-skating rink. And we’d need to build a housing complex for the athletes, though we could repurpose it into affordable housing after the games or convert it to student dorms to reduce the pressure students put on housing markets in neighborhoods near campus.

Most likely, we could do all of this for well under the $3.3 billion that GoTriangle projects we’ll need to build a light rail for UNC and Duke.

But last Wednesday, the Metropolitan Planning Organization yanked our Olympic dreams like so many Russian athletes accused of doping. Instead of the town raking in tourist revenue for two weeks during what is traditionally Chapel Hill’s slowest season for visitors, the MPO has committed Orange County taxpayers to a hefty tax hike and ongoing maintenance costs for the proposed 17-mile Durham-Orange Light Rail Transit system.

To add insult to injury, the MPO threw our Bus Rapid Transit plans under the train. In order to increase the likelihood that DOLRT would win money from the state, the MPO declined to ask the state for funding for BRT.

The Durham mayor played the “weighted vote” card, a legal option that gave his city 16 votes, Chapel Hill six votes, Durham and Orange counties four votes each, and two votes apiece for Chatham County, Carrboro and Hillsborough. GoTriangle and the N.C. transportation board each got one vote. The tally in favor of tossing BRT was 21-16. Durham city and county and GoTriangle voted for, and all of the others present voted against (which included the towns of Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough, and Orange and Chatham counties). No one could recall a time when any member organization had used its weighted vote before.

The staggering bill for a train that will benefit so few taxpayers seems all the more appalling as we enter the municipal budgeting period when we are acutely aware of all we wish we could afford to make our vision for a livable town a reality: a new police station, sidewalks, recreation space, electric buses to improve air quality and reduce global warming, more greenway miles for safe bicycle transit, expanded cultural arts options, and the insatiable need for more affordable housing.

The MPO vote last week made it all the harder for Chapel Hill and Orange County residents to go for the gold standard of quality of life. Instead, taxpayer money will be diverted to fuel a train that few people who live and work in Orange County will ever ride. With the weighted vote, Durham pushed us off the winners’ podium.
— Nancy Oates

by on February 19, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, County business, Economic development, Housing, Land Use, Lifestyle, Politics, Spending, Taxes, Transportation, UNC
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Posted by Nancy Oates on February 19, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/02/19/our-chance-at-the-gold-gone/

Frederick Douglass’ life and us

When a Daily Tar Heel reporter asked me what I considered the most important contribution of Frederick Douglass, I hesitated. I didn’t know enough about the life of the abolitionist and former slave, born in Hillsborough, to rank-order his accomplishments.

Fortunately, Orange County, the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro and the NAACP have joined forces to host a number of events in February and March to celebrate the 200th anniversary of his birth. Douglass, who wrote The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, did not know the actual day of his birth, because slave owners did not record the births of children born to their slaves, anymore than they marked the birthday of new livestock. But in 1835, he overheard his master (who may or may not have been his father) say that Douglass was 17, and he did the math.

The wife of another of his masters began to teach him to read, but her husband put a stop to that, saying literacy would make Douglass “unmanageable” and “unfit to be a slave.” Douglass immediately gleaned that education was the key to his freedom, and cleverly found ways to get others to unwittingly teach him to read.

He eventually escaped to the north and ultimately was able to buy his freedom. He became an eloquent and fearless abolitionist.

Douglass’ plainspoken, unvarnished narrative of the cruelties he witnessed and lived while enslaved underscore the worst aspects of human nature. The speakers at the Feb. 5 event put context around his life and experiences and drew a connection with Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson’s contention that slavery did not end — it evolved.

Author James Baldwin wrote that “we carry [our history] within us, are unconsciously controlled by it … and history is present in all that we do.” In Chapel Hill, we pride ourselves on being “inclusive.” But we can’t be genuinely inclusive unless we understand who we claim to be welcoming and how our respective histories intersect.

Douglass’ raw text is a good place to start. The book, about a hundred pages, including commentary, can be read in an afternoon, but will take much longer to digest.

And attend some of the performances, lectures and discussions sponsored by local government and the NAACP. Find out more at: www.orangecountync.gov/FD200.
— Nancy Oates

by on February 12, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life
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Posted by Nancy Oates on February 12, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/02/12/frederick-douglass-life-and-us/

Second chances

“Saving lives” likely did not appear in the job description when Beatrice Thompson signed on to work at the Red Roof Inn just off the I-40/U.S.-15-501 interchange. Yet for the man she found unresponsive in a hotel room last month, her prior knowledge of CPR made the difference between life and death. She performed chest compressions on the man for a good 10 minutes until police officers came and took over.

Once the police arrived, they noticed needle marks on the man’s arm and suspected he had overdosed on an opioid. Officers administered a dose of naloxone, but it seemed to have no effect. Firefighters also responded and gave the man a second shot, and he began to come around. Orange County EMS transported him to the hospital for further treatment.

For her quick and sustained actions — 10 minutes is a long time to continue chest compressions of sufficient force and rhythm to be effective — Thompson received the Civilian Service Award from the Chapel Hill Police at the department’s awards banquet last week.

Several police officers were called to the stage at the Chapel Hill Country Club last Tuesday evening, some of them more than once, for their successful intervention in life-or-death situations. None of the calls for which they were recognized made the news. No major drug busts or thwarting dangerous individuals in mid-crime. What stood out was their compassion, their ability to connect with people in pain through insight and shared humanity. Calming young people intent on suicide, for instance.

When we are frightened or hurt or a victim of a crime, we call the police, because they will always show up and they know what to do. It’s the life’s work they have chosen.

What impressed me about Thompson was that she could have called 9-1-1 and waited, not wanting to touch a stranger. Or having started chest compressions, she could have given up when her arms began to ache. She had no responsibility to the man. He was someone who apparently had made bad choices, and reversing the consequences of his harmful decisions was not her job.

Yet she didn’t give up. And when the police, firefighters and EMS technicians arrived, they persisted by giving the man a second dose of a very expensive drug — and a second chance to live a better life.

Congratulations to all of the Guardians of the Hill who were honored last week, and to Thompson, who inspires us to make the effort to become our better selves. Her actions have given the rest of us a second chance to live a better life, too.
— Nancy Oates

by on February 5, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Police
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Posted by Nancy Oates on February 5, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/02/05/second-chances/

At what price?

When has Chapel Hill ever forced an entire neighborhood to pack up and move away? When has the town ever told more than 100 of its residents they must leave their homes en masse and find other housing?

It sure looks like that’s about to happen to the Lakeview mobile home community in north Chapel Hill off Weaver Dairy Road. Texas-based developer Hanover Co. proposes building 303 apartments, 18 townhomes and a 5,000-square-foot commercial building on the plot of land that now houses more than 120 low-income Chapel Hillians in 34 mobile homes and two duplexes.

The housing that Hanover proposes to build will not be affordable to these good neighbors. Hanover has proposed housing that not even the average worker in Chapel Hill could afford. More important, the housing it wants to build is not what the town needs.

Lakeview is made up of folks who are hard workers, committed to their children, their neighbors and the community. These residents chose Chapel Hill for the same reasons many of us did — jobs, good schools, medical facilities and friendliness. They have put down roots here.

Hanover, on the other hand, chose this community because it sees a way to make a quick profit by reselling the project and moving on to its next profit-making endeavor.

So Hanover’s legacy for Chapel Hill will not be as good neighbors that contribute to the well-being of the community — it will be the destruction of a neighborhood.

Why would Chapel Hill choose to impose a massive disruption on these neighbors? At what point does a community embrace its residents rather than a business that is just passing through?

Every resident who spoke at the Jan. 24 council meeting told of access to jobs in town and families and friends they had known for years and even decades. The developer would disrupt those relationships and an established neighborhood, destroy its history and social network, just to build something that, as Hanover project manager Bo Buchanan told the council, would bring in more tax revenue for the town.

Several council members mentioned that the sale of the land is inevitable. They urged an effort to relocate the Lakeview residents to land that will keep them in Chapel Hill, close to the jobs our town depends on them to do and the schools that are helping their children succeed. Unfortunately, there is no such place right now. Town Council has not planned well for this disruption.

Hanover volunteered to contribute $75,000 toward relocating the neighborhood, in exchange for the privilege of making a sizeable profit for its investors.

What price can be put on a neighborhood or the social and personal anguish and disruption that would be caused by its upheaval? How much is it worth to help children in low-income families succeed and rise out of poverty? Chapel Hill has to decide which it values more: residents who comprise a stable workforce in hard-to-fill, modestly paying jobs or more luxury apartments in an already glutted market.

— Don Evans

by on January 29, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Housing, Land Use, Lifestyle
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Posted by Don Evans on January 29, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/01/29/at-what-price/

What’s worth preserving

Would a time traveler from the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, walking through one of Chapel Hill’s historic districts, recognize the neighborhood?

Amber Kidd, a preservationist with the N.C. Historic Preservation Office who advises local governments on how to set up and run a Historic District Commission, put that question to Chapel Hill’s Historic District Commissioners at a work session last Saturday at Town Hall.

The answer: Probably not.

A lack of support from state lawmakers who codified that an HDC can’t deny permission to demolish a historic home, combined with increasing development pressure and the town having no planner with specialized knowledge of historic preservation for more than a decade, add up to gaping holes in our ability to preserve the homes that make up our gracious historic districts.

Chapel Hill has three historic districts: Franklin-Rosemary, established in 1976, and Cameron-McCauley and Gimghoul, both designated in 1990. Every property owner who wants to renovate the exterior or build a new home in a historic district must first obtain the approval of the HDC so that the historic districts retain their special character and not turn into any other neighborhood of gracious homes on large lots. The Oaks, for instance, is a lovely neighborhood, but no one would come in from out of town to tour it.

The HDC is not the “pretty police.” Historic districts are resources worth preserving. They comprise slices of history of a town intertwined with the nation’s oldest public university. Many homes in our historic districts were built for renowned professors who helped make UNC the well-regarded school it is today.

A well-preserved historic district draws tourists, whose stays in hotels and dinners out contribute to a town’s tax revenue. Eroding the special character of historic districts reduces their importance as revenue generators.

But the HDC is under-resourced in this battle. The Historic District Guidelines are decades out of date and often conflict with town zoning guidelines, leading property owners to pick and choose which to follow.

HDC commissioners have been lobbying for years for a staff member well-versed in historic preservation who can work with property owners to make sure their application is complete and abides by the guidelines. The lack of an expert on staff contributes to delays in the approval process, frustration and wasted time of applicants and HDC commissioners alike.

There is no shortage of qualified preservationists for hire. Raleigh had so many excellent candidates that HDC commissioners asked, only half-jokingly, whether Kidd would steer the unchosen finalists to Chapel Hill.

Kidd applauded the HDC’s efforts to educate buyers, builders, architects and real estate brokers about what can and can’t be done to a historic home. She congratulated their applying for a grant to pay for help in updating the guidelines and keeping the pressure on to hire a preservationist.

These steps can’t reverse the damage already done. But they can slow future deterioration. And we will still have remnants of our history for generations to come.
— Nancy Oates

by on January 22, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Committees, Housing, Land Use, Lifestyle, Town staff, UNC
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Posted by Nancy Oates on January 22, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/01/22/whats-worth-preserving/

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