Compliance

Town Council meets Wednesday night in closed session to discuss what, if any, further action to take after the court issued a permanent injunction against the town’s towing and cell phone ordinances.

As an olive branch after he won his lawsuit, the owner of George’s Towing put up new signs in the lots he monitors to make it absolutely clear that people who try to sneak in some free parking in the lot of a business they aren’t patronizing at the time do so at their own risk. Some people may pay dearly to learn that business owners are serious about providing free parking only to their customers. But word will spread, and the problem will resolve itself in short order.

The town has much more important problems to spend its time and money on than appealing this lawsuit. Liking fixing the Community Development Block Grant activities that are out of compliance.

A couple weeks ago, the town received a letter from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development informing that although HUD had worked closely with CDBG grantees over the past nine months “to obtain and document resolution” of issues identified in an audit conducted by the Inspector General, “a significant number of activities remain inadequately documented or incomplete.” If these points aren’t rectified by Sept. 30, HUD will “advise” the town to pay back the grant money.

During budget discussions in the spring, Gene Pease asked about the status of compliance issues that had plagued some agencies in the past. He was assured that progress had been made and he needn’t worry about them anymore. No word yet on how much this would cost the town or which agencies are noncompliant.

On a totally unrelated note, does anyone know when the town began using parking meters? The question came up as I was working on a story for the 100th anniversary issue of Carolina Alumni Review, UNC’s alumni magazine. Two people I contacted at the town’s Parking Services division didn’t know. Even the town’s ever-resourceful public information officer, Catherine Lazorko, couldn’t ferret out an answer. I’m hoping some longtime resident may recall even the decade when parking meters first appeared. To jog your memory, parallel parking replaced angle parking on Franklin Street in 1965. Were parking meters in use then? Let me know what you recall.
– Nancy Oates

by on August 20, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Parking
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Posted by Nancy Oates on August 20, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/08/20/parking-meters/

See the world

Come see the world with me, and all it will cost is a couple of gallons of gas. Granted, with the supply chain disruptions in the Midwest – a ruptured pipeline in Wisconsin and equipment problems that shut down refineries in Indiana and Illinois – that’s nearly the cost of a couple of lattes a week. But it will be worth it.

For the past several weekends, I’ve been knocking on doors in Orange County, in neighborhoods outside of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, to educate voters about the importance of re-electing President Obama. Now that Republican candidate-apparent Mitt Romney has chosen Paul Ryan as his running mate, the choice for voters has never been clearer. Ryan, in his seventh term as a U.S. representative from Wisconsin, chairs the House Budget Committee and has pushed such ideas as privatizing Social Security (this, right before the economy collapsed in 2008) and dismantling Medicare. He shares Romney’s belief of cutting taxes for people earning more than $200,000 a year and raising the taxes of those making less than $200,000 annually.

I’ve always been fiscally conservative and hold the belief that hard work pays off, so the thought of the taxes on my middle-class earnings going to support the lifestyles of the rich and famous, as the Romney-Ryan tax plan would do, awakens the outrage that women my age are famous for. Being self-employed, I pay twice the Social Security that someone paid by an employer pays (I pay the portion of both the employee and the employer), so I’ve got a greater stake in making sure Social Security and Medicare are still around when I retire.

Walking through neighborhoods in and around Hillsborough over the past month, I’ve talked with folks on both sides of the $200,000 divide. I’ve had a first-hand look at the conveniences money can buy and how priorities change when income streams tighten or are cut off completely.

Join me and other Obama campaign volunteers some weekend. We’ll see how America lives and take a stand for making life better for all of us.

To arrange for a time to volunteer, contact Orange County campaign coordinator Alex Pugh at apugh@ofanc.com or 919-699-8518, or email me at neoates@earthlink.net.
– Nancy Oates

by on August 13, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Elections, Lifestyle, Taxes
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Posted by Nancy Oates on August 13, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/08/13/see-the-world/

Missed the podium

We can’t blame town attorney Ralph Karpinos’ go-for-the-gold spirit on the Olympics. The issues he pressed forward on that landed the town on the wrong side of lawsuits began long before the qualifying rounds began. And as gymnast and Olympic silver medalist McKayla Maroney found out yesterday, sometimes despite all your preparations and efforts, you fall on your butt at the most inopportune moment.

In the past year, Karpinos has urged the town to continue with its Voter Owned Election program, only to have the Supreme Court strike it down. Actually, the judges of the highest court in the land knocked over Arizona’s VOE law, and that had a domino effect on VOE programs all over the country.

Then Karpinos lobbied for a cell phone ban, despite a letter from the state attorney general’s office saying that the town’s ban would get shot down. And it did, last Thursday, when Judge Orlando Hudson issued a permanent injunction against the ordinance. Karpinos and Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt are huddling this week to figure out what to do next.

Karpinos could learn another lesson from athletes in one Olympic sport – women’s badminton. You’ve got to bring your best effort to the court, or you’ll likely be disqualified.
– Nancy Oates

by on August 6, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Courts
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Posted by Nancy Oates on August 6, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/08/06/missed-the-podium/

Call it a night

Time was Ed Harrison would joke about the council meeting he presided over that spilled into the next day. The meeting was memorable not only because it ended on his birthday but because of the rarity of a council meeting lasting past midnight. These days, it’s noteworthy if council ends before 11 p.m. Laurin Easthom used to leave at 10:30 (the time council set for itself not to take up any new agenda items) if she had a patient scheduled early the next morning. Now, she stays to the end, evidently not booking patients for early Tuesday mornings.

Even three years ago, when Chapel Hill Watch began covering council meetings, Don and I used to attend every meeting in person and still get home in time to write a blog post before bed. Now we watch from home, where the seats are more comfortable, given that council meetings routinely last longer than four hours.

A few reasons layered atop one another have lengthened the meetings. We have some suggestions for ending earlier.

 Use an airhorn, not a red light, to signal a speaker’s three minutes are up. Mayor Kleinschmidt asks speakers to heed the three-minute rule, but he rarely enforces it. Northside matriarchs, senior citizens, the wheelchair bound and lawyers have been known to preach sermons, and all Kleinschmidt does is squirm uncomfortably. Kevin Foy, as mayor, often cut people off mid-paragraph. Speakers learned that if they had anything to say that they wanted council to hear, they had to say it in the first three minutes.

 No repeats. Speakers, taking a cue from whiny preschoolers, know council can be worn down by repeating the same thing over and over and over. Even the most resolute council member will cave. Let’s return to the days when everyone who had the same message wore a red T-shirt and stood up on cue, rather than clogging the podium.

 Follow the recommendations of advisory boards and professionals on the town staff. Some council members elected since 2009 make a point of voting how they “feel,” rather than weighing facts and recommendations from people who know what they’re doing.

 Grow a backbone. This means you, council members easily swayed by a parade of speakers angrily demanding you vote against your better judgment. It’s uncomfortable having people mad at you. But the decisions you were elected to make are going to leave at least one faction angry. Live with it.

 Speak civilly to one another and respect differing opinions on the dais. A council member who responds to her colleagues with disdain and belittles anyone who disagrees with her pushes her colleagues to dig in their heels. Discussion degenerates into argument, and that always takes more time as members feel the need to defend themselves vociferously.

We’ve had enough meetings for the record books. This fall, let’s get down to business and still turn out the lights before midnight.
– Nancy Oates

by on July 30, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Council Members, Politics
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Posted by Nancy Oates on July 30, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/07/30/call-it-a-night/

VOE now DOA

For now, at least, beleaguered Chapel Hill taxpayers have one less expense to fund. The state General Assembly adjourned in July without enacting House Bill 1132 that would extend statutory authority for the town to continue its taxpayer-financed political campaigns, also known as the Voter Owned Election Program.

The lack of action will have little fiscal impact on the town at present. We don’t have local elections until 2013, and by that time, the state legislature could fish the bill out of committee, where about 200 other bills languish, and push it forward. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that one aspect of the politicians’ welfare program was unconstitutional – the part of the program that gave matching funds to candidates accepting public money if their opponents not accepting the government freebie were very successful with private fundraising.

Of the five candidates elected to council and mayoral seats in the 2011 election, only Donna Bell accepted money from the government-sourced gravy train. One successful candidate – Jim Ward – won without hitting up friends and family for donations or wresting funds from unwilling taxpayers. He evidently spent nothing but the filing fee. No yard signs; no lapel buttons; no direct mail pieces, mean-spirited or otherwise; not even a Twitter account.

The VOE program was well-intentioned. Money wins elections, and just because someone is skilled at asking for handouts or has a direct line to the deep pockets of family or friends doesn’t mean that candidate is the right person for political office. And candidates who represent the interests of the working class and others on a tight budget shouldn’t be penalized because of their target supporters’ inability to give generously to political causes.

But the town already has a long list of wasteful spending obligations that fall low on the taxpayers’ priority list but still must be paid. Think of the money we are shelling out to a private law firm to defend the town’s decision to hire a private consulting firm to justify firing two town employees lobbying for unionization. Think of the money we will have to pay, above and beyond the $7 million already paid to the for-profit developer, to buy parking spaces for the affordable housing units in the developer’s high-rise. Think of the money we will spend for signs warning motorists of our cell phone ordinance that they don’t actually have to obey.

Maybe, instead of spending thousands of dollars in handouts to fundraising-impaired candidates, we could hire Ward to put on a tutorial that explains his success.
– Nancy Oates

by on July 23, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Budget, Elections
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Posted by Nancy Oates on July 23, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/07/23/voe-now-doa/

Friday the 13th, county style

You know that point in a horror flick when the heroine lets down her guard just a little bit, and you know something bad is going to happen, you just don’t know what? You find yourself mumbling, “Stay out of the boat, Alice, it’s not what it seems,” or “Don’t pick up the phone, Drew Barrymore, just let it ring.”

You’d think by now job applicants would have that same eerie feeling when Orange County manager Frank Clifton offers them the title of tax administrator. We’re on our fourth county tax administrator in two and a half years.

In October 2009, Frank Clifton was appointed Orange County manager. Shortly thereafter, the county board of commissioners charged him with “reviewing the functions of tax assessment and collections and increasing efficiencies in these areas without adding costs.” By the end of December 2009, John Smith, who had been county tax administrator for the past 24 years, retired.

Clifton filled Smith’s position with Jo Roberson, who had been revenue director up to the point, and gave her a contract for the tax admin job through June 2011. Public records indicate that the revenue director position pays nearly $78,000, and the tax assessor position pays about $10,000 more. In August 2010, she threw in the towel and announced her plans to retire before her contract was up.

So Clifton hired Jenks Crayton, effective March 2011, and officially gave him a two-year contract in June 2011, with an annual salary of $95,000 and benefits equivalent to an employee who had been working for the county for 10 years.

Now, very quietly, Crayton is out the door with a year remaining on his contract, and Clifton hires Dwane Brinson, the tax administrator of Lee County. (Sanford is its county seat.) Clifton inked a two-year contract with Brinson for an annual salary of $108,000 and credited the not-yet-30-year-old with 11 years of county service on which to base his benefits. Lee, who has only two years’ experience as tax administrator, was named in 2010 to the Triangle Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 list.

Boosting the base salary of the county tax administrator position by at least $30,000 in less than three years doesn’t seem to jibe with “increasing efficiencies … without adding costs.” The speed of the personnel revolving door suggests that Clifton may be sorely lacking in people managing skills, and his overly generous raises indicate that money managing isn’t his forte, either. Former Progress Energy CEO Bill Johnson, accused of managing with an autocratic style, was shown the door with a $44 million bonus. Maybe Clifton is hoping for something similar.

As for Brinson, he may have what it takes to survive a Clifton storm. When Triangle Business Journal asked him his hero, he replied, “Donald Trump has always fascinated me.” And when TBJ asked him his five-year goal, he said, “Working as an assistant county manager or county manager would be a great fit.”
– Nancy Oates

by on July 16, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Budget, Taxes
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Posted by Nancy Oates on July 16, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/07/16/friday-the-13th-county-style/

Big Bang Theory

How much would you pay for the fireworks display last week?

Technically, we’ve prepaid for the July 4th show through our taxes, but the town put out a tip jar at the entrance gate and sent around an email with instructions on how to make a tax-deductible contribution through its Friends of Chapel Hill Parks and Recreation Department, a nonprofit entity that gives contributors a receipt for income tax purposes.

Last year, with sales tax revenue down and committed expenses (think library expansion) unavoidable, the town bumped community-building experiences too far down on its priority list to afford. So for a fireworks display, we had to go to Durham, just as we do for food trucks and affordable housing. Council members running for election a few months later heard how much voters missed the annual celebration. Matt Czajkowski suggested offsetting the cost with corporate sponsorship, generating no more spark among council members than a wet match.

But the idea caught fire with Chapel Hill businesses, and last week’s fireworks display was brought to us in part by the generous support of Top of the Hill, UNC Health Care, 140 West Franklin, Cruizers, East 54, Performance Subaru, The Cedars of Chapel Hill, Corporate Investors, Chick-fil-A, The People’s Channel, Harrington Bank and Grace Church. WCHL and chapelboro.com chipped in time, talent and $10,000 worth of free advertising. (I hope they got a free parking space in return.)

Of the $42,000 tab, businesses kicked in $11,750, and the tip jar collected an additional $8,000 from the 27,000 in the audience, leaving about $22,000 to come out of the town’s checking account.

The idea of soliciting pocket change donations from the people who care most about advancing a project is not new. Friends of the Library and Friends of Downtown help out their respective causes. So why not broaden the concept as a way to plug some budget holes?

Why not “Friends of Solid Waste,” for instance? And why limit it to cash donations? Friends of Solid Waste could set up a sort of alternative gift market; instead of sending a heifer to a needy family in Malawi, people could buy a compost bin for a conspicuous consumer in Chapel Hill.

Pulling off the fireworks event took a lot of work. But the people dancing in the aisles and singing along lustily with The Franklin Street Band’s rendition of “I Will Survive” while firemen hosed down the upholstered seats of the new Blue Zone would tell you it was worth it. Even the people standing in line to buy $4 bottles of water and ice cream in souvenir bowls shaped like baseball caps would agree. And that was before Pyrotechnico outdid themselves with rockets never before seen in the Southern Part of Heaven.

We definitely got our dollar’s worth.
– Nancy Oates

by on July 9, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Budget, Lifestyle, Spending
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Posted by Nancy Oates on July 9, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/07/09/big-bang-theory/

Trash talk

A psychological construct has it that some people who have a hard time enduring separation will pick a fight before leaving. Stalking off angry provides a cushion against the loneliness of being apart.

That could explain the near unilateral churlishness of council members at their June 26 meeting. Or maybe the sour note they ended on as they headed into their summer break was due to the frustration of the Charterwood vote. Or maybe the conundrum that awaits them in the fall: what to do with our garbage.

Now, there’s a fight. Think how roiled people get at the prospect of living next to a brand-new apartment building. Imagine how they’ll take the threat of a solid-waste transfer station moving into the neighborhood.

Orange County announced it will close the Eubanks Road landfill at the end of the 2012-13 fiscal year, so a year from now we’ll have to take our garbage elsewhere. But where to haul it, and how far? Durham offers the closest and least expensive option, but driving fully loaded garbage trucks down the highway presents some safety issues to the trucks’ drivers (picture the slow-to-accelerate trucks merging onto I-40) and costs associated with every fuel-inefficient mile.

A transfer station would allow trucks to empty their daily loads where the garbage could be compacted and stored until transported to its final resting place. But Chapel Hill has few parcels of suitable land. The vacant lot between Whole Foods and the liquor store on Elliott Road? Obey Creek? Rogers Road? Public Works director Lance Norris welcomes your suggestions.

Public Works crunched the numbers and said that hauling our trash to Durham would save money over paying the dumping fees at the Orange County landfill. Norris suggested switching over as early as October. After all, the town is no longer bound to the town-county landfill agreement, given that the county violated the contract by not providing sufficient notice that the landfill would close.

Orange County manager Frank Clifton, listening in the audience, furrowed his brow. In planning its budget, the county had counted on dumping fees from Chapel Hill all the way through next June. Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt offered a classic “it’s not you, it’s me” response to soften the breakup, assuring Clifton the town was not acting out of spite by considering options that would take revenue away from Orange County and send it to Durham County. Chapel Hill had its own tight budget to consider.

Norris ended his presentation by showing a couple slides of lovely transfer stations, and urged council members to visit transfer stations wherever their travels took them this summer.
– Nancy Oates

by on July 2, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Public Works
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Posted by Nancy Oates on July 2, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/07/02/trash-talk/

CH2020 win

Town Council approved CH2020 last night during Part 1 of its two-episode season finale. The vote came after nearly three hours of public comment and council discussion. As with any good drama, there was a plot twist – the Planning Board came up with a list of last-minute changes. And there was a very interesting presentation on the cost of growth and how it would affect property taxes.

But after much assurance from town staff that “moving forward” with CH2020 would not mean “leaving community members’ input in the dust,” council members voted unanimously to accept what will now be the new comprehensive plan and begin implementing it.

And some people thought hammering out the details and getting the words on paper took it out of them. Just wait until those words become the “living, breathing” entity of implementation, and we get stuck in its traffic and shelling out for services to high-density projects many people don’t want at all.

A couple of bright points: Rather than a traditional PowerPoint presentation of white letters on a solid-color background, assistant town planner Mary Jane Nirdlinger arranged for a presentation with inspired graphics and software that zoomed viewers in and out and whirled us around to new spots. I believe the presentation was designed in-house, and if so, that staff member deserved every penny of the 3 percent raise council approved in the budget it passed earlier in the evening.

I also took heart at the number of regular folks trooping up to the mike to add their opinions and insights. Too often at council meetings we hear mainly from paid consultants and lawyers and retirees with too much time and money on their hands. We are inexorably heading toward becoming a resort community, but seeing the number of people who seemed to know what it was like to do their jobs without a phalanx of support staff gave me hope that Chapel Hill might still tolerate, if not a working class, at least a middle class.

Tonight, tune in for more on St. Paul Village, Charterwood and options for solid waste disposal.
– Nancy Oates

by on June 26, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Budget, CH2020
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Posted by Nancy Oates on June 26, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/06/26/ch2020-win/

Learn from Lemony on CH2020

Terri Buckner writes:

Tonight the council will decide whether to adopt the Chapel Hill 2020 plan or send it back for additional detail/revisions. The plan combines strategic elements with the beginnings of land use guidance along with an implementation plan for addressing priorities and schedules. The plan has been strongly criticized by some for lacking the specificity needed to direct council and advisory boards when new projects come before them for review. The Planning Board went so far as to rewrite multiple sections in an attempt to add the detail they felt was necessary for guiding their decision-making processes.

Despite all the citizen and staff work on this plan, growth remains the elephant in the room. “The character and quality of life offered by these neighborhoods could be impacted by nearby changes that increase noise, light pollution, and traffic congestion. Sustaining the character and lifestyle that these areas provide, yet allowing them to be flexible to accommodate change will serve to assure their viability and will demonstrate that the residents’ concerns are an important consideration when planning for future changes.” Statements like this acknowledge the challenges we will face if growth predictions are accurate, and the Future Focus section outlines the type of growth staff and consultants believe is appropriate for individual areas of town. But nowhere does the plan propose any specific policies that might direct decisions across the entire community.

In Writing Public Policy, Catherine Smith says the first step in developing effective policy is to identify the problem. The 2020 plan establishes a vision and a set of goals and actions for achieving that vision. But nowhere in the plan is there an acknowledgement of any constraints or problems that might interfere with achieving the vision. For CH2020 to be successful, I believe that we need to step back and conduct a community conversation to determine our local principles on growth, including some guidance on what level of growth is acceptable.

Lemony Snicket, in “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” said, “Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don’t always like.” My preference is to be the master of our collective fate; at the very least, if I know the direction of the community, I can make my own decisions instead of continuing to wonder what those odd little waiters are going to serve up.

by on June 25, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in CH2020
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Posted by Nancy Oates on June 25, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/06/25/learn-from-lemony-on-ch2020/

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