Buy local

Last Wednesday, you had the chance to buy local, and it had nothing to do with the Carrboro Farmers’ Market. On July 24, a local company that has invested in Chapel Hill sold 2.5 million shares of its stock in its initial public offering. Heat Biologics, a biotech company working on cancer immunotherapy, moved from Miami to Chapel Hill two years ago to take advantage of the brain power for hire in our area. In its IPO last week, the company raised $25 million to conduct clinical trials of its experimental cancer-fighting drugs.

But from the dearth of local publicity, you’d think the IPO was open only to members of a secret club, kind of like General Assembly Republicans making laws that affect our livelihood, slipping provisions in late at night while nobody’s looking.

Heat Biologics is one of only six IPOs in the Triangle so far this year and one of only 10 in the past four years. It is the only IPO this year of a company located in Chapel Hill. So where are the headlines? I saw nothing about it in any local newspaper or news website, other than an after-the-fact article in the N&O.

Where was the hoopla from the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce? Why wasn’t Penny Rich tweeting about this? Why is the town not lavishing free parking spaces on this biotech milestone?

The company has five employees, and its Securities and Exchange Commission filing reported that it plans to hire as many as 10 more in the coming year. This is a startup that has made good, a position that all those entrepreneurs at Launch hope to emulate some day. So why was this success only whispered?

By the way, the chief financial officer for Heat Biologics is our own Matt Czajkowski. This is the second Chapel Hill-based company he has shepherded through to the IPO phase. When Czajkowski was first elected to Town Council in 2007, a group of detractors derided him for being pro-business. More recently, that same faction sputters that he is not friendly to business. All the while, he has held steady, applying his Harvard MBA and years of executive leadership to help the town make good financial decisions in a very bad economy.

With Gene Pease stepping down at the end of the year, who other than Czajkowski knows about business? Donna Bell has a solo social work practice in Carrboro, and Ed Harrison is a self-employed consultant in a part of Chapel Hill in Durham County. But they can’t compare to a Chapel Hill job creator who has made a career understanding how to set up a business to thrive and be an effective steward of the finances of a growing business.

If that isn’t buying local, I don’t know what is. If only the local media had let us know about it.
– Nancy Oates

A roster with ballast

“Fling … ends” read the headline in a local newspaper over a story about candidates running for office. And as I read through the profiles of the final candidates to file for Town Council – Loren Hintz, Jonathan Riehl, Amy Ryan and D.C. Swinton – and the school board – Andrew Davidson and Ignacio Tzoumas – I thought, “What a relief.” From their brief bios, they appear to have given serious thought to why they are running and what they can bring to their respective boards. The race is not just a fling with politics for them.

In the election this year, I’m looking for candidates who can recognize connections. Take one issue: affordable housing. If we fail to provide places where modestly paid people can live in town, we have to know how far they will commute. With growth throughout the Triangle, many service workers and low-tech employees can find employment outside of Chapel Hill, closer to affordable housing in Durham, Raleigh or Chatham County. Will businesses be willing to pay higher wages to attract ground-floor employees? Or will retailers decide it’s too expensive to do business in Chapel Hill and open instead in the vibrant commercial areas of neighboring towns?

As our town fills up with upper-income residents, what sort of commercial services will they patronize? Will they have to go out of town to find those businesses? How will the demands of the wealthy mesh with those of university students? Already council is fielding complaints from 140 West residents about skateboarders in the plaza. And this is before students return to campus, drink too much in Franklin Street bars, get loud, pass out or throw up in the plaza.

People generally expect that they will get what they pay for, and the more people pay for housing, the more demanding they are that their environment be safe, pleasant, and let’s face it, populated with people like themselves. How tolerant will they be of, say, the homeless?

Our good schools have kept real estate prices strong. People are willing to pay more to live within the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school district. As wealthier families move in, will they pressure the school board to shift more resources toward enrichment programs for college prep and gifted students and away from remedial programs to narrow the achievement gap?

Is that really what we want to do?

I’m looking for candidates who can see beyond progressive ideology to the costs of implementation, candidates who understand there is one taxpayer-baked pie, and if you cut a bigger slice for one project, you have to cut a smaller slice for another. I want candidates with the backbone to ask the questions we need to know the answers to, even if their more unprofessional colleagues speak to them with disdain for not going along with the way things have always been done.

And that takes someone who is looking for more than a fling.
– Nancy Oates

Good data

Garbage in, garbage out they teach you in business school, though maybe not in those exact words. The idea is that a decision is only as good as the information backing it up. Rely on inaccurate or incomplete data or misinterpret or ignore the information available, and the mistakes will show themselves in the outcomes.

Some town staff members, along with Town Council members Donna Bell and Sally Greene, organized a task force on affordable housing. The group includes experts on the challenges and priorities of low-income earners, a few people who have made their careers in managing or arranging for housing for the modestly paid, and some developers, who presumably know how to keep construction costs to a minimum. The task force is sorely needed in a town that wants to pretty itself up to be worthy of the endless Best Places to Live rankings, and doesn’t know where to put its un-rich.

I don’t want to see the task force’s mission derailed by misguided input from developers who joined the group not to make room for the modestly paid but to exploit a niche market and enrich themselves.

No one begrudges a developer making a profit. But some of the proposals I’ve heard so far are to push development costs onto taxpayers in order to boost the profits of private developers.
If the task force doesn’t have a real estate attorney among its number, it needs to recruit one who can close loopholes and think creatively. Suggestions such as high-density overlay districts in exchange for keeping the rent low on a few units would not be legally binding in North Carolina. An attorney might be able to figure out how to spin off a certain number of units into a nonprofit, a sort of Community Home Trust for renters, and keep the remaining units at market rate to ensure a profit for the developer.

Increased density isn’t the answer. One reason Chapel Hill’s low-income public housing works so well is that many of the projects are small and blended into middle-income neighborhoods. The crises that accompany poverty can overwhelm a complex if it is too large or too dense. (Think Durham’s Few Gardens.) Density at any price point doesn’t pay for itself in terms of cost of services, and ultimately, taxpayers pick up the tab.

Expedited approval might be an answer. For years, I’ve heard developers complain that the town’s lengthy approval process makes their costs too high. But there is no way to enforce keeping the rents affordable. Once the project is approved, the developer can convert it into luxury living, and the town has no recourse for a developer reneging on a deal.

Finding ways to remain an inclusive community will be difficult. The task force needs to stay focused on accurate and complete information, seek advice from a retired developer whose counsel won’t be biased by the prospect of making money, and find a good real estate lawyer.
– Nancy Oates

To be rather than to seem

Elections in Chapel Hill are when the esse meets the videri. The election filing period opened in Orange County last Friday, and residents have until next Friday to register their intent to run for public office.

Chapel Hill will elect four Town Council members and a mayor in November. Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt has filed for re-election. Town Council members Gene Pease and Laurin Easthom announced earlier this year that they would not seek re-election. Sally Greene has filed to stay on the dais. Ed Harrison has not yet declared his intentions.

Since the last municipal election, in 2011, the town has been consumed by development issues and debt. We’ve gone through the CH2020 visioning process, which included a goal of making room for even modestly paid people to live in town, but even after CH202 became the town’s new comprehensive plan, elected officials and town staff have struggled to implement it. Now the steering committee for Central West Focus Area, the first of six sections of town ripe for redevelopment, reports a similar disconnect between town residents, staff and outside consultants.

We took on about $16 million in debt to expand the library, because as a university town, we pride ourselves on being a little more bookish than our neighbors. Yet that debt keeps us from finding police and fire stations free of mold, pressures the town manager to bust unions to keep a lid on personnel costs, delays extending the greenway and sidewalks, and puts off adequately funding retired municipal employees’ health care expenses.

During election season, we’ll hear plenty of talk about what we want Chapel Hill to be: inclusive, cutting-edge, artsy, bustling, innovative, cool. I suspect the Invisible Middle (those 25- to 55-year olds who collectively pay the most in taxes yet didn’t make the cut in Kleinschmidt’s sound bite that he was mayor of a town of 20-year-olds and 80-year-olds) might have their own list. But once the votes are counted and the yard signs plucked from intersections, we have virtually no control over whether elected officials do what they say they’d do on the campaign trail. We’ve seen that from our state legislators and governor in recent months. And Town Council newbies face a continual fight with the “we’ve always done it this way” old guard.

Chapel Hill needs to become a verb rather than an adjective. If you’ve got the backbone to stand up for what you believe, Chapel Hill needs you in public office. The filing period closes at 5 p.m. July 19.
– Nancy Oates

Who can we blame now?

Chalk up what I’m about to say to jealousy, pure and simple.

I’ve irritated a lot of people in my lifetime, but no one has ever agreed to pay me to stop. So when I learned that Orange County manager Frank Clifton walked away from his previous job as manager of Onslow County with $121,000 in severance pay because he couldn’t get along with the county board of commissioners, and now, due to disagreements with our county commissioners, will retire from Orange County with full benefits for life, I want to know how to land that sort of gig.

Admittedly, town and county managers have a tough assignment. They serve “at the pleasure of” elected officials who are easily swayed by blocs of outspoken voters. They can’t appear to squander taxpayer money, yet must defend themselves against taxpayers who squawk loudly when the government refuses to pay for a desired service or project in order to keep from raising taxes. And when elected officials make questionable spending demands – such as Orange County commissioners voting themselves a fancier meeting room costing taxpayers $1.5 million – managers lay their jobs on the line if they object.

Frank Clifton had a reputation among Chapel Hill officials as not being a team player, despite the town eventually getting its way on many issues. But Chapel Hill is part of the team. How much of that lack of cooperation can be blamed on the county manager?

Clifton told Chapel Hill the county couldn’t contribute more to the town’s crown jewel library, but Chapel Hill proceeded with the renovation, and the county eventually anteed up. Clifton ran the numbers on solid waste and saw that trucking it to Durham saved money. But when he closed the landfill a year early, Chapel Hill retaliated by terminating its landfill contract a couple months earlier still. Clifton’s demand that Orange County residents who live in Chapel Hill obey the county’s public smoking ban prompted our mayor to declare that the town takes orders only from the state and he would not order town police to enforce the county ban.

Much as I’m a fan of citizen input on government decisions, hiring the new county manager is the commissioners’ job only. They need to pick someone who will work cooperatively with them, and if that leaves the county in a mess, voters will know whom to blame. Citizen input only leaves the commissioners an out to say, “It’s not our fault; voters wanted this person.”

Town and county governments are going to have to own up to their respective roles in the conflicts. Our libraries, solid waste, fire fighters and other emergency responders, schools, economic development and tax rates are at stake. We’ll have to find a way to cooperate in the best interests of all Orange County citizens, within and outside Chapel Hill. Because come October, we won’t have Frank Clifton to take the blame.

As for my cantankerous husband irritating people by his comments on Chapel Hill Watch, this New Yorker cartoon from a couple years back says it all:

Don will continue to scare off woodpeckers and deer, until Chapel Hill outlaws pop guns. And I hope he will continue to reorient discussions back to the issues when they get sidetracked.
– Nancy Oates

Sue me

Let’s say your boss is doing something that impedes your ability to do your job well. How receptive do you think he or she would be to learning about it from you?

Let’s say your boss is town manager Roger Stancil, and if he didn’t like your critique, or if you were a union member like Kerry Bigelow, Clyde Clark, Chris King and Lee Thompson, he could fire you. You could always turn to the Personnel Appeals Advisory Board, but even if its members backed you unanimously and unequivocally, Stancil doesn’t have to listen, or so he told Town Council members at their June 17 meeting.

Chapel Hill operates as a “council-manager form of government” Stancil announced to council, which means, he said in so many words, that council has no say in how he runs the town.

That’s one interpretation of state law G.S. 106A-146; the UNC School of Government, in a 2007 publication on council-manager form of government takes a different perspective, that the “council has the authority to confer powers and duties on the mayor and manager in addition to those conferred on them by law.” In other words, while state law grants a town manager the power to hire and fire all employees except the town attorney and those elected to public office, the council could, for example, order the manager to consider input from advisory boards.

Stancil did not attend the Personnel Appeals hearings and said that recordings of the hearings were virtually impossible to hear. To that end, he is spending taxpayer money to hire a court reporter for future proceedings that he will, in all likelihood, ignore.

While the Personnel Appeals Board narrowly sided with “Boss” Stancil in firing Bigelow and Clark for not picking up yard waste from private property at the request of the property owner, the board unanimously recommended reinstating Thompson, who was fired for picking up yard waste on private property at the property owner’s request, and King, who was given permission by his supervisor to take a day of sick leave to cover part of his vacation.

When council members asked Stancil what form of redress employees had when he steamrollers over the recommendations of the advisory board, Stancil said, “They can sue. That remedy is available.”

NAACP labor division co-chair Miriam Thompson (no relation to Lee Thompson) petitioned the council to follow up on a number of irregularities in hiring and firing decisions and the personnel grievance process. In response, Stancil said he hired two ombudsmen two years ago (after Bigelow and Clark filed suit). Given that more personnel problems and lawsuits have piled up in the past two years, apparently the ombudsmen are well aware that they serve at Stancil’s pleasure.

Stancil also said he has instituted a “360 review,” in which workers are expected to critique their boss as part of the employee evaluation process.

Cynic that I am, I bet all those bosses get excellent reviews.
– Nancy Oates

Business as usual?

Bonnie Hauser, the president of Orange County Voice, sheds light on Orange County Commissioners’ budget deliberations. Here’s what she has to say about the commissioners’ season finale:

On Tuesday, the BoCC will approve increased taxes and fees for 2013-14. On top of Chapel Hill’s 2 cent tax increase, the county will add 2 cents for CHCCS and increase a few fees. That’s in addition to the new transit tax and fee and last year’s sales tax increase for schools and economic development. To make the numbers work, including keeping the schools whole, the county dipped into reserves – again. (Chapel Hill did the same). To the commissioners, this is not a tax increase – but it’s clearly a trajectory that’s not sustainable.

The commissioners will formally approve the increases on Tuesday as part of their 1,000-page agenda, the last meeting before summer break. The consent agenda rushes to spend $1.6 million to retrofit geothermal HVAC to the county offices and $1.5 million on a new meeting room for the commissioners. Plus, despite public opposition, a late item on the massive agenda recommends awarding a contract to design a new community center in Cedar Grove. Originally planned as a generous 10,000-square-foot $2 million facility, the project has ballooned to cost $3 million to $5 million – without question or explanation. Rather than wait and clarify the issues and requirements, the county wants to plow ahead. So much for public process and transparency.

To the commissioners’ credit, they did delay an unexpected $8 million project to build yet another county campus at Blackwood farm. Instigated by Commissioner Gordon, the county also is working on a space plan for its campuses in Hillsborough, Chapel Hill and other facilities. (Apparently the meeting room couldn’t wait.)

As the commissioners prepare for summer break, wouldn’t it be better if they kept it simple and made sure loose ends were tied up? Shouldn’t they check in and see whether the county is ready to close the landfill in a couple of weeks? Or take a few minutes to reflect on issues that were raised during weeks of budget deliberations? If they are worried about future taxes, why not ask for the facts so that they can anticipate future critical needs and revenue growth and the progress of the taxpayer’s investment in economic development? Wouldn’t that be more productive than whining about state cuts and future tax increases? Such actions would improve my confidence that fiscal policy was managed – and not a reaction to fabricated political crises.

We spend a lot a time on this blog bantering about policies and outcomes. Is there interest in a real discussion about fiscal sustainability? I’ll start by agreeing that growing and diversifying the tax base will help – but it will take time for the economic development plans to get traction. Economic development directors Dwight Bassett (Chapel Hill) and Steve Brantley (Orange County) are doing a great job – but it’s a big change.

For me, the fiscal hole is too big to grow out of. Our local fiscal cliff is looming in the form of needed police and fire stations, transportation, school building repairs and other essential items. Plus, we still haven’t figured out what to do with our trash. One path to change is a close look at redundancy and costs and new ways of delivering services using technology and cooperation. There are others.

The real challenge is planning for and investing in the future – rather than continuing to showcase outdated ideas, services and policies.

Do you care?
– Bonnie Hauser

Budget busters

The town can’t afford to keep the larger library open as many hours a week as the pre-renovated space without raising taxes or cutting other services. From the beginning the plan for funding the increased operating costs was to raise taxes, but the economy hasn’t exactly bounced back. Now state laws are hitting some of the library’s staunchest supporters – retirees – in their bank accounts. And some Democrats on Town Council seem a little self-conscious about their Republican mindset of making decisions that reshape the town into one that has no room for modest-income residents.

The schedule calls for council to pass a budget tonight, and council has yet to reconcile the numbers. During two work sessions on the budget last week, council members spent a good deal of the time arguing about whether to keep the library open for up to 10 additional hours a week and how to finance it. By the end of the second work session, Wednesday night, they had not reached a consensus. Roger Stancil dug under the sofa cushions to come up with $80,000 of extra revenue from vehicle taxes and about $64,000 more from the county based on its formula for contributing to the library. At $25,000 an hour in library operating expenses, that brings the number of hours per week the library would be open from 58 to almost 64.

The gap could be ameliorated by shifting operating hours – closing the library on Monday, as museums are, and adding those hours to nights and weekends – or tapping volunteers or hiring low-wage workers to handle mundane tasks of re-shelving books that Jim Ward and Sally Greene said are causing professional staff burnout. And those types of solutions might be what library director Susan Brown, hired May 20, comes up with.

Rather than digging in their heels, council members agreed to give Brown a few months to propose alternatives. (And while she’s cogitating, maybe she could boost the efficacy of those flat-screen TVs in the entryway by posting when and where events are being held in the library.)

Listening to the work session discussions, you’d almost forget that we have bigger fish to fry than keeping the library open 64 vs. 68 hours a week. The Police Crisis Unit is facing its own crisis, of the fiscal variety. The town will need to find $64 million to pay the health-care costs of its retirees over the next 30 years. Fire fighters live in fire stations rife with mold. And we’ve been living paycheck-to-paycheck when it comes to capital improvement projects.

Maybe Donna Bell had a hand in getting council to allow breathing room for other budget priorities. She was arrested last week as part of the Moral Monday protests of decisions made by our state legislature intent on balancing the state budget on the backs of the working and middle classes. Perhaps while waiting to be booked, she had time to reflect on what Chapel Hill considers its priorities.
– Nancy Oates

Price vs. value

When I heard about the 120 or so taxpayers who showed up at the County Commissioners meeting on May 23 pleading to pay more in taxes to fully fund the schools budget, I recalled a scene from Crocodile Dundee wherein New York City street thugs brandish a switchblade in an attempt to rob the protagonist who hails from the Australian outback. He shows no fear, even as his leading lady whispers, “He’s got a knife!”

“That’s not a knife,” Mick Dundee scoffs as he pulls out what looks like a machete. “This is a knife.”

A hundred and twenty taxpayers, begging for a tax hike of as much as 4 cents per $100 valuation – $160 a year on your prototypical $400,000 home in Chapel Hill – puts the dozen supporters of the library and its 1-cent per $100 valuation tax increase who turned out for a recent Town Council meeting in perspective.

Though I bristle about people who live in “it’s only a couple of lattes a week” world, I can see why a 4-cent tax hike to keep up the quality of our public schools is an investment, whereas a $40-a-year tax increase to expand the library operating hours is a luxury.

Superior public schools, above all else, motivates buyers to pay a premium for houses inside the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school district. Excellent schools ensures the strong value of what for most of us is our largest financial investment, and that benefits middle-class and working-class homeowners, especially. Homeownership is the most reliable way to build wealth for people not born into money or ensconced in high-paying jobs.

Residents lobbying to fully fund the school budget urged spending the money on personnel in the classroom, programs and capital improvements (a gym for one school, a science wing for another) to provide a well-rounded school experience for all children. Taxpayers who own more expensive homes would contribute more; those with lower-value assets would contribute less. And the money would benefit students from all walks of life.

With the current General Assembly defunding public education in favor of vouchers for private schools – and otherwise dismantling all agape principles of our society – local districts may have to pick up the slack in their own best interest. It’s too late to vote current representatives out of the state legislature, and I don’t believe the Moral Monday arrests will change the regressive bills set to pass.

Private school tuition costs thousands of dollars a year, even with a voucher. A tax hike of a fraction of that amount in order to give all students a quality education benefits rich and poor families alike.

Town Council’s budget talks continue at 6 p.m. tonight and Wednesday night in the library. Unlike at the library’s Tuesday night movies (tomorrow at 6:30 p.m., Skyfall, a James Bond thriller), you must bring your own popcorn.
– Nancy Oates

Putting the priority in budgeting

My husband has wanted a new couch for years. And I agree we could use one. But something always elbows ahead of it on our priority list. An immediate emergency – the washing machine breaks and the estimate for the repair equals the cost of a new one. A capital improvement – our very expensive Chapel Hill property eroding into the creek can be stopped only by new retaining walls, trees and bushes. An increase in operating expenses – the cost of gas, groceries and utilities go up as our revenue shrinks in the recession.

Most of us watching Town Council members haggle over how to allocate town funds and whether or how much to increase taxes are well familiar with implementing priority budgeting. Citizens weighed in on their priorities – a small contingent asked for more and better space for teen programming, and a larger group implored restoring library operating hours to its previous level. (A library supporter suggested the teen initiative look into using space in the new library.)

Different council members suggested different ways to stretch tax dollars. Gene Pease advocated putting public safety first – fully funding police and firefighter needs, then trimming all other categories equally. Jim Ward was upfront that restoring library hours was of greater importance to him than adding more resources to the sorely understaffed police crisis unit, the frontline officers who serve residents at the scariest times.

Matt Czajkowski looked at tradeoffs – restore library hours or give municipal employees a 2 percent pay increase (enough to offset the increase in Social Security taxes individuals pay that went into effect this year)? Does a pay raise to current employees come at the expense of retired employees by ignoring OPEB liability? (And how much is that liability? Reports have cited the amount as $30 million or $60 million. That’s a big gap.) He noted that a 2-cent tax increase is a latte or two to one resident or prescription medicine for another.

Ed Harrison wanted to neutralize the unfairness of property owners with 2,000 square feet of impervious surface area paying the same $9 a year stormwater fee increase as someone with 4,000 square feet of impervious surface.

Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt said choosing one program over another to fund won’t work if the town wants to serve the needs of its diverse population, an important point as far as it goes. But how can we justify, say, public art if it means cutting back on police and firefighters?

We have a beautifully renovated library. The reality is we may have to budget its hours. Or make sacrifices in other programs to come up with the extra money. And tell crime victims they can de-stress in the tranquil library, a full 68 hours a week.
– Nancy Oates