An airplane crashed not half a mile from my house, and I heard nothing until the sirens began.

We live underneath the flight path of many planes taking off and landing at Horace Williams Airport. We always know when the Tar Heels are playing football at home because of the increased air traffic, and more jets than usual. Men’s basketball games cause an uptick in flights, too, as do UNC system board meetings.

But most other times, we get a mix of planes. Some of it may be people taking flying lessons. I think one of the tests you have to pass on your way to getting a pilot’s license is to know what to do when the plane stalls. We have several times heard a plane buzzing lazily overhead, then sputter, then dead silence. If that doesn’t get all heads to snap upwards, nothing will.

All due respect to my friend Diane Bloom, a longtime, diligent proponent of closing Horace Williams Airport, I’ve never really felt unsafe living where I do. Bad things can happen anywhere. My kids will be the first to accuse me of being a hypocrite. They can recite chapter and verse my lecture on not tempting fate. A few crashes have occurred at Horace Williams during the years we’ve lived here, always somewhere inside the Horace Williams tract. Yes, they could have happened a half-mile earlier, and there I’d be with a flaming jet in my living room. But of all the things I worry about, I can’t generate any anxiety over waiting for that to happen.

I worried more during the years I worked for the N&O and drove home from Raleigh after midnight on Friday and Saturday nights, when the only other drivers on the road had likely been drinking for the past several hours. I worry as I walk across supermarket parking lots and see frail, elderly shoppers who use their carts as ersatz walkers, then get behind the wheel of a car.

Once the economy gets going, construction will begin on Carolina North, and that will force the closing of Horace Williams. All those flights will be diverted to RDU, and the people who stay in the hotels or work in the restaurants and stores edging the airport or live in the subdivisions oozing ever closer to RDU will have that much more to worry about. But those of us who live near Horace Williams will know that the next time a plane crashes, it won’t be in our backyard. That’s supposed to make us feel better?
– Nancy Oates

What does Betty Kenan know that the rest of the moneyed world doesn’t?

Georgia Kyser’s house at 504 E. Franklin St. sat on the market for, what, four or five years, at least. I don’t recall its initial asking price, though I remember thinking when I heard it, “Good luck with that.” As the house lingered on the market, its price slowly dropped. Last I heard, it was listed at about $1.5 million. Its 2009 tax value is nearly $1.6 million.

In April, Betty Kenan bought it for $900,000. A bargain.

The house is a historic gem, albeit one that has had little updating since maybe the 1970s. Built in 1914, it has five bedrooms and an equal number of fireplaces and all the architectural details you’d expect from a lovingly maintained house that is almost 100 years old. Situated on the corner of East Franklin Street and Battle Lane, it occupies prime historic district real estate.

During the recession, real estate prices have dropped most sharply in the high-end properties. As is so frustratingly true, it takes money to make money. If you, too, are of the moneyed set, you should stop reading this and call your Realtor. Time to shift more of your portfolio into real estate.

If Betty Kenan does nothing with the Kyser house other than pay its taxes and mow its lawn, it will, in years to come, be worth at least its tax value, if not surpass it. And some of us will share in her good fortune, and not only through the large sum she pays to the county in taxes. Kenan, owner of Fine Feathers clothing shop in University Square, is the widow of Frank Kenan, who owned Kenan Transport and The Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Fla., and presumably inherited a good portion of his wealth. She is also a noted philanthropist. The more money she makes, the more she gives away.

The legal entity that purchased the house is Playhouse Trio LLC, the same group that owns 708 and 710 E. Franklin St. two blocks away. We don’t know what Betty Kenan plans to do with the house at 504. I was under the impression that she lives in a smaller house across the street and a few doors down. Usually when people move well beyond retirement age, they downsize, not upsize.

I’m hoping she’ll rent the front parlor to The Chapel Hill Museum.
– Nancy Oates

Nothing but bad news came out of the Chapel Hill Museum’s board meeting last night. Monday will be the last day the public can see the exhibits, though the gift shop likely will remain open for another week, said Stephen Rich, the museum’s treasurer. All that inventory must be sold, as well as the museum’s furnishings. The museum has run out of money.

“We got lots of verbal support in the past month and a half, but very little financial support,” Rich said. “It’s tight right now, and nonprofits are the first to get hit and the last to come out of recessions.”

Reducing the museum’s hours won’t buy any time, Rich said, because the museum must still pay all upkeep and operating costs, “even if it’s only open one hour a week.” Reduced hours wouldn’t make much difference in reduced personnel costs. Museum director Traci Davenport and one part-time staffer are the only two names on the payroll. Everyone else is a volunteer.

The museum must continue to pay rent and utilities until the lease ends in June 2011 or until the museum vacates the premises, whichever comes first. Before the town crafted its 2010-11 budget, the museum had asked for an additional $34,000 in operating aid. The town granted only $20,000.

“It’s very unfortunate that we’re closing, and there’s a lot of people sad about it, but we can’t go into debt,” said Rich, a CPA.

At one time, the concept of a virtual museum was bandied about, but information presented at last night’s board meeting dimmed that possibility, Rich said. The meeting on July 21 with the town will only be to air the museum board’s last questions.

The board is in the process of contacting owners of the artifacts donated to the museum to learn whether they would re-donate should the museum find more affordable space. The original museum grew out of a groundswell, albeit in better economic times, and perhaps that will happen again, Rich said.

But at least for the next few days, Rich said, “spread the word that the shop has some good bargains.”

And Traci Davenport is polishing her resume.
– Nancy Oates

While we sat in Kenan Stadium on July 4, waiting for the fireworks display to begin, I was struck by the diversity of the crowd. Not just in race and ethnicity, but in age range and social group – families of mom-dad-kids, grandma-mom-kids, dad-kids, and other mixes; teenagers with their friends; senior citizens in male-female pairs and same-sex or mixed-gender clusters. The crowd could have been lifted directly from a free New York Philharmonic concert in Central Park. It did my heart good.

And I am similarly pleased that the Town Council is not always voting in ways we’ve come to expect. It used to be that when I looked at the agenda, I could fairly accurately pick who would vote which way. But in the June 21 meeting in particular, council members spoke up for and against items in ways that surprised me.

Matt Czajkowski assertively holding town manager Roger Stancil accountable for providing information to council members about selecting a site for the homeless shelter. I gather staff is sometimes lackadaisical about filling council requests for information.

Laurin Easthom likewise insisting that information she requested from staff be delivered, and her new willingness to be the lone holdout on votes as she stands up for her constituents.

Gene Pease turning into a wild card in terms of whom he will throw in his lot with.

Mark Kleinschmidt siding with Czajkowski on some issues.

Jim Ward going over the consent agenda with a fine-tooth comb and voicing concern over the money spent on hybrid buses that have a lifespan of about 12 years. Perhaps he’ll join us in a decade at a booth at the library coffee shop he voted for to ponder how to pay for a new fleet of buses that now cost about $500,000 each.

Even town attorney Ralph Karpinos offered legal counsel on several points.

I know the council meetings run longer than many members and citizens alike prefer. But to hear issues being debated on their merits with very few personal jabs or snide tones of voices is a huge step in the right direction. For that alone, the last council meeting of the year ended on a high note.
– Nancy Oates

As I listened to the debate, during the Town Council’s last business meeting on June 21, over guidelines vs. standards pertaining to the Planning Commission’s request for clarification on how to proceed with the section on shelters in the Land Use Management Ordinance, something Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt tossed off caught my attention.

At the start of the discussion, several citizens objected to the lack of public participation in selecting a site for a new homeless shelter. The Homestead Road site had been presented as a done deal, they said. Council member Matt Czajkowski asked town staff once again for a list of the sites it had considered before selecting the controversial Homestead Road location, the criteria used in determining which was the best site, and the pros and cons for each site considered. Town manager Roger Stancil said that the process had not been that scientific.

Kleinschmidt ticked off three reasons why other sites had been rejected years earlier: the sites were owned by the county, and the county said no; they were not convenient to public transportation; or neighbors objected to the location long before the project got to the special use permit phase.

We can check off “motive” for why the Homestead Road location was not discussed publicly before the selection was announced. IFC administrators, having weathered neighborhood objections to other sites, finally found one that seemed just right. So this time, they were savvy: They secured the support of former Mayor Kevin Foy and former Chancellor James Moeser, and made sure a smiling Foy and Moeser flanked them as they announced the selection.

You can hardly blame them. Homeless shelters are easier to support the farther they are from where you live. But I believe, perhaps naively, in transparency: If Homestead Road truly is the best place for the shelter, public input would make the decision to build it there easier to accept by the neighborhoods it would impact most.

People want to be heard. And if you shut them out, they are likely to dig in their heels all the more. Expect even deeper entrenchment as the SUP process moves along.
– Nancy Oates

Got something to say? We need to hear from you. We’d like to open Chapel Hill Watch up to guest bloggers. Between Chaucer and Uncle Sam, Don’s time is spoken for for the rest of the summer. Although Nancy is always ready to spout off about something, she would like to lace her posts with more facts than is her wont, and that would be a daunting task for her to accomplish five times a week.

We’d still like to have a fresh post every weekday, and until the Town Council meetings resume in September, we’ll need additional brains opening up topics, explaining old ones and offering up inside information.

If you’ve got a blog post in you, please e-mail it to us at neoates@earthlink.net. We’ll post it and attribute it to you as you’d like to be known. And if you have a headshot of yourself, we’ll post that, too.

In the interim, we’ll at least pose questions and rely on the collective knowledge of the Chapel Hill Watch community to posit some answers.
– Don Evans and Nancy Oates

I wish we had some cover-up to explain our nearly two-week silence. But it was much more plebeian than that – we needed money. Rental property I needed to refurbish before new tenants moved in; a course Don needed to take to further his career; our regular freelance assignments that allow us to pay our ever-increasing tax bills; and our aging bodies that need at least 4 hours of sleep at night to function the next day, all elbowed aside time we would spend on the blog.

I still don’t feel up-to-speed on all that is going on in town government, but an assignment I’ve been working on recently has left a pit in my stomach when I think about Chapel Hill’s cavalier spending. I’ve been talking with investment company founders, bank presidents and finance professors about the financial crisis. Some of them warn of cities and states on the brink of a municipal crisis due to underfunded pension obligations. Chapel Hill is not immune.

Last fall, as I recall, Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt patted town staff on the back for setting aside $400,000 a year toward the town’s $32 million pension obligation, saying that was more than many towns put aside. But is that sufficient?

Federal law requires that credit card companies print on the bill how long it would take to pay off the balance making only the minimum payment, and how much sooner the balance would be paid with a larger payment. But that is predicated on adding no further charges to the account. Does our $400,000 “payment” take into account the additional “charges” of people retiring from town government at higher salaries who are living longer?

Many companies have replaced pensions with 401Ks for employees because retirees are drawing pensions for several years longer than the pension fund planned for. I don’t know whether the town has switched to a 401K plan for its new hires, and I won’t be able to find out until town offices reopen Tuesday. But even if we are no longer adding people to the town’s pension plan, funding $32 million at $400,000 a year will take 80 years.

Any shortfall has to be made up by raising taxes or cutting services.

But at least we’ll be able to debate that over coffee at the new library coffee shop.

– Nancy Oates

We ask your forbearance. Don is immersed in a course on Chaucer, and he communicates only in Middle English these days. I’m refurbishing a house by day and shifting my full-time work to hours I would normally sleep. We will try to delve into all that happened at Monday’s Town Council meeting by early next week.

Don’t let the town e-mail, “Council Meeting Summary” fool you. The e-mail made it seem a festive occasion of honorifics and semantics. Not so. Much was said and done that did not make the “highlights” e-mail.

Last night’s council meeting was full and long, a good part of it devoted to the issue of shelter guidelines. Though the meeting ended before midnight (barely), today is a day of deadlines for us. Give us a day to unpack what went on. We’ll have a report tomorrow.
— Don Evans and Nancy Oates