April 2010

Last year, the Rail Station Task Force recommended the Collins Parcel in Hillsborough as the best place for a future Amtrak and commuter station for Orange County, which is one of only two counties along the North Carolina Railroad corridor statewide without passenger service today (Davidson County is the other). Conceptual plans for the station and transit-oriented development on the site were presented to a packed audience on March 31, 2010 at the Orange County Library.

Last night, the Chapel Hill/Carrboro chapter of the NAACP held a candidate’s forum for the County Commissioner at-large and County Sheriff’s race.

The candidates present were: Clarence Birkhead, Lindy Pendergrass, Joal Hall Broun, Barry Jacobs and Joe Phelps. Alice Gordon also stopped by, even though she is uncontested in her County Commissioner race in District 1.

There was actually a lot of ground covered at the forum. Among the topics discussed was the 287g Program, overcrowding in county jails, funding for the Chapel Hill library and Google Fiber Optics.

Most notable was William Thorp, the NAACP chapter chair, giving an impassioned plea to the commissioner-hopefuls to fix the situation in Rogers Road. The plea came in the wake of a new report that found 9 out of 11 wells in the region were contaminated and a quarter of the septic tanks in the area were in disrepair.

The Town of Chapel Hill and the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership are planning the process for the future of downtown Chapel Hill. The Downtown Public Forum is Thursday, April 8, at 8:30 a.m. and again at 4:30 p.m. The event will be held in the second floor Great Room at the Top of the Hill Restaurant. If you can't make either forum please open OP on your browser and tune into my coverage of the event. I will be in attendance at the morning forum.