Communication can be key to an organization’s success – even Hezbollah has a PR department. I learned that from listening to globe-trotting journalist Thanassis Cambanis, who was at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill on Oct. 7 to promote his new book, “The Privilege to Die.” The book takes a close look at Hezbollah, the southern Lebanon-based Islamist political and military organization that seems to be fighting an eternal war with Israel.

The book, published by Free Press, is interesting because it takes a subject – an organization that is on the United States’ list of terrorist organizations – and looks beneath the veneer of government labels into what makes the group tick and what binds its adherents so faithfully to the movement.

Turns out it is very simple – Hezbollah offers a better life through communication, political organization, education, social interaction, advocacy, and even tree planting. These “terrorists” have improved the lot of millions of residents of Lebanon, a country whose name at one time was synonymous with destruction and chaos. Hezbollah is a very savvy organization that has its eyes on the future rather than the past and is rebuilding southern Lebanon. And it is a lesson in how successful a religious movement can be if it focuses on the well-being of its adherents.

It’s important to learn about organizations such as Hezbollah. That way we can better understand them and find ways to deal with them that benefit everyone.

The book is a fascinating study by a man who has worked for The New York Times and Boston Globe and grew up in Chapel Hill. Residents may remember Cambanis from his days as editor of The Proconian, the student newspaper of Chapel Hill High School, and for his journalistic efforts while he was a student at UNC. His first big story covered the struggle for a free-standing black cultural center on campus. His reports for The Daily Tar Heel included one on the arrest of a group of students who had taken over the chancellor’s office.

As editor-in-chief of The Daily Tar Heel in 1996, he led a challenge to the university over the state’s open meetings law. Among the targets were secret honor court trials of nonacademic cases, including one that involved the supporters of a student body president candidate who stole and threw away the entire press run of a conservative magazine that criticized their candidate. The N.C. Press Association even joined in a lawsuit challenging the university system’s application of the open meetings law. UNC eventually was forced to open hundreds of committee meetings to the public. Thanks to those efforts, students and state residents can be better informed about decisions that affect their communities.

Cambanis has worked tirelessly for the public’s right to know, whether it’s campus stone-walling or what makes an influential religious movement a powerful force in Middle East politics and policy. Hezbollah cannot be ignored or dismissed as a bunch of crackpots. Thanks to Cambanis’ book, we have a better chance to understand the group and how it works.

–Don Evans

After Time Warner Cable conked out during the broadcast of the Town Council meeting last night, some viewers might have been lost to the baseball post-season game on another channel. Pity that town planner J.B. Culpeper didn’t tune in as well. She might have learned something about being a team player.

During the public hearing on a special use permit application modification for The Courtyard, the presenter representing the group of investors who bought the property after it went into receivership noted that the town had rejected the owners’ offer to widen the sidewalk for 190 feet along the Roberson Street side. Instead, town staff recommended that the developers install new sidewalk and replace the curb and gutters along all 430 feet on that side.

Council member Matt Czajkowski asked town staff why they recommended the extra work. Culpeper popped up and replied that she would get back to council with some figures. Czajkowski was nonplussed. It’s your recommendation, he said in essence, and I’m only asking you to justify it.

Culpeper tried to turn the question over to town attorney Ralph Karpinos, but he wouldn’t bite. So Culpeper was left to flounder on her own. “Rational nexus,” she said.

“What’s rational nexus?” Czajkowski asked.

“It’s a legal term,” Culpeper replied.

Someone needs to tell Culpeper that the town staff and council are on the same team. The idea is for the two bodies to work cooperatively – the town staff gathering information and sharing it with the council who, ideally, will use the information to make decisions that are in the best interest of all of the town residents. Yet time and time again, Culpeper seems to deliberately obstruct information flow.

Through patient questioning, Czajkowski drew out that rational nexus is basically the town asking developers for freebees in proportion to the size of the development. The bigger the project, the more the town expects in return if it approves the plan. In shadier circumstances, that could be viewed as a kickback in exchange for approval. But we’ll give Culpeper the benefit of the doubt.

Culpeper’s smart-alecky attitude may make for good TV, enough to draw viewers away from the baseball game. But ultimately, it makes for bad relations between council and staff. And that’s in no one’s best interest.
– Nancy Oates

We live in a town that spent more on fixing up a skate park than on repairing our history museum to keep it open. Remember that, the next time a council member cites the image of Chapel Hill as a reason for voting one way or another on a matter.

I’m harping on the museum issue because the way it unfolded is a microcosm of how decisions about our town are made. We can debate all we want to about the location and density of growth, the benefits and risks of increased debt, and whether green building actually saves energy. But if the majority of town council members base their vote on anything other than fact-based, well-reasoned decision-making, and the town staff continues to railroad projects through without public input, we won’t have a town that reflects the values of its residents.

During a long debate over how much to fund the museum at the council’s June 2 budget meeting, Penny Rich took offense to museum director Traci Davenport’s “attitude” toward Sally Greene’s suggestion at a May meeting that the museum partner with another ailing nonprofit as a way to strengthen the museum’s books. Greene defended Davenport’s response, but when it came time to vote, Rich was the sole naysayer of giving the museum $20,250 for the year, an amount far less than a recent consent agenda item that approved giving $25,000 to a consultant for two months of advice on the Glen Lennox Neighborhood Conservation District plan. Earlier in the debate, Greene responded to Mark Kleinschmidt’s suggestion of $35,000 for the museum with, “Wow. My head is spinning.” Would that it had spun at the $14.6 million she voted to borrow to add a coffee shop and gift shop to the library.

At last Monday’s meeting, town manager Roger Stancil presented what appeared to be a done deal of new tenants for the building and requested $95,000 for repairs. Matt Czajkowski, Jim Ward and Gene Pease asked for more discussion on what to do with the building once the museum moves out. Kleinschmidt shot down the suggestion, saying that no one could make plans during the upcoming holiday season, a comment that had some council members exchanging puzzled looks.

Czajkowski also questioned why, after the council couldn’t come up with the extra $14,000 the museum needed to stay open, it was now being asked to approve $95,000. He suggested covering the building’s expenses for three months ($15,000), long enough to bring the public into the discussion of the best use of the building. Kleinschmidt snapped back that funding only to “keep the lights on” was “irresponsible.”

Czajkowski, who takes his role of steward of public funds seriously, later said, “What is truly irresponsible is that we let the museum close for lack of an additional $15,000 commitment – and now we have to pay out an extra $70,000 or so while we figure out the highest and best use of the facility.”

Stancil’s plan may ultimately be the best use of a run-down building that would cost $500,000 to $1 million to be brought up to code if a new tenant isn’t put in place immediately and can’t be torn down because it has a preservation covenant on it. But that information should have come from the town manager or council, not uncovered by bloggers. And the new tenants’ leases should be drawn on a month-to-month basis while the public gives its input on how to use this town treasure.
– Nancy Oates

Perhaps it’s my Midwest, Protestant upbringing that prevents me from enjoying a party unless everyone is invited.

Every year, I go on the Parade of Homes, touring only the priciest entries. I love seeing what people with more money than they know what to do with do with it. The economy has had its effect this year, for sure. The highest-priced homes are less ostentatious than in years past but still are beautiful places to call home. And that is no less true at Greenbridge, which not only has its $1,011,000 condo open for Parade but all the lower-priced units on that floor open as well. By lower-priced, I mean high $600,000s to about $800,000. And that doesn’t include the monthly maintenance fee.

The high prices surprised me. When I got home, I got on the Internet and saw that condos in Manhattan were a much better deal. And Manhattan has more public green space than Chapel Hill.

Looking out toward the horizon, you’d wonder why Chapel Hill needs a tree ordinance. From the vantage point of eight stories up, Chapel Hill and Carrboro appear to have a tree canopy of about 95 percent. It was only when I looked down that I got a little uneasy.

Views of the street show the rooftops of modest businesses and the houses and yards of a neighborhood that is a mix of working class, once-were-and-would-like-to-be-again-working class and given-up-hope-of-ever-again-working class.

The Greenbridge brochure I picked up when I entered the building read “Comfort. Conscience.” The adjectives were synonyms if you looked up and over at the grass-topped roofs of the adjacent wing of Greenbridge, but antonyms if you looked down.

No doubt about it, you’d have to be well off financially to buy a unit in Greenbridge. And maybe siting a luxury apartment building across the street from residents who could never aspire to live there unless they won the lottery is part of the “Conscience” half of Greenbridge’s marketing campaign. Maybe every time they enter their condos, Greenbridge residents remember how fortunate they are, and that inspires them to volunteer at the shelter or write a sizeable check to a human services nonprofit.

This is the last weekend of Parade. Tour Greenbridge. And make sure you look down.
– Nancy Oates

You’d think that Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt, a lawyer, would know better than to try to bluff in a situation where he could so easily be proved wrong. Yet Monday night’s Town Council meeting had shades of prosecutor Christopher Darden asking O.J. Simpson to try on a pair of shriveled leather gloves, which led to defense attorney Johnnie Cochran chanting, “If the gloves don’t fit, you must acquit.”

During the discussion Monday night of what to do with the building at 523 E. Franklin St., former home to the Chapel Hill Museum, Kleinschmidt insisted that the council had agreed to fully fund the museum, in fact give the museum more than three times the money its director asked for to make repairs. “We can go to the tape,” Kleinschmidt said.

So yesterday we did. In the video of the June 2, 2010, budget work session, council members clearly stated that the museum would not be fully funded for the year. The council voted to fund the museum for 3 months of operating expenses, followed by 9 months of one-third of the operating expenses and no money for capital improvements. Penny Rich voted against that plan, not wanting to give the museum any money because she hadn’t seen the museum’s business plan.

Don Boulton, chair of the museum’s board and a founding member since the museum began 14 years ago, said the town has had the museum’s business plan and its financials all along. The reports have been prepared by Stephen Rich (no relation to Penny), a former financial executive of a global corporation. If the town thought anything was lacking in the financials, it never let the museum know.

Of all of the buildings the town owns, the museum building is the only one it does not maintain. Every repair the town made, it billed back to the museum, said Harry McLean, president of the Chapel Hill Historical Society, which sublets space in the basement of the building from the museum.

McLean understands why the town is so anxious to fill the building with a tenant immediately. If the museum lies empty, the town would need to bring the building up to code before it could bring in new tenants. Beautifully designed but poorly built 45 years ago, the building is not up to code, and making it so, plus fixing its myriad problems (such as failing ductwork that lies under a poured concrete slab) would likely cost close to $1 million, said McLean, owner of Chapel Hill Design, a building design and construction company.

Hearing town manager Roger Stancil say he’d like the building to be filled with tenants that generate revenue for the town has McLean a bit anxious. The Historical Society recently completed nearly $50,000 of improvements to its space with the understanding that it would be allowed to stay regardless of what happens to the museum. But it has no lease.

“If the town makes our performance standards too onerous,” McLean said, “we’ll be out, too.”
– Nancy Oates

Dan Ariely, in his book Predictably Irrational, tells of a study he conducted in which he asked people to choose between two prices for a service. The vast majority chose the lower price. Then he presented the same scenario, keeping the first two prices the same but adding a third, higher, price. The vast majority chose the middle price, which was the higher price they had rejected when only two options were presented.

Evidently, town manager Roger Stancil has read that book. After turning down the Chapel Hill Museum’s request for $49,000 in June, agreeing only to $20,250, Stancil was back at the podium last night lobbying for Town Council to approve $95,000 in much-needed upkeep because the building at 523 E. Franklin St. is in such poor condition. (The museum had asked for $15,000 for basic repairs.)

And though the body was not yet cold (the museum still occupies the building until Oct. 15), Parks & Recreation director Butch Kisiah presented a plan for the building to be used as a performance satellite for the UNC art department. And Harry McLean, president of the Chapel Hill Historical Society, made a plea to continue to use the lower-level rooms for the society’s programs and collections, which now include the bound volumes of The Chapel Hill News, dating back to 1923. After another downsizing recently, the CHN deemed the bound volumes a nuisance that it had no room for, so off-loaded them to the Historical Society.

Council member Matt Czajkowski, who had asked Stancil to prepare financials for the proposal, asked that they be projected on the screen. Stancil said they couldn’t, but the technical staff found a way. Why did the town say it could afford only $20,250 for the building in June, but now blithely propose spending $95,000, he asked. And why was there no public discussion of how to use the building? Why not pay the building expenses for three months and open public discourse on how the building should be used?

Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt said the council had agreed last June to fund $50,000 for maintenance, even though the museum had asked only for $15,000, but that the museum announced it would close anyway. “We can go to the tape,” he said, to prove he was right.

We didn’t need to. Nearly every council member spoke up to say Kleinschmidt was wrong. And as more council members sided with Czajkowski, Stancil interjected that the building would really need $300,000 to $500,000 to be fixed properly. Kisiah opined that he estimated it would take about $1 million to make the repairs. Then Stancil came up with a new offer. How about $75,000 plus $11,000 the council agreed to spend on expenses last June?

To six of the eight council members, $86,000 certainly sounded better than $1 million. Czajkowski and Laurin Easthom held out for three months’ funding so the public could offer input. Donna Bell was absent.
– Nancy Oates

Don’t you hate it when your own words are thrown back at you in an argument?

Council member Jim Ward must have been thinking that during the Town Council meeting of Sept. 27 when Citizens for Responsible Growth lined up a passel of experts to speak out against rezoning part of the Jordan Lake watershed to allow the Obey Creek mixed-use development to be built.

In 2004, builder Scott Kovens proposed constructing about 600 houses on the 120-acre tract along the east side of U.S. 15-501, across from Southern Village. At that time, a Mayor’s Committee on Obey Creek development, headed by Ward, rejected the development as too dense. The committee wrote: “The Committee’s conclusion regarding existing land use policies in the Southern Area is that the existing policies were put in place thoughtfully and with benefit of a highly participatory process, … An argument can be made that all policies can benefit from periodic review; however, there is not evidence that current conditions warrant such a policy review for the Southern Area at this time.”

Kovens, a resourceful businessman with a wicked sense of humor, brought developer Roger Perry into the redevelopment plan. Perry, a principal of East West Partners, has earned a reputation as someone who can win town approval of controversial developments (think Meadowmont and East 54) and make them a commercial success. In May, Perry presented the concept plan for Obey Creek that showed 1,200 residences and 870,000 square feet of office/commercial space, including a 120,000-square-foot hotel, on 38 acres. The remaining 82 acres, much of it too steep to build on, would be designated a town park.

Perhaps because the Obey Creek proposal was presented under Perry’s brand, council members kept an open mind. They did ask Perry to scale back the height of the 10-story buildings that would front the project along the highway and reduce the density.

Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt dismissed the Citizen’s for Responsible Growth presentation as being too soon in the process. An application for a special use permit had not been received, and the time for residents to present feedback would be at that rezoning hearing. But might he then say that plans have proceeded so far along that it would be unfair to ask the developer to start over again? That’s the impression I got from his response to the public comments on siting the homeless shelter on Homestead Road.

I half expect Kovens to present a revised version of Obey Creek, this time the same 600-home development he proposed six years ago. Compared to the mixed-use behemoth presented in May, this 2004 redux plan would seem downright eco-friendly.
– Nancy Oates

Take a tour of Church Street any time, and you’ll see a bigger concentration of students than in most classrooms on campus.

That’s usually not a problem. There are times, though, when that concentrated studentness flares into the sort of behavior that a friend complained to me about a few weeks ago. He lives in a stylish cottage in one of the town’s historic districts. A nearby house had turned into a student rental, with way more people living in it than allowed – the town’s house rule is four non-related persons per single-family dwelling. My friend complained about the extra vehicles, extra yard debris and extra noise.

He tried visiting with the student residents and got some measure of relief – at least the trash was picked up. But it got me to thinking about what a shy neighbor can do if faced with such a situation.

The process is complaint-driven – the neighbor must complain to the town’s zoning enforcement officer, who will pay the residents a visit and post a notice. The officer will return later to see whether steps have been taken to remedy the situation.

The office received 154 complaints last year. That’s for a staff of one person to resolve. And that seems like an awful lot of households that may be in non-compliance with town laws.

So the question becomes: Just how effective is reporting a nuisance to the town? I would venture to speculate that a town official tacking a little yellow notice on someone’s front door is no more effective than the offended neighbor dropping by with a snack to discuss issues.
–Don Evans