February 2011
An important, community-wide meeting to learn about and discuss the Chapel Hill Downtown Development Framework and especially its implications for Northside
Citizens of Chapel Hill have a right to opportunities to educate themselves about changes in their community and provide input in the development process
Co-sponsored by The Marian Cheek Jackson Center, Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP, EmPOWERment, Inc., St. Paul A.M.E. Church, St. Joseph C.M.E. Church, Justice United.
For further inquiries email jacksoncenter.info@gmail.comor call (919) 929-6595.
Date:
Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - 1:00pm to 3:00pm
Location:
St. Paul AME Church - 101 North Merritt Mill Road
As an active worker-owner with Weaver Street Market Co-operative these past six years, I have worked hard not only to help WSM be successful as a business, but also as a model for democratic co-operation. It is with regret that I have to report that WSM continues to fail on both counts. It is time now to begin an active, community-wide conversation about the future financial and co-operative direction of WSM, and I invite OrangePolitics to take part in that conversation.
Bottom line: WSM has a crippling long-term debt of $8 million, incurred undemocratically in order to pay for the dubious expansion project of 2007/2008. That debt is costing our co-op millions in capital and interest repayments each year. Hence, the need for the 15% sales increase in 2011. With similar efforts required in the next four years.
It is WSM workers who are having to make those repayments by working ever harder, for less. We get longer opening hours. Less shift hours. Insufficient staff support. Paltry pay raises. And no dividend (haven't seen one for the past three years).
Among the items the Chapel Hill Town Council will be reviewing at tonight's public hearing is a revision to the LUMO to loosen the regulations on ground signs at commercial developments outside of downtown, including:
- Removing the limit on the amount of information that can be displayed on the sign;
- Increasing the maximum information display area from 15 to 50-72 square feet;
- Increasing the maximum overall signage area from 15 to 216 square feet; and
- Increasing the maximum height from 8 feet to 10-12 feet, depending on the speed limit of the adjacent road.
Date:
Saturday, April 16, 2011 - 1:00pm to Sunday, April 17, 2011 - 5:00pm
We're experimenting with a new type of content on OP, and we're calling them "blurts." The idea is to be similar to a tweet. It's limited to 129 characters plus a link. I will be doing some work on the site to theme the blurts so that they don't just look like blog posts that lost their body, although that's pretty much how they will function.
A few selected bloggers will be piloting blurts as an experiment and then I expect to open them up to everyone. You can see them on the Latest content page, and they might even show up on the front page once in a while.
I have some other changes planned for OP, but I'm starting with this as it's the easiest to get done. Let me know what you think.
Date:
Friday, March 25, 2011 - 5:30pm
Location:
Jessee's Coffee & Bar, 401 E Main St, Carrboro
Yesterday there was a community meeting for Northside residents to learn about the evolving framework for downtown development. The Downtown Partnership, who is a partner with the Town of Chapel Hill in the development of the plan, live-tweeted the meeting at @CHDpartnership for folks who couldn't attend.
It sounds like it was a very good start, although residents will need to do more digesting and analysis before they have an informed response to the proposal. Here's what the Partnership tweeted...
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