Absentee voting

Viewers of American Idol know to call one number if they want to vote for one performer and another number to vote for another performer. Maybe Town Council has adopted a similar practice.

Laurin Easthom left during a discussion of the Triangle Regional Transit Local Preferred Alternative issue. During a spate of late-night council meetings last year, Easthom, a dentist, explained that she couldn’t stay late the night before she had to perform a procedure on a patient early the next morning. Presumably, that’s why she ducked out early Monday night – early being a relative term, given that council had already been in session more than five and a half hours at that point.

So Easthom missed a long discussion on whether the council had a preference of C1 or C2 for the light-rail route and whether council should let the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Transportation Advisory know which alternative they prefer. Community members who spoke Monday night overwhelmingly preferred C2, and so did some council members. But other council members wanted to remain neutral. The committee would consider both alternatives, regardless of whether council picked a preference.

Matt Czajkowski moved that the council send forth the preference for C2; Ed Harrison put forth a substitute motion to indicate no preference. Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt called for a vote. With Easthom’s absence, council was down to eight members, creating the possibility of a tie vote. Kleinschmidt asked all those in favor of Harrison’s substitute motion to raise their right hand. He counted three.

“And Laurin,” Jim Ward said, nodding toward Easthom’s empty chair. Kleinschmidt counted it as a fourth hand. But it wasn’t enough to pass the substitute motion.

Next came the vote on the motion to state a preference for C2. Kleinschmidt counted five raised right hands, then added, “And with Laurin, six.” The motion passed. Thus, Easthom’s empty chair voted for the no-preference motion and for the C2-preference motion.

To be fair, Easthom may have been home texting or tweeting her votes to council. But if she was, it would have been nice for someone on council to have made that clear.

Then again, it was after 11 p.m., more than six hours after council had convened that evening, and there was still the contentious landfill issue to get through before everyone could go home. And even as the clock edged toward midnight, community members still waited in chambers to speak on the issue. So we’ll cut council some slack this time.
– Nancy Oates

by on January 26, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Council Members, Transportation
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Posted by Nancy Oates on January 26, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/01/26/absentee-voting/

Late night with Town Council

Town Council and town staff worked a double shift yesterday, given that all have full-time jobs and council convened at 5 p.m. to begin hashing out what to do about community response to the Yates Building incident. The Community Policing Advisory Board had requested approval to hire an independent investigator along the lines of CIA, which investigated the firing of the Sanitation Two. Cost estimates for the move ranged from $15,000 to upwards of $30,000.

From 5 until shortly after 7 p.m., council met in closed session and evidently learned that hiring an outside investigator would not accomplish CPAB’s goal of reducing the inherent tensions between law enforcement and non-law enforcement members of the community. As with the Sanitation Two investigation, the investigators could not compel anyone to testify; witnesses could not be sworn in and made to tell the truth, nor could they be cross examined; and investigators could not offer any protection against criminal or civil liability if witnesses gave damning testimony against themselves.

In an effort to reduce community tensions, council listened to nearly three hours of community comment and discussion among its own members of how to move beyond the Yates Building incident. And we do need to move on, as the council agenda itself showed. We need to select a route for the light rail system, monitor the development of Chapel Hill North as construction moves ahead, and plan what to do with our garbage and keep our promises to the Rogers Road community. The community comment and discussion on those issues didn’t end until after midnight. And council has scheduled a special session next Monday night to complete last night’s agenda.

Lee Storrow suggested focusing on how police and activists should behave during future incidents of civil disobedience. And Chapel Hill being what it is, there will be more such events.
– Nancy Oates

by on January 24, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Occupy Protests, Police, Sanitation workers
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Posted by Nancy Oates on January 24, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/01/24/late-night-with-town-council/

Affordable housing

Northside and Pine Knolls face a losing battle to remain affordable (and black, for that matter) unless we, as a town, address the demand for student housing near campus.

Tonight Town Council will receive the Planning Department’s update on the town’s affordable housing strategy, a plan the council adopted in June of last year. One of the key components in the plan is to conduct a survey to learn income levels and what type of housing the workforce would like. (We hope that the sentence stating the staff would survey “employers” was simply poorly worded and that staff actually intend to ask the people who need affordable housing what their preferences are.)

Nevertheless, even if the town creates housing that fits local employees to a T, the units will be snapped up by students whose parents provide financial backing. And that demand will raise housing prices. The town’s plan to buy property as it becomes available and preserve it as affordable housing will have limited success, because the town can’t outbid what a private developer could pay.

To prevent teardowns, the town would need to arm the individual parcels with all sorts of protective covenants similar to those of Community Land Trust housing, which would limit resale value. Creating a Historic District Commission-type body to approve any sort of renovation has done nothing to improve the affordability of neighborhoods farther east. To the west, Carrboro found that limiting the footprint and height of the houses won’t achieve affordability, either. The Carrboro millhouses, on a price-per-square-foot basis, are among the most expensive real estate in the Triangle.

One of the tricky aspects of crafting development restrictions for the Northside/Pine Knolls neighborhoods is how to control who moves in and what the owners can do with their property without preventing current owners from reaping full market value for their real estate investment. The only significant savings many working class people have is the equity in their home, and it is downright un-American to prevent them from harvesting the equity when they need it.

Reducing demand will help keep prices low. Building apartments – not condos – downtown will ease the pressure. Projects like Shortbread Lofts – garish color and cheap windows notwithstanding – may be in the best interests of the community.
– Nancy Oates

by on January 23, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Downtown Chapel Hill, Housing, Northside
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Posted by Nancy Oates on January 23, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/01/23/affordable-housing/

Shortbread hearing long on complaints

During last night’s public hearing on the Shortbread Lofts, I had to knock my head against the wall a couple of times to make sure I wasn’t stuck in a time warp. It sure felt like Aydan Court all over again.

You have a developer who has taken pains to fit the changing demands of the community into an urban streetscape that could give local merchants a badly needed boost and meet market need, and still you have folks lining up to complain about it.

It will draw too many people to the area. (That’s the point.) It will draw too many renters to the area. (The demand is for rental housing in this era when people are leery of investing in an asset that is as illiquid as real estate, and even if they did want to buy, banks wouldn’t give them mortgages.) It has too much parking. It doesn’t have enough parking. Make the rooftop jogging track multipurpose. It doesn’t preserve the charm of Rosemary Street. (It’s next door to a minimart, surrounded by parking lots and down the street from a low, concrete block building.) It doesn’t fit with the downtown intimacy. (Without paying customers, downtown would be a very lonely place indeed.)

And then Matt Czajkowski called it ugly. Granted, its color has been described as “sunshine” or “mustard” yellow, and eight of the nine council members are of an age to prefer “oatmeal” or “café au lait” to raucous primary colors. But that’s for the Community Design Commission to handle.

The developers agreed to 85 of town staff’s 86 recommendations, asking only that in-street lighting on the crosswalk be replaced with a lighted crosswalk sign. Jim Ward asked whether in-street lighting would cause problems for a snow plow, and Czajkowski pointed out that when Rosemary Street (a town road) is repaved, the town would bear the cost of re-setting the lights.

The developers still have some issues to work out with the Franklin Street property owners. The new alleyway access, wide enough to accommodate emergency vehicles, cuts 3 feet off one Franklin Street lot and 8 feet off another. Another faction objected to the dumpster being replaced by a permanent structure to house trash bins. Mayor Pro Tem Ed Harrison made it clear that the developers would need to resolve those issues to achieve “peace in the valley” before council would likely approve it.

The matter returns to council Feb. 27.
– Nancy Oates

by on January 19, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Downtown Chapel Hill, Economic development, Housing
Posted by Nancy Oates on January 19, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/01/19/shortbread-hearing-long-on-complaints/

Short shrift for Shortbread?

What better circumstances, if you’re a developer wanting to build an 85-unit apartment building, than to have the town change the ordinance, a week before your presentation, effectively limiting the housing supply of your target market in a neighborhood a few blocks away.

No wonder the developers, known only as “Shortbread Lofts LLC,” who have been planning this seven-story mixed-use project for a good six years, feel now the time is ripe to break ground. The developers go before Town Council tonight to request zoning of the 1.4-acre site at 333 W. Rosemary St. be bumped up a notch from Town Center-2 to Town Center-3 conditional. The developers also are asking for a special use permit to raze the 22 apartments currently on the site and build the 144,290 square feet of floor space that includes 3,560 square feet of ground-floor commercial space and make room for 121 parking spaces.

More good luck: The planning board has given the project its blessing. And the developers have precedent on their side. Town Council approved the much taller Greenbridge and 140 West projects. The apartments will be market rate in a range of sizes and prices. The plan’s energy-efficient features show nothing more exotic than solar panels for hot water and a tankless hot water system as back-up. The material submitted by the developers does not indicate that they expect the town to kick in any money to mitigate the developers’ risk or to clean up any toxic waste from the site. (How much is the 140 West bill up to now?)

And after last week’s 5-hour, 22-minute marathon, and public hearings for another construction project and a concept plan review also on the agenda, council members may be very focused in their comments and questions. (The other public hearings pertain to the Hultquist IP Office Building in Meadowmont – a Master Land Use Plan Modification and special use permit – and a concept plan review for the Arc of Orange County Apartments in Meadowmont.)

What could possibly go wrong?
– Nancy Oates

by on January 18, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Downtown Chapel Hill, Housing
Posted by Nancy Oates on January 18, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/01/18/short-shrift-for-shortbread/

The other tax drain?

Deborah Fulghieri is an ETJ (Extra-Territorial Jurisdiction) member of the Planning Board. Here’s what she has to say on the recent sale of Eastowne Office Park, owned by Blue Cross Blue Shield, to UNC Health Care:

It was a surprise to learn that Chapel Hill’s economic development officer does not live, vote or pay property taxes in Chapel Hill. His assertion that he could not afford what he wanted in Chapel Hill – his salary is $78,000 per year – sent me on a brief search on Alamance County’s website, which shows what he paid cash for a small house on six tenths of an acre, and gives a map. He could have afforded the equivalent nearby, so I think he has other reasons to live where he lives. (When the economic development officer job was advertised in 2007, it specified that a vehicle would be provided at Town expense; perhaps that offsets his commute.) But I can’t accept the economic development officer for Chapel Hill, for heaven’s sake, joining the chorus singing “Chapel Hill Is Too Expensive.” His money is not where his mouth is.

Maybe that is why he didn’t work to keep Blue Cross Blue Shield from selling Eastowne Office Park, on 48 acres of Chapel Hill’s best commercial property fronting on I-40 and 15-501, for $14,250,000 – 33 percent less than its assessed value – to UNC Health Care. By comparison, University Mall on 41 acres is assessed at $33,928,000, and Rams Plaza on 14 acres was sold last month for $13,250,000 – three times as much per acre as Eastowne. Although there are differences in the use of these properties, the Eastowne property does not appear to have been exposed to the market for sale, and might not be considered an arm’s-length transaction.

The location is right where Chapel Hillians exit when they want to shop in Durham, otherwise referred to by Chapel Hill’s mayor as the “open drain on sales taxes.” UNC Health Care vice president Karen McCall was quoted by WCHL as saying that UNC Health Care will continue paying property taxes. “We certainly respect the need for the Town to be able to take care of all the facilities and all the organizations relying on Town services.” Those property taxes in 2011 were $333,652.08, an important part of our county’s and Chapel Hill’s budget. UNC Health Care is exempted from property tax by N.C. statute (the N.C. Machinery Act, Section 105-278.1), so the property could be withdrawn from the tax rolls whenever its management might see fit. This transaction weakens Chapel Hill’s commercial tax base.

I think Chapel Hill’s economic development department dropped the ball here and will now try to push for heavy commercial development on the Town’s periphery. That’s as bad an idea as letting Eastowne be sold for a third of market value, for non-commercial use.

– Deborah Fulghieri

by on January 17, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Economic development, Taxes
Posted by Nancy Oates on January 17, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/01/17/the-other-tax-drain/

Real community policing

Terri Buckner has long been interested in the livability of our community. Here’s her take on the role of policing in Chapel Hill:

In March of 2011, the Chapel Hill Town Council, in response to a community-generated petition, created the Community Policing Advisory Committee as one of its standing advisory boards. The citizen petitions which initiated the creation of this new committee consistently requested the creation of a civilian review board, so I’m unclear as to where the “community policing” descriptor came from in the official name. Community policing is a term with specific meaning.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, community policing is “a philosophy that promotes organizational strategies, which support the systematic use of partnerships and problem-solving techniques, to proactively address the immediate conditions that give rise to public safety issues such as crime, social disorder, and fear of crime.” The key elements of community policing are 1) creating partnerships with other groups and organizations within the community, and 2) making every effort to prevent crime before it occurs. SARA (scan, analyze, respond, assess) is the conceptual framework referenced by the Department of Justice for systematically analyzing problems when they arise.

It’s not clear to me whether the Chapel Hill Police Department has embraced this nationally recognized approach to community policing or a hybrid approach. Over the past 20 years, they have established a number of policing kiosks located throughout the community, but nowhere in the official literature do I find a specific statement embracing the community policing philosophy.

Does it matter? I think it does. Much of the community response to the CHPD response to the Yates Building incident boils down to a difference of opinion in how we, as a community, perceive the policing function. Do we want a traditional police approach or do we want a community policing model? In the 1990s I spent 5 years as the editor for a community policing research agency in Florida. Based on what I learned there, these are two diametrically opposed approaches. Traditional police departments concentrate power and decision-making centrally while community policing agencies empower individual officers to make decisions. Traditional police departments respond to problems; community policing departments make every effort to prevent problems.

In analyzing Chief Blue’s memorandum, I do see elements of a community policing approach through the collaboration with the Downtown Partnership staff in communicating with the protesters, and his description of the decision-making process sounds very much like the SARA model. On the other hand, it also sounds like all decisions were made centrally rather than by the field officers and, per Dan Coleman’s report, individual officers had the opportunity to intercede and didn’t.

Whether or not the Town Council decides to fund the external review of the Yates incident, I hope this situation, from the incident itself to the conflicting response from the community, will initiate a fuller discussion of the role of policing in Chapel Hill.

— Terri Buckner

by on January 16, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Police
Posted by Nancy Oates on January 16, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/01/16/real-community-policing/

Apologies due

At Monday night’s council meeting, Donna Bell said she was sorry that Katelyn Ferral was detained while covering a story at the Yates building but acknowledged that when you run with the big dogs, sometimes you get sprayed with drool.

Those weren’t Bell’s exact words, but that was the gist of her response to Laurin Easthom’s and Lee Storrow’s resolution for a blanket apology from the town to the “press” for police ordering Ferral to the ground along with others at the crime scene.

Bell’s point was that everyone makes decisions that have consequences. Reporters have to be vigilant that in getting as close as they can to whatever they’re covering, they don’t cross the line into becoming a part of the story. Easthom’s resolution passed 5-4 – Bell joined Matt Czajkowski, Gene Pease and Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt in voting against apologizing for police doing their job.

That got me thinking about all of the times in life I’ve endured something unpleasant that surely someone should take the blame for and extend an apology to me.

All those Friday afternoons I had to leave home an extra hour early to drive to work in Raleigh because rush-hour traffic clogged I-40.

The time the whole family came down with the flu at the same time, and sick as I was, I had to take care of everyone else because I was the wife and mom.

The mornings, for years, I got up in the dark to pack lunches and make breakfasts and walk the kids to the bus stop to wait for the 6:45 a.m. school bus.

I’m sure you have your own list. Did we deserve these things? No, and someone should apologize.

How about it, Town Council?
– Nancy Oates

by on January 11, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Council Members, Police
Posted by Nancy Oates on January 11, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/01/11/apologies-due/

Good news, bad news

Last night’s Town Council meeting (which didn’t end until early this morning) yielded good news and bad news.

The good news: Council passed all three resolutions and all three ordinances to tighten development restrictions in the Northside community.

The bad news: The town has no money to enforce them.

The Neighborhood Conservation District status put in place nearly a decade ago contained many strictures to preserve the character of the neighborhood. If the town had enforced those regulations, the neighborhood would not be in the state of development crisis it is in today. Last night the town put in place even more strident development restrictions. But if those aren’t enforced, they will be ineffective, too.

Possible solution: Town manager Roger Stancil said he wanted to keep the new ordinance simple enough that any town employee – not just a specially trained enforcement officer – could provide enforcement. We pay an arts czar and assistant about $100,000 annually for a task that takes up very little time. They could patrol the Northside and Pine Knolls neighborhoods during slow periods in their job. It’s a win/win, an example of town employees adding to their skill set to become more flexible that Stancil talked about during his budget presentation.

More good news: The town installed new technology at Town Hall, in particular, a new audio system in Council Chambers.

The bad news: It doesn’t work as well as the old system. One mike (where town employees present) has constant static. The other mike, for the public to use, is too muddy for the speaker’s words to be understandable. Council members who don’t speak into their mikes at just the right angle and distance also can’t be understood.

Final good news: The new configuration of having the public speak at a mike at the opposite end of the dais means the TV cameras show the reflection of someone’s computer screen. TV viewers can keep tabs on who is checking Facebook, watching YouTube videos or playing solitaire.

The bad news: From my perch on the couch, I couldn’t tell whose computer it was. I may have to attend a council meeting in person to find out.
– Nancy Oates

by on January 10, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Northside, Technology
Posted by Nancy Oates on January 10, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/01/10/good-news-bad-news/

Fiscally happy New Year

Town manager Roger Stancil must have eaten his New Year’s Day Hoppin’ John on behalf of the town this year. When Town Council resumes meetings tonight, council members will vote on whether to accept money from several sources.

The consent agenda asks council to accept $5,000 from OWASA toward Code Red, a service that notifies customers if the water is tainted; $1,000 from the Library Foundation, courtesy of Matt Czajkowski and his family, for the purchase of Kindles to loan out; $9,073 from the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant to upgrade police safety equipment; and $11,962 from the e-NC PEG Grant and matching funds for equipment to produce new video content for TV-18, Chapel Hill’s public TV station.

The item requests $3,000 be given to the Library Gift Fund for the purchase of new material, perhaps some e-books to load on the Kindles, and asks for $93,000 to finish paying for the new parking meter system, renovate a parking lot on Graham Street the town purchased last year and resurface part of Lot 2 over the weekend. But the latter are necessary steps to keep the town Open for Business.
The consent agenda includes a request to allow Stancil to apply for a $500,000 grant to cover the town’s portion of a matching grant to lay artificial turf at Cedar Falls Park. Stancil applied for a $700,000 grant last year, but the state turned him down due to the state’s fiscal woes.

The council also must vote on whether to accept a new agreement with the county so that Orange County residents who live outside of Chapel Hill can continue to use the library for free. The agreement, crafted by Sally Greene, Gene Pease and Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt, working with county commissioners, sets the county’s first-year contribution at $342,986, building in gradual increases so that the county’s portion rises to more than $500,000 by the fiscal year ending in June 2015. That increases the county’s portion from about 21 percent of the library operating budget to nearly 30 percent.

So 2012 starts off on the right fiscal foot.
– Nancy Oates

by on January 9, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Budget, Downtown Chapel Hill, Library, Media, Parking, Spending
Posted by Nancy Oates on January 9, 2012

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2012/01/09/fiscally-happy-new-year/

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