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 against what those most affected by the issue lobbied for.

The politicos outnumbered community members 2:1. It was almost as though the politically connected were trying to send a message to those of us up for re-election this year or in two years that political connections can drown out the voices of the people who live here.

After casting my vote to support the community members, I left the meeting knowing this was why I wanted one more term on council: to make sure the voice of the people is heard.

I’m a public servant, not a politician. My mission is to go out into the community to learn where people stand on issues and bring those voices back to council to be part of the discussion. While I can count to five (the number of votes on council it takes to pass a motion), I also understand the power of reason as we on council try to balance the town’s inevitable growth with the quest for individuals to have a good life.

And all of us want a good life, even as we recognize that the vision of a good life is different for each of us. By listening to people talk about what they love about Chapel Hill and what they don’t want to lose as progress churns through, I have been able to find various points on which we agree:

We want people who work in town to be able to live here, and we’re willing to pay more in taxes for that to happen. We understand the need for trees to counter flooding and climate change. We want to reduce the time we spend stuck in traffic. We recognize the need to increase the number of local jobs.

For the past four years, I’ve shown my commitment to bringing community voices to the decision-making table. I have the tenacity — the stick-to-it-iveness — to continue finding balance as we grow. For that, we need to hear all voices.

I’m asking for your support to make sure your voice is at the table. Visit ReElectNancyOates.org

— Nancy Oates

by on July 22, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Elections, Politics
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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 fare-free bus system, will be essentially an express bus that will run in it’s own dedicated lane and will have a transmitter aboard to synchronize its travel with traffic lights. As the bus approaches an intersection, the traffic light will ready to turn green so as to minimize the time that BRT vehicles spend at traffic lights.

The project is at its 30% design phase, and is just now beginning the station area planning. Consultants led the public through what development might occur near the BRT’s limited stops.

Town planning staff have colored in spots on the Future Land Use Map to reflect the high-density development they would like to see near the bus stops. Consultants showed drawings of what the areas could look life with boulevards breaking up sections of road that are nine lanes across at present.

But before we get too far down the road with BRT, we need to look at the functionality: Who will ride the bus, and why?

We also need to sit down with some major development project investors to find out what would entice them to invest in a particular area. A previous council may have missed that step in approving what was then The Edge and now is Carraway Village. That parcel, wedged in between I-40 and Eubanks Road.

Council approved a Special Use Permit to build a major commercial and retail center with some apartments along the western border. But what came out of the ground five years later were apartments, plus a Starbuck’s and a Chick-Fil-A. Apparently, we forgot to loop in the investors with the money to bring the project out of the ground. Something about that site is not appealing to investors. We need to find out definitively what was missing.

Town staff will bring before council Monday night (July 15 at 5:30 p.m. in Council Chambers in Town Hall) what they heard from all the informational meetings and events.

Join us!

— Nancy Oates

by on July 15, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Land Use, Town staff, Transportation
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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 out the grass field for AstroTurf. Work crews are putting the finishing touches on the newly laid synthetic grass field at this very moment.

Fireworks don’t mix well with synthetic grass. Although it won’t catch fire the way grass does, it will melt when those flecks of burning cinders land on it. Given the likelihood of damage, UNC and town staff mutually agreed to cancel the fireworks display at the stadium.

Turns out trying to find an alternate venue for a major fireworks event last minute is harder than booking a wedding reception on the fly. The largest open space available was Southern Community Park.

Staff scrambled, and I give them a lot of credit. The event at Kenan Stadium had grown over the years to attract maybe 20,000 fireworks fans. Live music, seating, snacks and bathrooms — we had the ability to invite people beyond those with a Chapel Hill address to a free party. With Kenan Stadium scratched off our list, the next biggest venue could handle maybe a quarter of the crowd we’ve had in the past.

Traffic along 15-501 was bumper-to-bumper for more than a mile. Frustrated drivers let their passengers out in the middle of the road to hike in. Afterward, people walked in the dark along the shoulder and even in the road to get home. People who gave up and tried to find other vantage points had limited views due to tall buildings and tall trees (yes, there are some left).

Those accounts are from people who tried to get to Southern Village that evening. I joined a crowd of expats on top of the hospital parking decks, people who did not realize the venue had changed or who knew what rush hour traffic was like on 15-501 and did the math for the July 4th event.

Some things we can do differently next year: 1) Use our digital traffic signs to inform drivers days in advance of the change of venue; 2) Run shuttle buses from the hospital parking decks and University Place; 3) Have smaller fireworks displays in multiple venues around town.

Or, join us on the parking deck. Bring beach chairs and a boom box.

— Nancy Oates

by on July 8, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Parking
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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 Land Use Map.

The FLUM, as we call it affectionately, colors in parcels of land based on the intended density. It’s not legally binding, but it provides a rationale for council decisions to upzone land for redevelopment. For more than a year, town staff have been reaching out to the community to gather reactions and ideas for what the town should look like in 2049. At one point the staff member leading the FLUM and LUMO rewrite (aka the Land Use Management Ordinance) reported collecting comments from nearly 1,500 people.

I expect that nearly all of them responded with something along the lines of: Pay attention to the carrying capacity of the land. Don’t clearcut all the trees; don’t flood our homes; don’t tie us up in traffic jams.

Yet the map we reviewed last week had encroached on many single-family-home neighborhoods by replacing houses with apartment buildings six stories high and taller. Many of those neighborhoods are relatively affordable. Residents of those houses objected.

Ironically, earlier in the evening we had reviewed town staff’s plan for affordable rental housing. The upshot of that discussion was that it was going to be very difficult to wring more affordable units from developers. If we wanted housing for a workforce earning less than 50% of the Area Median Income, likely the subsidy would come from taxpayers.

We, on council, need to think through any unintended consequences and be consistent. We can’t ask taxpayers to subsidize housing to make it affordable to many who work in town while at the same time taking away the older homes that currently provide that workforce housing.

— Nancy Oates

by on July 1, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Housing, Land Use, Politics, Town staff
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Posted by Nancy Oates on July 1, 2019

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/07/01/the-flummox-of-flum/

Late night

I blame the lateness of the hour for someone on the council dais suggesting that a retaining wall designed to mitigate flooding include “breaks” to “engage the street.”

The comment came during a concept plan we were asked to review that didn’t being on our overstuffed agenda until after 11:30 p.m. We were all tuckered out, and civility and information processing had begun to fray. The person on the dais did not understand that a retaining wall would not be visible from the street and would have to be continuous to hold back water and soil to protect a row of townhouses — built about 15 feet below grade on a downhill slope from the street — from flooding.

By the time I got in my car to go home after our council meeting and closed session last week, it was 12:30 in the morning. We don’t make our best decisions when we are that tired. Concept plans, always last on the agenda, introduce proposed developments that affect the quality of life of residents. It undermines transparency if we require community members to stay until midnight to hear a presentation and make their 3-minute comment.

In recent months, council has reduced the number of meetings without reducing the number of issues we take up. We pack agendas, and meetings routinely run past 11:30 p.m. That shuts out the public who have days that begin early, babysitters to pay and responsibilities outside of keeping tabs on council. Without input from the public, we make decisions in a vacuum.

Most council members work full time, but we knew the council workload before we filed to run for office. If we spread out our agenda items over four meetings a month, instead of cramming the issues into only three meetings a month, we likely would end before 10 p.m., which was typical of council meetings in prior years.

There is considerable value to having residents listen to a presentation in real time and offer comments before council begins to discuss. When those presentations begin later than when we might reasonably expect people to stay, we inadvertently restrict public comment. That’s not a healthy democracy.

We’re spending taxpayers’ money; we’re making decisions that affect residents’ quality of life. We owe it to the public to include them in the decision-making process by taking up issues at a reasonable hour.

— Nancy Oates

by on June 24, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Council Members, Spending, Taxes
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Posted by Nancy Oates on June 24, 2019

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/06/24/late-night/

Kneecapping our best intentions

Chapel Hill residents take housing affordability seriously. Are we on Town Council poised to undermine progress we’ve made?

The budget we passed last week included a property tax increase that would fund the $10 million bond voters approved last year to be spent on increasing the supply of affordable housing.

Some years back, council approved accessory dwelling units almost everywhere in town with the intent of increasing the supply of affordable housing.

This week, council will take up the issue of short-term rentals, such as AirBnB and VRBO. One of the ideas proposed during the Economic Sustainability Committee meeting earlier this month was that those ADUs be approved as short-term rentals.

Under current law, property owners can build a garage apartment or small detached house on the same lot as a larger house in a single-family residential neighborhood. Due to their small size and lack of amenities available in an apartment complex (no swimming pool, gym equipment or tanning beds), they would command lower rent than a traditional house or apartment. They might also draw students away from larger rental homes, leaving those available for families.

Anecdotally, I’ve learned from people who own units they rent out on AirBnB and the like that short-term rentals are much more lucrative than renting the place under a year-long lease and is less wear-and-tear on the unit.

The Orange County Visitors Bureau estimates that short-term rentals in Chapel Hill generated about $5 million for homeowners in last year, a 40% increase over the prior year. The town sees very little of that revenue reflected in occupancy taxes. Despite more than 300 units in Chapel Hill listed on AirBnB and similar sites, only a handful of property owners (think single digits) have applied for a permit that would ensure they comply with health and safety standards.

If we allow whole-house short term rentals, including ADUs, what impact will that have on the supply of affordable housing voters have made clear they want to increase? While owners of ADUs understandably want to make extra income from their assets, would we be funneling to them the property tax increase voters intended to fund affordable housing?

— Nancy Oates

by on June 17, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Budget, Business, Committees, Community life, Housing, Land Use, Lifestyle, Taxes
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Posted by Nancy Oates on June 17, 2019

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/06/17/kneecapping-our-best-intentions/

If we build it …

Which came first — residents with a plethora of discretionary income? Or craft breweries, tapas bars and the availability of Starbucks’ White Chocolate Mocha Frappuccino on every street corner?

If we build it, they will come, goes the adage. Last Friday morning at the town’s Economic Sustainability Committee meeting, Alisa Duffey Rogers, project manager of the Future Land Use Map and the rewrite of the Land Use Management Ordinance, presented photos of her vision for downtown — clusters of tall apartment buildings wrapped around parking decks with ritzy retail shops at the base, made to order for those with plenty of disposable income perched in town temporarily.

Certainly, developers will rush to build such high-profit luxury living spaces. And certainly, we need residents with considerable discretionary income to support businesses in town. But those businesses and our main employers can’t run without employees — people to cook, serve and clean in restaurants; municipal employees; junior professors, support staff and groundskeepers on campus; nurses, technicians, and laundry and food service workers at the hospitals.

As towns around us grow, modestly paid workers will have employment options that don’t require commuting to Chapel Hill. We need to build homes for “the missing middle,” those in the 80% to 120% Area Median Income.

To that end, economic development officer Dwight Bassett proposed that the town buy the Lakeview mobile home park land for $5 million and redevelop it.

The town has no money to redevelop the land anytime soon, given commitments we’ve already made, such as a new municipal services center, but town ownership of the land would remove pressure on Lakeview residents to relocate in the near future.

Nevertheless, a consultant presented various redevelopment options to create — repeat the refrain — a vibrant, walkable community. He panned the barracks-style housing of multifamily units and townhouses lined up cheek-by-jowl in straight rows, edged by barely a fringe of grass. He claimed that development did not have to be dense, and showed a drawing of two-story apartment buildings.

His pitch and pictures seemed very much like what we had envisioned for the town-owned land at 2200 Homestead Road that Town Council designated as a combination of market-rate units sufficient to subsidize an equal number of affordable units. But when we turned it over to staff, we got back barracks-style units, block-y apartment buildings and a communal living building with no target tenant. And the cluster of tiny homes had been erased. A majority on council shrugged it off.

What makes us think the Lakeview project would have a different outcome? And what makes us think that a low-density development would be financially feasible for the town when professional developers say only high-density makes the numbers work?

The consultant flashed figures of wealth levels of town residents, indicating that two-thirds of Chapel Hill’s population is considered high-wealth (he did not define the term). He did not stratify the pay levels of the jobs in Chapel Hill. Yet that’s what we need to focus on. To ensure a stable, well-functioning town, we need to build for the people who work here.

— Nancy Oates

by on June 10, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Council Members, Downtown Chapel Hill, Economic development, Housing, Land Use, Lifestyle, Town staff
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Posted by Nancy Oates on June 10, 2019

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/06/10/if-we-build-it/

Wealth gap

I say this every year at budget time. Call it my annual screed: A flat percentage salary increase across the whole pay scale widens the wealth gap. The rich get richer, and the poor end up with comparatively less buying power.

This year, the town’s 3% across-the-board pay raise will put an extra $900 (before taxes are withheld) in the pocket of an employee making $30,000 a year. Employees making $200,000 receive an extra $6,000. Because of the state and federal tax cuts — that in reverse Robin Hood style take from the poor and give to the rich — employees on the high end of the pay scale get to keep more of their raises.

I have in the past, and again this year, suggested that employees making the equivalent of the Area Median Income (about $80,000 right now) or some other reasonable cut-off point (maybe everyone earning less than six figures) receive a 3% raise, while those making above that amount get a 2% raise. Or perhaps take a fiscal “leap year” periodically in which everyone receives the same $1,000 pay raise to hit “pause” on the widening wealth gap.

Every year, council votes it down.

Council members who support applying a flat percentage pay raise across the spectrum argue that highly paid employees would feel dissed if they received a lower percent or the same amount as their lower-paid co-workers. The highly paid employees might start looking for jobs elsewhere, those council members say.

Maybe. But people who are drawn to government work (and nonprofits — I say this as a former nonprofit and government worker) generally are motivated more by the ability to make a difference in someone’s quality of life than they are by getting rich. If they left for a municipality that paid more, it would be to a bigger town with more bureaucracy and less personal working conditions. And if someone is working only for the money, he or she may not go the extra mile that someone who believes in the value of the work occasionally will.

Unlike in the private sector, no one in municipal government generates revenue. Every pay raise comes at the expense of taxpayers, who are the only revenue source government organizations have.

From an economic vantage point, those on the lower end of the pay scale are more likely to spend their raises and stimulate the economy. Those on the higher end will be more likely to stash the extra income in an ever-growing brokerage account, benefiting further from decisions made by businesses to increase shareholder returns, which often involve keeping wages low and hiring the fewest number of employees to run the organization.

As taxpayers, we are investing in our employees to run a healthy organization. We need to invest in all of our employees, not just the ones at the top.

— Nancy Oates

by on June 3, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Budget, Business, Council Members, Lifestyle, Spending, Taxes, Town staff
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Posted by Nancy Oates on June 3, 2019

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/06/03/wealth-gap/

Rogers Road victory

The historically black Rogers Road neighborhood crossed the finish line this past week on quality-of-life improvements years in the making. Town Council approved rezoning that would protect the neighborhood from the over-development expected once the sewer line extends into the area.

The neighborhood, north of Homestead Road and east of Rogers Road, sits just south of the Orange County landfill, which has tainted some wells in an area that had no access to public water and sewer since the community’s inception in the 1700s.

The homes are in one of the town’s Extraterritorial Jurisdictions (ETJ), which means the property owners are governed by Chapel Hill’s land development regulations but can’t vote in town elections. They pay only county and school district taxes, not town taxes, and their children may attend Chapel Hill-Carrboro public schools.

In 2011, OWASA extended water service to the neighborhood. The sewer line will be completed any day now. Without public utilities, the neighborhood was able to retain its rural character. Recognizing that developers would take interest once the area had access to water and sewer, the residents of the Rogers Road community conducted a nine-month planning effort to shape growth in the coming years. The Mapping Our Community’s Future report came out in May 2016.

To give teeth to the report, Chapel Hill planners proposed formally rezoning the area. The town hired a consultant and held numerous community meetings over the past couple of years. Rogers Road residents remained adamant that their vision detailed in Mapping Our Community’s Future be respected.

Town staff presented a proposed rezoning at our April 22 council meeting that hewed fairly closely to the mapping report. Public comment at the meeting underscored the desire to hold to the mapping report, to remove proposed roads that ran through private property and to limit the rezoning to only the historically black neighborhood.

When town staff came back to council with the plan last Wednesday, clearly they had listened to the feedback from property owners. (This is rarer than you’d think.)

The night before our council meeting, the chair of the Orange County commissioners emailed a request to council members to delay voting on the rezoning until the commissioners had formally weighed in. However, delaying the vote would have left Rogers Road property owners vulnerable to developers taking advantage of access to the newly completed public utilities and proposing development that did not fit with the neighbors’ vision. As county staff had been involved in the rezoning process from the start and briefing commissioners along the way, council members and town staff so no need to subject the Rogers Road property owners to unnecessary risk.

The rezoning allows home-based businesses; triplexes, as long as they are affordable to people of modest means, and some duplexes that make room for growth. The quality of life has improved, and the character has been preserved.

— Nancy Oates

by on May 27, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Council Members, Housing, Land Use, Lifestyle, Public Works, Town staff
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Posted by Nancy Oates on May 27, 2019

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/05/27/rogers-road-victory/

The cost of appearances

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 manager included a budget exercise, which Maurice Jones knocked out of the park. When he tackled the real thing this spring, he came through again.

His budget corrected some areas we had long neglected — such as money to boost the starting salary of police officers in an increasingly competitive field, and funds to repave local streets where we’ve Band-Aided potholes for years.

It reflected a stroke of genius in making use of some money that had been shackled for the past few years. In 2015, the General Assembly decreed that all inspections fees a town collects must be used for inspections purposes only, not thrown into the general revenue pot, as we’ve done for years. Chapel Hill collects way more in fees than the department budget. Our new town manager found five people in the Planning Department who served inspections work and transferred those positions to the Inspections Department. Just like that, hundreds of thousands of dollars were freed up to use.

The budget left out only requested increases of four nonprofits, totaling about $72,000. When Town Council asked Jones to include those, he found $10,000 tucked away that could be applied to the requested increases, and said the remaining $62,000 would have to be taken from our savings. Tapping into our savings — living beyond our means — can negatively impact our bond rating, which determines the interest rate we are charged when we borrow for big-ticket items, such as a new police station. After some discussion, council agreed to pull the money from savings.

We were ready to wrap up when a council member proposed pulling another $50,000 from savings to be used for cultural arts. The manager’s budget hadn’t included an increase in spending for cultural arts, and what did that say about our town, the council member asked. The mayor directed the manager to explore tacking on another $50,000, and now we are living $110,000 beyond our means.

We do not live in a cultural desert. We need only cross Franklin Street to access Playmakers Theater, Current Artspace, Memorial Hall, Hanes Art Center and the Ackland Museum. We can drive 20 minutes to Durham for DPAC, Carolina Theatre and the Nasher art museum. We can drive 30 minutes to the many cultural arts venues in Raleigh. The council member had no specific use for the money, only “is that the message we want to send?”

By focusing on appearances, we are creating a town only for the wealthy. If we are intent on pulling another $50,000 from savings, let’s designate it to be used on events that will be free to the public.

— Nancy Oates

 

by on May 20, 2019  •  Permalink
Posted in Budget, Community life, Council Members, Lifestyle, Police, Politics, Roads, Spending, Taxes, Town staff
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Posted by Nancy Oates on May 20, 2019

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2019/05/20/the-cost-of-appearances/

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