How old is too old?

Age discrimination reared its ugly head at last week’s Town Council meeting. And this time, because we were talking about edifices, the youngster took the hit.

Staff made two proposals — the first to donate town-owned land to be used to relocate nearly century-old tiny houses to be used for affordable housing; and the second, in deciding what to do with the police station property, to consider only options that would tear down the existing building because, now 30-some years old, it is “too old” to be renovated.

The four cottages were built in the 1920s from kits ordered out of a Sears catalog. Ranging in size from 366 sft to 756 sft, they were erected after WWI as faculty housing. Author John Grisham bought them in 2016, because they were adjacent to a large historic house he bought at the same time. He wanted to tear them down to gain more privacy and parking.

Grisham petitioned the Historic District Commission for permission to demolish the homes. Because state law allows a property owner to demolish a house after 365 days if the petition is denied, Chapel Hill’s HDC granted the ask, but with a 365-day waiting period in which to negotiate a way to save the homes. But when the HDC extended an invitation to talk, Grisham ignored it.

Once the yearlong waiting period had passed, town staff asked council to donate some town-owned lots in Northside to Self-Help to be used for the four cottages, which Grisham would donate to the nonprofit, reaping a tax write-off of about $900,000 that would put about $300,000 in his pocket.

Town staff did not indicate whether they explored what condition the cottages were in; what would happen to the land if they did not survive the move; and who would pay to bring them up to code. (They lose their historic status once they are moved from their original location.)

But the concrete commercial building constructed in the 1980s? “Too old,” staff scoffed. It must be demolished.

I don’t know how much taxpayers spent to build the police station, but I would be surprised if the town expected to tear it down 30 years later.

We are preparing to spend $34 million on a new police station on land that UNC agreed to rent to us for 30 years. I was concerned that we were spending so much without a guarantee that the lease would be renewed. Is town staff expecting that the new station won’t last more than 30 years?

To be better stewards of taxpayer funds, we need to make sure that the new building lasts more than 30 years. Even if the town has grown so much by then that it has outgrown the new police station, as it has the current one, we need to be able to repurpose the building. We build our houses to outlast our mortgages, to be updated and resold. We need to view our town assets with the same perspective of investing in what will last.
— Nancy Oates

by on October 15, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Housing, Land Use, Northside, Parking, Spending, Town staff, UNC
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Posted by Nancy Oates on October 15, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/10/15/how-old-is-too-old/

Where’s that hatchet?

During the inter-city visit to Lawrence, Kan., last month, some of us went to a hatchet bar. (No taxpayer dollars were spent there.) It’s like darts, only with a hatchet thrown into a thick, wooden wall, instead of a pin in a corkboard. It’s harder than it looks, and very few in our group were able to do it. I couldn’t, either, on my first two tries. Then the manager came over and showed me how to hold the hatchet and how far away from the wall to stand. I followed her instructions, and on my next throw, I got the hatchet to stick. Everyone cheered.

The next morning, one of the men in our group said, “I have never seen so much anger on a woman’s face as when you threw the hatchet.” Odd, because I wasn’t feeling angry. I was just being an Oates: Focus; get the job done. I wondered whether he would have interpreted my concentration as anger if I were a man, and if so, would it be unusual enough for him that he would comment to me about it.

Last week Brett Kavanaugh showed us what anger on the face of a man looks like. After his mortifying meltdown in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the subsequent vote by the Senate to appoint him to the Supreme Court, I sensed that something basic to society had been irreparably broken. Four Republican women, 45 Republican men and one male Democrat are so inured to tyrannical behavior that Kavanaugh’s bullying tantrum seemed acceptable to them.

Some people have found that those outbursts are worth the embarrassment to themselves. The response from typically socialized people when confronted with such hysterics is to back off. Let this person have his way; the issue isn’t important enough to engage with that irrationality. Does Kavanaugh think that’s how the justices of the Supreme Court will respond?

Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan I’m sure have dealt with people like this over the course of their careers. They will know how to handle him. But, idealist that I am, I thought the Supreme Court would be a safe haven from, well, jerks.

With Kavanaugh’s appointment, a third of the men on the Supreme Court have been accused of sexual assault or harassment; that’s an overrepresentation than in the population at large. And this is the deliberative body that holds our freedoms in their power.

Women my age feel the pain acutely; we have fought so many battles for our daughters over the decades. Our victories have been hard won, and now we see that they are only temporary. We are old; we are tired; and clearly our race is not yet over.

And to my colleague in Kansas — look at my face now. This is what anger on the face of a woman looks like. You’ll recognize it in a lot of the faces around you.
— Nancy Oates

by on October 8, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Ethics, Lifestyle
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Posted by Nancy Oates on October 8, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/10/08/wheres-that-hatchet/

What happens in Lawrence …

At the very last session on our intercity visit to Lawrence, Kan., participants stood up, Quaker meeting style, to say thank you to someone or to commit to something. It had been a jam-packed, eye-opening, exhausting three days, and we were trying to synthesize all we had learned before climbing back aboard the bus and heading to the airport.

We had just finished recording our Five Big Things (which got compressed down to three, given our fatigue and tight time schedule) on sheets of newsprint and draped them over a chair. I wanted to make sure those brainstormings made it off the page, so I publicly committed to seeing that the good ideas the trip had inspired for what might be possible in Chapel Hill be unpacked and tried on once we got home.

Another council member edited my declaration into a sound bite: “Make sure what happens in Lawrence doesn’t stay in Lawrence.”

A few enterprises made it worth taxpayers sending every member of council on the trip. First, was the Bioscience and Technology Business Center. Built on 80 acres of endowment land on the University of Kansas campus, the bio-tech business hub comprises a mix of established corporations and start-ups. Funding is 60% private and 40% public monies. All decisions about the hub are made jointly by the university, the private-sector partners and the town; each entity gets only one vote, which motivates the three parties to cooperate and collaborate.

The university’s tech transfer office makes its home there, and the next phase of construction will include a 20,000-square-foot daycare center. A hotel and conference center have already broken ground nearby, and plans are underway for residences just outside the campus perimeter.

Next up was a tour of Peaslee Tech and Lawrence College and Career Center. Because the technical school and career center don’t accept Pell Grants nor make federally funded loans, the two institutions have much greater decision-making flexibility, unimpeded by federal regulations.

The tech school and career center don’t train any student for a job that pays less than a living wage. None pays less than $15 an hour. Because the school and center leverage apprenticeships, students make a living wage while learning. The curriculum teaches green deconstruction of buildings; repair and maintenance of machines that make parts; plumbing, electrical and HVAC; and carpentry. The buildings were financed by 11 banks that pooled resources to make the loan.

On our final day, we toured Sports Pavilion Lawrence, a 180,000-square-foot indoor sports center, free to all town and county residents and KU students. In addition to basketball, volleyball and pickleball courts, the center has areas for gymnastics, indoor soccer field, cardio and weight rooms and a wellness center that includes physical therapy. The center draws more than 20 tournaments a year, which brings in money toward operating costs and boosts revenue from hotel occupancy taxes.

Seeing success in other towns gave me hope that there is more to development than luxury apartments.
— Nancy Oates

by on October 1, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Council Members, Economic development, Land Use, Lifestyle, Spending, Taxes, Technology
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Posted by Nancy Oates on October 1, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/10/01/what-happens-in-lawrence/

The cost of crime

In the U.S. 1 in 4 of us has a criminal record; 4 in 4 of us have a criminal history.

Ever driven over the speed limit? Had a drink while underage? Inhaled? Three out of 4 of us are the lucky ones, to have had the luxury of not getting caught.

Last Thursday, the town’s Justice In Action Committee co-sponsored “The Crushing Impact of Criminal Justice Debt in Orange County,” a forum at Town Hall on the costs of getting caught. Fines are meant to be punitive, a hurt to remind you not to do that again. Court costs and fees are not designed as deterrents, but they begin accruing as soon as the police officer hands you a speeding ticket. While the fine is $30, court costs add another $188 to what you must pay before the ticket is resolved.

The forum’s guest speakers — retired Orange County public defender James E. Williams Jr.; Gene Nichol, UNC law school professor (and director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity, before UNC’s Board of Governors shut it down); and UNC Law research associate Heather Hunt — delineated some of the hardships endured by low-wealth defendants from court costs and fees.

The main speakers were followed by a panel consisting of retired UNC Law professor Rich Rosen; UNC School of Government’s public policy department chair Jamie Markham; Durham District Court Judge Amanda Maris; Quisha Mallette, a lawyer with UNC Law’s Immigration Clinic; and Orange County Commissioner Mark Dorosin, who had been a lawyer with the Center for Civil Rights before the Board of Governors neutered that, too.

What are some of these costs and fees? After you are arrested and fork over the nonrefundable 10-15% of bail that a bail bondsman takes if you don’t have cash in hand to pay the court, you must pay $60 to ask for a court-appointed lawyer. Probation costs $40 a month, and community service is a flat $250. A split sentence costs $40 a day for any time spent in jail. Every court appearance may mean asking for time off from work or finding childcare.

There are another couple dozen or so fees that the court could waive, if you know to ask. But over the past few years, the N.C. General Assembly has made it increasingly onerous for judges to waive fees.

Stop by the courthouse on any given day, and it may seem like the vast majority of defendants are poor. But bear in mind that those of us with financial means often can hire lawyers to appear in our stead.

Judges need to be able to level the playing field for those who are not so lucky. Why impose crushing fees on people who have no hope of paying them? Fines and court-ordered punishment are sufficient deterrents. If society covered court costs and fees collectively through our taxes, we would have incentive to invest in education and enrichment opportunities for youth so that crime doesn’t seem the most attainable option.
— Nancy Oates

by on September 24, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Courts, Ethics, Taxes
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Posted by Nancy Oates on September 24, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/09/24/the-cost-of-crime/

The Florence side of trees

After our week of worry, it feels like we dodged a bullet when Hurricane Florence shifted south. In Chapel Hill, the power outages were short-lived, the flooding no worse than expected, and no one has died. Those of us who lived here through Hurricane Fran feel a guilty relief — and empathy after seeing the devastation in the towns in Florence’s new path that weren’t as prepared as we were.

A special thank you to town employees who staffed a call center around the clock for a few days to provide human-to-human information for people who needed non-emergency assistance during the uncertainty of the storm. This supplemented the terrific job emergency responders do on a routine basis.

I felt particularly safe, cocooning in my brand-new neighborhood that has large trees only on three sides of the development. Having had the privilege of living in Chapel Hill for more than 20 years in houses shaded by very large, leafy trees, I know the pros and cons. After soldiering through Fran and numerous ice storms and large snowfalls, I deliberately chose a house smack in the middle of the new development, as far away from any mature trees as possible. I’m a tree NIMBY — I love trees, but not in my backyard.

I recall a friend coming over to see my new house and commenting, in a condescending tone, “I couldn’t possibly live in a place without trees.”

I thought at the time: “Then you haven’t been paying attention to development in Chapel Hill.”

My friend will be in for a shock. For those who love trees, the past few years have been disturbing at best, and looking ahead, the distress continues. It seems like every month we see a new swath of land clear-cut to prepare for development already approved or anticipated. And our council docket promises even more to come.

New development means sacrificing trees. Yet trees and green space provide documented benefits for mental and physical health. As density increases, the need for green becomes all the more crucial.

As development projects come before council, we need to pay attention to how many, what size and what type of trees will be planted as replacements for the mature trees taken down.

We also need to respect the few remaining parcels of land that could become permanently protected greenspace where the public can gather without having to pay. The more development that springs up around the American Legion property, the stronger the case for preserving the entire 36 acres as community gathering space.

I want to welcome more people and businesses to our town. That means removing trees by the acre. But we don’t have to “live without trees.” We can preserve acres more, if we choose that path.
— Nancy Oates

by on September 24, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Courtyards of Homestead, Environment, Housing, Land Use, Town staff, Trees
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Posted by Nancy Oates on September 24, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/09/24/the-florence-side-of-trees/

Shelter from the storm

The Red Cross thinks of everything. After UNC opened the Friday Center on Saturday to Hurricane Florence victims seeking shelter, the Red Cross swooped in, and with the practiced precision of a military operation, set up camp to welcome people who may have left home in a panic with nothing more than the clothes they were wearing and maybe a cell phone.

Volunteers set up cots, each with a plastic-wrapped fluffy white blanket with the trademarked red cross, turning banquet halls into dormitories and break-out conference rooms into medical clinics. A truck pulled up with mobile outdoor showers, and another was on its way with handicap accessible shower stalls. Another truck had pet cages, because pets weren’t allowed indoors, and a veterinarian checked animals for injuries.

The Red Cross had arranged for meal preparation, pallets of bottled water and diapers, Swahili translators and sign language interpreters. Police provided security and a therapy dog, and despite guests arriving worried, exhausted and at the end of their ropes, the only thing that broke out were some chess games.

Within 24 hours, the Friday Center had registered and welcomed about 170 guests, and a caravan of buses with some 200 more folks was on its way Sunday afternoon. Hurricane Florence had moved on, but the crisis was far from over. Rivers had yet to crest, and people still were fleeing homes ahead of floodwaters.

At this point, no one knows how long shelter guests will stay. Understandably, they are anxious to go home, to make sure their home is still there and to assess the damage. Maybe in a few days they would appreciate access to the bookmobile or people to help fill out forms for insurance claims or FEMA aid. Right now, the Red Cross is focusing on basic needs, and one that has become apparent is a shortage of charging stations for cell phones and other wi-fi devices.

Chapel Hill is a compassionate and generous community, for the most part, but the Red Cross has asked that people not drop off anything at the Friday Center. Contact the Central North Carolina chapter of the Red Cross to find out how to be most helpful.

UNC, after opening up the Friday Center, went a step further. Its Athletics Department reached out to the Red Cross to find out when would be convenient for Rameses, a couple of star coaches and some scholarship athletes to visit and greet shelter guests.

Truly, the Red Cross thinks of everything.
— Nancy Oates

by on September 17, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Housing, UNC
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Posted by Nancy Oates on September 17, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/09/17/shelter-from-the-storm/

Taking a stand on Silent Sam

Chapel Hill has its own version of Colin Kaepernick in UNC Chancellor Carol Folt. Though instead of taking a knee, Folt took a stand — on whether Silent Sam should be allowed back on the pedestal in the university’s front yard.

Up to this point, I’d been disappointed that Folt had been so tentative in the controversy over a symbol of white supremacy. She seemed to be walking on eggshells so as not to cause indigestion among members of the General Assembly and UNC Board of Governors.

Confusion roiled around who had ultimate authority to decide whether Sam would stay or go. Gov. Roy Cooper said the chancellor could move the statue out of the public eye for safekeeping. The General Assembly said it was up to the state’s Historical Commission, but neither the BOG nor the UNC administration petitioned the commission to remove the monument.

The BOG says the governor has misinterpreted the law passed by the General Assembly in 2015 prohibiting the removal of objects of remembrance. Though the BOG has no say regarding the removal of the statue, it does have authority over the removal of the chancellor.

If Folt did not want to poke the bear by ordering the statue warehoused or at least brought inside but still on public display, she could have put up plaques around Silent Sam explaining its history and putting in context why it was put up to begin with. Instead, she bowed to the General Assembly’s view.

So Folt’s Aug. 31 letter to the community came as a welcome surprise. In the middle of explaining that the BOG had given her and UNC’s Board of Trustees a Nov. 15 deadline to deliver a plan for Silent Sam came this sentence:

“Silent Sam has a place in our history and on our campus where its history can be taught, but not at the front door of a safe, welcoming, proudly public research university.”

If she sticks adamantly to a plan that does not return the statue to its pedestal on McCorkle Place, she might find herself toppled by the BOG.

I applaud her strong stance that puts her professional well-being secondary to the humanitarian values shared by the majority at UNC and townwide. She has popular support for her position, which may or may not give her comfort should she find herself in the unemployment line.

Folt has earned my respect. It is very hard to hold firm to a stand when you’ve got a lot at stake. At the same time, it’s hard to shake up others’ lives without shaking up your own. But if we want real change in these highly charged, unyielding times, we have to take as much risk as we can bear.

Thank you, Chancellor Folt, for showing true leadership.
— Nancy Oates

by on September 10, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Ethics, Politics, UNC
Tagged
Posted by Nancy Oates on September 10, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/09/10/taking-a-stand-on-silent-sam/

Where we go from here

Silent Sam made sure that town manager Roger Stancil did not go gentle into that good night. Stancil wrapped up his more than 12 years in Chapel Hill town staff’s top post on Saturday and was working nigh until midnight on his to-do list. The many hours of meetings to coordinate with UNC Police and strategize public safety necessitated by protests after activists yanked the statue down on campus slowed his progress a bit. But not much.

(And how fortuitous that Stancil’s successor, Maurice Jones, with his hard-earned experience in Charlottesville last year, clocked in the very day the troubles started and could share his counsel from the get-go.)

After Stancil announced his retirement last year, council came up with a list of priorities — 27 of them, along the lines of “Fix the downtown parking shortage,” and “Get the LUMO rewrite and new future land use maps going,” and “Draft a development agreement for the Municipal Services Center.” Darned if he didn’t make significant progress on almost all of them.

Council met with Jones last week in closed session to talk about priorities moving forward. I expect it may take a little while before he is sufficiently comfortable to push back and give us guidance. Put I hope he won’t take too long. We need help.

Yes, I know, council is the town manager’s boss. But none of us on the dais knows city planning. Unless staff tell us, we don’t know when we’re making a decision we’ll regret later.

My sense is that Jones and Stancil have quite different styles, just as Stancil and his predecessor, Cal Horton, did. I didn’t have any dealings with Horton directly, but from what I’ve heard, he ran the show. Some community members say Stancil did, too, but I think he just knew how to count to five.

When I think back on the most objectionable initiatives in the past decade, they can only be blamed on council — the lack of affordable housing in Ephesus-Fordham, Carraway Village and any other new construction approved; the Blue Hill form-based code that did away with requirements for trees and allowed building in the Resource Conservation District; the luxury high-rises blanketing every buildable parcel. Those came about because each project had at least five council members voting for it.

I stopped by Charlottesville over the summer and wandered around its downtown area for a couple hours. (Try that in Chapel Hill. Strolling campus doesn’t count.) There was quite a bit to see: a pedestrian mall, heavily weighted toward independent businesses, not all of them restaurants; historic buildings, though almost all housed businesses; a school repurposed into artists’ studios open to the public; transitional housing apartments; a really good chocolate shop; and townfolk welcoming to a sweaty stranger.

And the diversity of people — to the point that I grew suspicious Jones had called ahead to make sure there would be an interesting mix.

Stancil led us through some rocky times, including the recession, and kept us on a path of fiscal stability. Now Jones takes the reins. I’m looking forward to seeing what paths we choose with his guidance.
— Nancy Oates

by on September 3, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Council Members, Town staff
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Posted by Nancy Oates on September 3, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/09/03/where-we-go-from-here/

What Does Democracy Look Like?

Talk about a baptism by fire: His first day on the job, town manager Maurice Jones had to deal with a “spontaneous” rally by activists that ended with the toppling of Silent Sam, making national news.

The statue’s demise happened close to the one-year anniversary of the deadly protest in Charlottesville, where Jones had been the town manager at the time. His heart must have sunk last week when, after what should have been the end of a day of meeting new colleagues and filling out HR forms, he learned of crowds gathering on Franklin Street and milling about ominously.

We are lucky to have had a battle-tested veteran at the table to give counsel on “Here’s what we didn’t anticipate last year in Charlottesville,” and “Here’s what we could have done differently.”

The warrants issued for the statue’s vandals last Monday night and arrests made during the protest this past Saturday are for people not connected to the university. To the extent students or faculty were involved, they apparently expressed themselves civilly and nonviolently.

Not so with some of our guests a week ago and this past Saturday. After the statue fell, some shouted, “This is what democracy looks like!”

But it’s not. It’s what anarchy looks like.

The statue should have been moved long ago. Fifty years ago, students were tossing red ink mixed, they claimed, with blood on Silent Sam. And the administration had ignored them. So I understand their frustration. The process was too slow by decades.

A few years ago, when the state legislature passed a law prohibiting the removal of monuments commemorating North Carolina’s military history, UNC could have installed a plaque next to the statue educating viewers on the Confederates going to war to preserve slavery, the installation of statues throughout the South at a time when white supremacists wanted to assert themselves, and Julian Carr’s dedication speech taking pride in whipping a black woman. Yet the administration dismissed even that mitigating step.

After the statue tumbled, the UNC Board of Governors railed against mob rule, ironic, given its shades of Mob rule: the firing of UNC System President Tom Ross; the cap on money toward scholarships; the startling pay hikes to top administrators while those at the low end of the pay scale got a garden for free produce they can’t afford to buy.

But felling the statue doesn’t set us on a path toward righting all the wrongs that need to be fixed. It only offers evidence to the ultra-conservatives and the white supremacists who think liberals are lawless.

The way to get the statue to come down is to vote out those who want to protect symbols of racism. That is what democracy looks like.

When we elect people who have a commitment to justice, who feel compassion for all, who love their neighbors more than power and status, then we won’t have to always be ready to fight. We can build a town that enables our diverse residents to thrive. And our new town manager can spend his first day on the job learning how to work the coffee machine.
— Nancy Oates

by on August 27, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Elections, Town staff, UNC
Tagged
Posted by Nancy Oates on August 27, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/08/27/what-does-democracy-look-like/

ID’ing the Enemy

Faithful readers may have noticed that Chapel Hill Watch did not appear among the list of 350 news outlets that ran an editorial rejecting Donald Trump’s dissing of the media. No political agenda here. I totally agree with the editorial published by The Boston Globe. I simply went on vacation last week, a real vacation where I didn’t follow any national news whatsoever. I can’t remember the last time I experienced such serenity.

Ever since he first ran for office, Trump has been calling news media “the enemy of the people,” that is, unless the reporting portrayed him in a positive light. The Globe got tired of such hogwash and pointed out that “[t]he press is necessary to a free society because it does not implicitly trust leaders — from the local planning board to the White House.”

Read the editorial here.

As Twitter, Facebook and other social media have let individuals create their own news, we rely on large, established news outlets elsewhere to invest resources in reporting, fact-checking and analyzing so that we have a realistic picture of what’s happening in our world.

And if the truth punctures someone’s idealized view of themselves, brace for the backlash.

Thomas Jefferson said: “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

I’m grateful for the journalists willing to not only put their lives on the line to help us see the world as it really exists but to persevere through the angry taunts from those with injured egos.

When I returned from my vacation, peaceful as it was, I thirsted for news of what I had missed. While I didn’t necessarily like what I read upon my return, I felt a part of the rest of the world.

Chapel Hill’s only newspaper closed up shop last year, and the Durham Herald-Sun has done a yeoman’s job of keeping on top of issues of concern to the community. Yet I miss knowing who got married, gave birth, died, got arrested, bought or sold a home; what businesses opened or closed, which movies were playing and artists displaying, and what produce was in season at the farmers market. Those details connect us as a community.

But even more important is knowing about actions of elected leaders that impact our quality of life. News media disseminate facts that help them make better decisions, that information helps the public recognize a bad decision and know when to speak up.
— Nancy Oates

by on August 20, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Community life, Media, Politics
Posted by Nancy Oates on August 20, 2018

https://chapelhillwatch.com/2018/08/20/iding-the-enemy/

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