Last night’s Town Council meeting was one for the record books – three public hearings, completed in 1 hour and 18 minutes. But the agenda items – food trucks, expansion of a building and parking lots at Carol Woods, and a proposed amendment of stormwater management rules for new development – posed little controversy. All members were present, except Gene Pease; no explanation for his absence.

First up: regulations to allow food trucks. After meeting with people who have a stake in one side or the other of the issue, the Planning Department came up with a new set of regulations to address concerns. For instance, food trucks would be allowed on downtown property only when competing brick-and-mortar establishments were closed; elsewhere, food trucks could be open for business only when nearby restaurants were open. A half-time police officer would be hired to enforce the rules. One speaker urged planning for extra enforcement by the Board of Health to make sure food truck operators follow the same food-handling standards as restaurants.

One sticking point came up when Kristen Smith of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce said that downtown merchants were opposed to food trucks. No one seemed to know the Downtown Partnership’s official stance, but Smith raised the concern that legalities prevented the town from requiring that every food truck be affiliated with an Orange County restaurant. Local restaurateurs feared that on UNC game days – the restaurant equivalent of the day after Thanksgiving to retailers – food trucks would drive in from neighboring counties and drain business from Chapel Hill eateries. Unless that can be worked out, Smith said, the Chamber is opposed to food trucks.

Next: a special use permit application for an expansion that would add 18 apartments to an existing three-story building at Carol Woods, make access to the building more convenient from the parking lot and expand overflow parking for residents who have two cars or a boat(!). But management is asking for a reprieve from the bicycle parking regulation, to cut the required 92 spaces down to four, with the provision that if residents want more bike spaces, they’ll ask for them. Ed Harrison brought up the point that residents may not have need of bike parking, but once the Weaver Dairy Road improvements are done, staff may want to bike to work. And residents might not be as aggressive lobbying for staff requests.

Both issues – food trucks and the Carol Woods SUP – return to council Nov. 21.
– Nancy Oates

My mom died last week. She did not take her last flight, meet her final deadline, leave her mortal coils behind; she was not promoted to Heaven or beamed to a new galaxy; nor did the Angel of Silence claim victory over her. She wanted her obituary to say simply that she died. I know this because she wrote it in her death file.

While she was alive, the death file sounded ominous and kind of morbid. But it included all sorts of practical stuff: where the safe deposit box keys were, lists of passwords and an inventory of bank accounts, brokerage accounts and insurance policies. As things came up over the years, she wrote down what she wanted and put it in the death file. She included a list of people she wanted us to call so that they would learn she had died before reading it in the newspaper. We knew what music, hymns and Bible verses were meaningful to her that we might use in her funeral service. Maybe she just didn’t want her four strong-willed children, who rarely agree on anything, to fight once she wasn’t around to intercede.

At the end of her life, some of the information in the death file, in her own handwriting, proved invaluable for decisions she couldn’t make. We knew specifics of what she considered an acceptable quality of life, what she considered unacceptable and under what conditions she wanted to discontinue treatment for her leukemia.

I chide Don about his plan for extended illness in old age. He says he’s just going to walk off into the woods, sit down under a tree and wait to die. But from what I’ve seen of the aging process, the will to stay alive causes us to readjust our parameters as our world shrinks. When the time comes that Don might want to head off into the woods, he may not recognize it. Is he really counting on me to point him in the right direction and slap him on the rear to get him going?

He’d be better off starting a death file.
– Nancy Oates

George Cianciolo reports on the Chapel Hill 2020 kickoff:

The first meeting of Chapel Hill 2020, the process designed to develop a new Comprehensive Plan for Chapel Hill, kicked off this evening at East Chapel Hill High School. It started with an open house from 5 to 6 p.m., followed by introductory remarks by Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt and a description of the process to be used by the facilitator, Matt Leighninger, and then brief remarks by town manager Roger Stancil and the two Chapel Hill 2020 co-chairs, Rosemary Waldorf and George Cianciolo. The attendees, seated in groups at approximately 30 tables, then spent an hour getting to know one another and sharing their thoughts regarding what should go into a vision statement and what key theme areas should be considered for focusing on as the process evolves. The last 20 minutes included a brief summation by Matt Leighninger and a brief description by representatives from six of the tables of some of the ideas that had emerged from their discussions. The discussions at each of the tables were facilitated by either one of our Leadership Team members, 18 individuals who had been recruited by Rosemary or George to be facilitators throughout the entire process, town staffpersons who also had undergone the same facilitation training as the Leadership Team or facilitators from the School of Government.

I think I speak for everyone involved (the initiating team that began this process, the Outreach Committee that has worked hard to insure we get as many and as diverse a group of attendees as possible, the mayor, the town manager, the town staff and Rosemary and myself) when I say this first meeting was an outstanding success. At 7 p.m., fire chief Dan Jones counted the number of individuals seated at the tables and it was 378. Since some folks were there but standing, it would be safe to say we had 400+ attendees at this event – possibly a record for a public meeting for Chapel Hill. We also had representatives from Carrboro, the County Commission and the School Board, including the new superintendent. Was this first meeting problem free – No. Some folks quickly recognized that the number of people, the closeness of the tables and the acoustics of the East Chapel Hill High cafeteria area did not make for easy listening. Did they complain – No. In the spirit of roll-up-your-sleeves and get involved that we’re looking for in this process, they gathered their materials and went outside (thank goodness it wasn’t raining) and set up shop. We had about one-fifth of the group working outside.

It was a great start to what will be an 8-month process, but we have a long way to go. We asked everyone there to come back to our next meeting (Oct 6) with five family members, friends, colleagues or acquaintances in tow. Our challenge now, given the success of tonight, is to find a suitable venue for that meeting and to keep the excitement and enthusiasm going. But we will get it done, and we hope to see at least 2-3 times tonight’s crowd at that next meeting. During this interval we will be going through all the suggestions and ideas generated and shared tonight and drafting a vision plan and a set of key theme areas for the group to begin finalizing and prioritizing respectively. We hope to see you all there. But if you can’t come, you can still leave your comment(s) and share your thoughts on our blog at: www.2020buzz.org.
– George Cianciolo