The Community Survey that recently was presented to the Town Council had a lot of information in it about satisfaction with town services. One area where the council should study real hard is what residents want in bike safety.

As many respondents were dissatisfied with the ease of biking and walking in town (35 percent) as were satisfied (35 percent). When you add in the ones who were neutral (20 percent), that means a lot of folks are leaning toward not walking or riding a bike in this town. Anyone who’s tried riding a bike along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard can attest to the scare factor, even with the sliver of bike lane along that highway.

Half the respondents said they ride a bicycle, and three out of four of those riders are pedaling for recreation. Two-thirds of them want separate bike paths. And seven out of every 10 respondents admitted they didn’t feel safe riding a bike in Chapel Hill.

And all that dissatisfaction with bike safety translated into 69 percent of the residents surveyed being very likely or likely to vote in favor of issuing obligation bonds to improve bicycle lanes and off-road paths.

This town has some severe bike safety issues.
The town and UNC will hold a community workshop April 15 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. in the Magnolia Conference Room of the Giles F. Horney Building at 103 Airport Drive to talk about potential locations for a bike pathway between the Carolina North campus and the main UNC campus. Both groups want to avoid a pathway along the MLK roadway. And both want to avoid steep grades. They favor including existing or planned greenways for a portion of the route.

It seems clear from the survey that the town can address one sore point with residents very easily by working further to make biking in this town safer and easier and by expanding its bikeways. Two road projects that are under way – the Weaver Dairy Road and South Columbia Street projects – will include bikeways. It’s good to see that those projects will have bikeways that are off the roads.
Background materials about the Carolina North-town bike workshop are available at www.townofchapelhill.org/index.aspx?page=1356. Now might be a good time to think beyond the bikeway connecting Carolina North with main campus and see what can be done for a more extensive townwide system.
–Don Evans

We are basically happy campers, those of us who live in town, or more accurately, 696 of us who responded to a survey conducted by ETC Institute of Olathe (not Google), Kan., and sent to 2,000 households. An additional 91 of us who were not selected to receive the 8-page form in the mail completed it online, and those responses were not part of ETC’s report to Town Council at the March 22 meeting. The unsolicited were a more disgruntled — some might say discerning — group, but that’s to be expected. People are more likely to take action or give feedback when they are dissatisfied than content or neutral.

The responses from the 696 show we’re quite satisfied with the quality of life in town, and most of us feel safe here. We seem to be rule followers, judging by our dissatisfaction with the enforcement of town regulations. We like the parks and find little fault with transportation. We love the library and the trash service equally.

What we don’t like is the way the town is planning and managing growth, and we’re unhappy with the value we receive from our tax dollars.

Drilling down to the nitty-gritty, we are dissatisfied with parking (its availability, cost and the town’s philosophy) and the ease of walking and biking. Almost everyone in town is dissatisfied when it comes to the availability of affordable housing. And we don’t want to use bonds to pay for stuff.

So how much credence should the town give this survey? The racial diversity of the respondents does not reflect the mix of residents. And a scattergram of respondents showed bald patches in areas where students tend to live. That prompted council member Gene Pease to ask for a scattergram of households that didn’t respond.

Sometimes the most telling information comes from silence.

Wade through the report of the 696 at:
http://www.ci.chapel-hill.nc.us/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=5973.

View the online responses at:
http://www.ci.chapel-hill.nc.us/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=5981.

Bonus points for identifying the locations shown in all three photos on the report’s front cover.
— Nancy Oates

Talk around the water cooler at the Crosland construction company is that work on the Chapel Hill North and Chapel Watch Village projects in north Chapel Hill will be back on track in 90 to 120 days.

Those who’ve been around for more than 10 years were probably looking at those projects, which represent 243 apartments, and having flashbacks to the Big Hole on West Rosemary Street – the site where The Fountains now stands. Construction on that building was stopped before the foundation was laid or the first girder went up due to the death of a general partner and the loss of potential buyers. The ugly, red-clay hole was dug in 1991 and stayed there throughout the decade as the construction company and the banks worked things out. The project finally was completed in 1999.

But a Cary-based Crosland official said recently that the Chapel Hill projects just suffered the effects of a general credit shutdown – banks aren’t lending money for commercial real estate projects. Blame it on the economy.

Maybe that’s the case, but Crosland lawyers have been doing a lot of running in and out of court lately. In February, Crosland placed a 19-acre property it is developing in Kannapolis into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in a dispute with Carolina First Bank. In December 2009, the company did the same with a holding company for one of its properties in Charlotte; Carolina First Bank said Crosland missed an interest payment. And in November, the bank foreclosed on property owned by a Crosland subsidiary in Nashville, Tenn.

The moves were a way for the company to preserve “meaningful equity value” in the properties, according to a Crosland official, and the company is actively negotiating with the bank on other affected properties – which got me to thinking about the Crosland projects in Chapel Hill. Now, the foreclosures could be as much a function of the health of Carolina First as it is a signal of Crosland’s financial well-being. The bank’s parent company, The South Financial Group, reported a $340.8 million loss for the third quarter of 2009. South Financial also has reported $431.8 million in nonperforming loan balances.

Did the two Chapel Hill projects get sidetracked in the chaos at South Financial? Headquartered in Charlotte, Crosland manages 10 apartment communities in the Triangle, including Dobbins Hill, The Apartments at Meadowmont and Cosgrove Hill. The privately held company’s asset portfolio and current projects have a market value of approximately $1.5 billion. Doesn’t sound like a company that is on the brink, but these days, you never know.
–Don Evans

Periodically, my husband and I pledge to live healthier lives by swearing off our main vice, salty snacks. Harris Teeter may be having a buy-one-get-one-free special on potato chips, and we’ll virtuously walk past the chip aisle with only a longing, backward glance.

And that will work fine, until we throw together a meal that would be truly enhanced by potato chips, in which case we make a special trip to the convenience store and pay full price and then some for a bag.

In that sense, I think we are typical of the rest of mankind. Hence, my passionate belief that government and utilities need to plan ahead. Recognize you’re going to consume those resources, and acquire them in a cost-effective manner.

We may think that by limiting residential development, we’ll limit population. I warrant that people will just get used to living in tighter spaces. When I lived in Manhattan, I knew people who continued to live in studio apartments even after they married and had two children. I’ve lived close to campus in Chapel Hill and seen two-bedroom apartments occupied with more students than our no-more-than-four-unrelated-persons-per-unit regulation allows. People will live where they want to live, and make sacrifices accordingly.

Likewise, town manager Roger Stancil needs to give council members a list of every major expense he anticipates for the town in the coming years. He has that information; how can he “manage” the town without it? Council members need to know the risks and potential sacrifices before they vote on selling bonds to expand the library.

Seven years ago, the majority of us approved the town selling bonds to expand the library. The town manager and council have not felt the time was right to act on that in the past seven years. And despite the current low interest rates and the marginally lower construction costs, the time still may not be right. More people are unemployed, and those finding work are starting at a much lower salary. This means less revenue coming in through income tax and less money coming in through sales tax (people spend less as budgets tighten). As the gap widens between the county’s assessed value of property and the lower price it could be sold for, people feel less wealthy and will look for more affordable communities.

We may be able to afford the library bonds now with only a small tax increase. But as we try to make up the anticipated shortfall from other revenue streams, why burden ourselves with such an expensive purchase? Can we find a more cost-effective way to meet the town’s library needs?

And as OWASA continues its consumer conservation education push, it needs to find a cost-effective way to meet the town’s water needs if some people use more water than is prudent.

The recent town survey showed that residents were happy with the town, except in the area of planning for growth. Library bond supporters used that as a mandate for selling the bonds now. I would posit the opposite — good planning comes through acknowledging the situation as it is now and realistically how it is likely to change. That goes for the water we use and the money we spend.
— Nancy Oates

I sure would like to see the document Matt Czajkowski was asking for at last Monday’s Town Council meeting.

Czajkowski had requested a one- or two-page listing from town staff that would lay out what other financing or bond requirements, certificates of participation, interest-bearing and required debt service, and other fiscal obligations that the town faces. His request came during a discussion about whether to take on even more town debt by issuing the library expansion bonds.

Czajkowski was concerned that the council was about to vote on the bond issue without having a list of looming obligations. Among those obligations are the payoff for the Wallace Parking Deck, health care and retirement costs, water quality requirements for Jordan Lake, the need for a new police building as well as Parks and Rec facilities, and the $8 million pay-out for Lot 5, plus cleanup costs before construction begins.

Czajkowski’s request seemed pretty reasonable to me: I’ve always found it useful to compare my expenses with whatever big-ticket item I might contemplate buying. You can’t just spend and spend because you have a seemingly huge pot of resources, aka town taxpayers.

Laurin Easthom also was concerned about the debt saddle that the town would be wearing. I’m not sure she was happy when Town Manager Roger Stancil emphasized that if the library bonds were issued, any financial emergency the town faced in the next five years could not be paid for without a tax hike.

Let’s face facts: The town operations center, the last big-ticket project the town financed, went way over budget. Who’s to say the library project won’t? If we are touching our debt ceiling by borrowing $16 million, what will we do if costs go overboard? That, in addition to those other looming expenses, just makes it prudent to delay the library debt.

Easthom summed it up pretty well: “We’re all in a bad state economically. It’s irresponsible to vote for a $16 million expansion project.”

Stancil said May 24 is the deadline for issuing library bonds. He didn’t say anything about the town asking the N.C. Local Governments Commission to extend the time limit for another three years, which is also an option.

Bottom line: We don’t have to issue those bonds right now, and when you look at the state of the town’s economy, it would be imprudent of the council to do so.
–Don Evans