At a recent Town Council meeting, several members encouraged Chapel Hill voters to put the county commissioners candidates’ feet to the fire about the public library funding inequities.
It was great political theater, hearing Jim Ward and Laurin Easthom bob their heads and look at one another and do their “Uh huh! Yeah! It’s an election year for the county!” routine.

So when the first filings rolled in last week and commissioners Alice Gordon and Barry Jacobs filed, I was curious what their candidacy statements would be.

No surprise with Gordon as she said she would run on her environmental record as well as improving public transit in the region. Umm, did Gordon not get the memo about county spending? About how the folks in Hillsborough have overspent to the point where the county has reached its debt limit? And that Gordon voted in favor of all that ruinous spending, the same spending that keeps the county from paying its fair share of Chapel Hill library costs? Maybe Gordon should revise her platform and run on something a bit more pertinent to the average county resident, such as how the commissioners plan to return the county to solvency.

Jacobs in his filing statement at least acknowledged that the economic landscape is “unsettled” and that he is committed to government that is “cost-effective and customer-oriented.” Those sentiments are refreshing, given that a whole lot of county folks believe the Board of Commissioners is the last group that cares about its “customers.” Otherwise the board wouldn’t have spent tax dollars so extravagantly and then come back demanding more. The candidates should take to heart the tax revolt of last winter and heed what a whole bunch of those “customers” were saying. If I recall correctly, Jacobs pooh-poohed the protests in as good a Marie Antoinette imitation as he could project.

So, it’s time to put the incumbents on notice – business as usual just ain’t gonna cut it during these terrible budget times. Any serious commissioner candidate must be one who is concerned about county spending and willing to rein it in. And the serious candidate had better get a grip on not raising taxes and on being honest with taxpayers — even with the so-called “revenue neutral” revaluations of last year, my property tax went up 6 percent.

I plan to sit up front at as many campaign forums as possible and remind the incumbents about their disastrous spending history. I would encourage others in the county to do the same. The commissioners are accountable and, I suspect, need to be reminded of that.

–Don Evans

On Monday night, the executive director of the Orange County Visitors Bureau, Laurie Paolicelli, gave the Town Council scads of information about how important tourism is for Chapel Hill, how the town has a lot of features that visitors look for when considering a destination, and how much money tourism generates for town businesses and taxes.

“Everything a tourist looks for, we have in Chapel Hill,” Paolicelli told the council.

Paolicelli said tourism brings $152 million a year into the county, with Chapel Hill by far generating the most interest and dollars. And the number-one request the bureau gets from prospective visitors is whether the town has a guided tour. Apparently, such a tour is high on the list of must-do things for visitors. And there are plenty of sights to see in Chapel Hill – enough to provide plenty of stops on a town tour loop. Paolicelli even showed a drawing of where such a town tour loop would go – basically it would start at University Mall, wend its way along Franklin Street with a stop at the town museum, turn around at Carrboro’s Weaver Street Market, then come back for stops at the Ackland, the Carolina Basketball Museum and the planetarium.

It would be an 11-mile trip, so driving, either by bus or car, would be essential.

Now, buses can be expensive. The estimate tossed out at the meeting was $50 an hour per bus. And for such a tour you’d want several buses operating sequentially, so that visitors could get off the bus to visit a site (and especially a business or two) for more than just a casual stop. Which means that a tour that uses some means other than buses to get the tourists through the loop would be a nice alternative.

And that brings us to a suggestion by Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt. He suggested that a system of self-guided stops could involve using cell phones to access tour information and presentations. Wait a minute – isn’t there a push to outlaw cell phone use while driving town streets? I wouldn’t want to see police issuing citations to drivers who were just dialing in to a historical presentation.

Then again, the town is going to need extra revenue to pay for that library renovation and those expensive parking spaces at 140 West Franklin. Great idea, Mr. Mayor!
–Don Evans

Last week, The News & Observer sold its office space at 505 W. Franklin St. to Franklin Junto, a group of investors led by Top of the Hill’s Scott Maitland who will turn the space into a distillery. The N&O will pay rent to Maitland for a corner in the building where the dozen or so remaining N&O/Chapel Hill News employees will work.

The N&O sold the land and building for $2.15 million, about $800,000 below its tax value, considered the market value as of January 2009.

How did the N&O end up in such dire straits that it had to sell prime real estate in downtown Chapel Hill for nearly 30 percent off its market value? Its parent company, The McClatchy Co., took on too much debt a few years back when it bought the Knight-Ridder newspaper chain.

McClatchy financed $3.75 billion of the $4.5 billion purchase price. At the time, in 2006, McClatchy and its lenders evidently didn’t think the purchase was a bad idea. But time has shown otherwise. The economy spiraled downward, and McClatchy struggled to make its loan payments. The company sold off what newspapers and assets it could and slashed staff. The N&O has cut its staff, which once numbered just over 1,000, by half in the past 18 months.

Now, in a sour economy that some financial experts say has not reached bottom yet, Chapel Hill’s Town Council is considering issuing all the bonds it has available to it to finance some discretionary capital improvements, such as more than doubling the size of the library and fixing up the greenway. Because of the cost associated with issuing bonds, town manager Roger Stancil advised issuing them all at once, rather than one at a time as needed.

The town needs to have some funds in reserve in case 140 West Franklin is built, and I don’t see how the town can walk away from that contract unscathed. (I’m awaiting a reply to my e-mail to Stancil and town attorney Ralph Karpinos as to what nullifying the contract would cost the town.)

All of the people who spoke at Wednesday’s public hearing made solid cases for why the town should spend money on their particular projects. And if the economy were better, I’d feel better about the town taking on somewhat more debt to invest in those projects. But the economy is bleak right now, and we have made some spending decisions in the past that mean we may not be able to follow through on the projects voters approved a couple years ago. Even though the depressed cost of materials and labor right now would make capital improvements a bargain, they aren’t a bargain if the town has to refinance repeatedly because something unforeseen has stressed its resources to the breaking point.

As McClatchy learned, sometimes the prudent course is to say no to a bargain.
— Nancy Oates