November 2014
Join us for this third session of the Carrboro Planning Board's three-part fall forum series on community-scale energy use and climate change
In this session, we'll hear about and discuss:
- Climate Protection Planning in Carrboro (Randy Dodd, Town of Carrboro environmental planner)
- Solarize Orange County (Rob Pinder)
- Passive and Active Solar Energy Opportunities for Your Home, featuring an Interactive 3-D Model (David Clinton, architect and principal at Szostak Design Inc, and Planning Board member)
- Energy Conservation (John Hines, marketing representative of Piedmont Electric Membership Corporation)
- Base Hits, Strike Outs, and Home Runs: Twenty Renewable Energy Businesses I Have Loved (Lyle Estill, vice president of Piedmont Biofuels and serial entrepreneur)
We'll have light refreshments and plenty of time for questions and discussion. See you Wednesday!
Also:
- Chapel Hill Transit routes CW, F, and J stop in front of the ArtsCenter.
- There's a beautiful new bicycle corral at the ArtsCenter entrance.
- There's free car parking (and covered bicycle parking) in the 300 East Main parking deck.
Date:
Wednesday, November 5, 2014 - 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Location:
Carrboro ArtsCenter, 300 E Main Street, Carrboro
Recently, the Orange County Health Department launched plans for the Family Success Alliance, modeled after the success of the Harlem Children’s Zone.
With its inception as the Rheedlen Centers for Children and Families in 1970, the Harlem Children’s Zone aims to disrupt generational poverty with a holistic, long-term approach providing education and support from early childhood through college, supportive services to families to prevent homelessness, and health services including obesity prevention. Serving over 13,000 children and 13,000 adults in 97 blocks of Central Harlem, the engaged children (70% in the served blocks) have a 92% college acceptance rate, 100% of pre-K participants are assessed as school ready, and the 800 local employees fuel economic growth. The Harlem Children’s Zone also serves as the Model for President Obama’s Promise Neighborhood Initiative that has awarded 58 grants to communities across the country to implement similar programs.
Tuesday is Election Day. Don’t forget to go vote if you haven’t taken advantage of early voting during the past couple weeks. You can find your polling place on the state Board of Elections website.
Partially because of the elections, the Hillsborough Town Board, Carrboro Alderfolks and county School Board will all be on break this week. The Chapel Hill Town Council will be on Obey Creek and hold a work session on a yet-to-be announced topic. The Chapel-Hill Carrboro School Board will also consider the superintendent’s review state school boards association agenda and the county commissioners will get some preliminary information on financing major projects and equipment purchases.
Here’s the full summary:
CARRBORO BOARD OF ALDERPERSONS
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There is no meeting this week.
CHAPEL HILL TOWN COUNCIL
Tonight I was listening to FM101.1 La Ley and heard two senate ads in Spanish back to back. The first was by Ben Carson PAC. The theme was that Hagan sends her kids to private school but opposes vouchers while Tillis gave vouchers to thousands of kids (hispanos). The second ad was by People for the American Way. The theme was that Tillis cut millions from education and health but gave rich Carolinians lots of tax breaks. VOTE! (This is my second attempt to post this, the first one didn't show up.)
Happy Election Day! Polls are open from now until 7:30pm. If you're out voting today, what are you seeing at your polling place? If you're working a polling site, how's turnout looking where you are?
At a special meeting on Monday, the Chapel Hill Town Council decided to formally move into the negotiaton phase in the development agreement process for Obey Creek, a proposed mixed-use development across from Southern Village on 15-501.
Developer East West Partners presented a revised proposal to Council Monday. While the overall size and mix of the project has not changed, the layout and some design elements have changed. The proposal, as it currently stands, will develop 35 acres and preserve 85 in perpetuity. All buildings will be LEED certified.
The mix of uses is proposed to include 400,000 square feet of retail space, 250,000 square feet of officespace, and 600-700 residential units, including a senior housing component. All parking on the site would be structured except for street parking along streets within the development.
East West Partners also provided a model of the current proposal to help councilmembers and members of the public better understand the scale of development (see photo).
For a number of reasons, primarily the lack of availability and cost of land, the focus of new residential construction has become apartments. All of the major development projects currently moving through the pipeline – Village Plaza Apartments, Obey Creek, Glen Lennox, The Graduate, The Edge – are almost exclusively apartments for their residential components. And in the case of Obey Creek, about half of the apartments are targeted to those over 55.
So where will the kids live?
In Chapel Hill, as in so many communities nationally, apartments are seen as a poor choice for raising children. Historically, many of us want backyards and grass for our kids. In fact, many developers tout the fiscal advantages of creating environments unappealing to families with children – few pupils for our schools and ample school taxes.
Extensive mold and other serious maintenance issues, unannounced inspections, living with no water, play equipment removed, violence, disrepect by management, inability to use shared resources, children not allowed to play outside.....
Would you be surprised to know that these are just some of the complaints coming from our neighbors who live in affordable housing complexes throughout Orange County (Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Hillsborough)?
Orange County Justice United is partnering with residents in all of these complexes to organize the community, conduct neighborhood audits to acertain the extend of the issues, present these findings to management, and have the issues addressed.
The Gateway Village Apartments in Hillsborough is one such housing complex. A story about our work together can be found here.
We know that there is a shortage of affordable housing in our communities. We must work to ensure that the affordable housing that is available, is welcoming unless we want to be a community of the wealthy.
Carolina North will top the agenda for the Chapel Hill Town Council’s Monday business meeting Monday. Throughout the rest of the week, the council will also consider transportation improvements in the Ephesus-Fordham area and Obey Creek. The Carrboro Alderfolks will discuss a potential new zoning classification, while the county commissioners will talk ETJ and curbside recycling. The Hillsborough Town Board will start the public outreach process for its Vision 2030 document, while the county school board will set the school calendar for next year.
Here’s the full summary:
CARRBORO BOARD OF ALDERPERSONS
CHAPEL HILL TOWN COUNCIL
With Mia Burroughs winning a seat on the Orange County Board of Commissioners last week, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School Board has announced its process to fill the vacancy she will leave when she officially resigns on November 30, 2014. The deadline for applications is next Wednesday, November 19.
Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools has provided this informational packet for individuals interested in applying for the seat. Additionally, an information session will be held at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, November 17, at Lincoln Center (750 S. Merritt Mill Road, Chapel Hill) for applicants to learn more about the roles and expectations of the position.
The Board will interview candidates at a special meeting on Monday, November 24, at 6pm at Lincoln Center, with a vote to be taken at its December 4 meeting. The selected appointee will be sworn in on December 18.
Coldwell Banker is out with their annual home price comparisons, as reported by the Triangle Business Journal, and the news isn't so great for anyone living in Orange County concerned with affordability.
Chapel Hill ranks as the most expensive housing community in North Carolina. A typical four-bedroom, two-bathroom home will cost you an average of $401,765 here, compared with a state average of only $229,112. Hillsborough ranks 9th at $276,816.
For comparison, the average price for a four-bedroom, two-bath home in Durham is only $250,129. In Raleigh, it's $272,305.
The metric isn't perfect - looking only at relatively large houses - but the comparison still paints a pretty clear picture of what's happening in Orange County compared with the rest of the state.
On the agenda for this week's meeting of the Town of Chapel Hill Transportation and Connectivity Advisory Board is a discussion of bicycle safety improvement. Much of this is in response to the death of a woman on a bicycle who was hit by a motor vehicle near the intersection of Hillsborough Road and MLK Jr. Blvd, a notoriously dangerous part of town on which to ride a bike.
The Town has decided to make bicycle safety a priority and has already taken several steps, including an awareness campaign, changes to pedestrian crossings on MLK Jr. Blvd and adding green-painted sharrows to roads on certain popular bike corridors.
The focus will be regional this week, with all four of the county’s elected boards meeting together Wednesday to discuss affordable housing, the use of sales tax revenue for economic development, solid waste and the rural buffer. Triangle Transit will also be hosting workshops in Durham and Chapel Hill to get feedback on the current phase of the light rail project.
Several elected bodies will also be having their own meetings. The Carrboro Alderfolks will follow up on the town’s recent community police forum, while the Chapel Hill Town Council will tackle the Edge development proposed on Eubanks Road and the county commissioners discuss parks and rec.
Here’s the full summary:
ASSEMBLY OF GOVERNMENTS (ORANGE COUNTY, HILLSBOROUGH, CHAPEL HILL, & CARRBORO)
Despite the holiday, only the county commissioners are off this week. Both the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education and the Carrboro Alderfolks will meet in closed session, while the Chapel Hill Town Council will hold a regular meeting on wide variety of topics. The Hillsborough Town Board will discuss its upcoming planning board retreat, while the county school board will talk strategic planning and community engagement.
Here’s the full summary:
CARRBORO BOARD OF ALDERPERSONS
I signed a new housing lease about a month ago in mid-October – a lease that won’t start until June of next year. This is how competitive student off-campus housing is in Chapel Hill, and the ever-high demand for student housing in Chapel Hill continues to negatively affect non-student renters.
Niche.com estimates that 90 percent of houses near campus fill up by October. From my experience, students looking to rent an affordable house (as opposed to a townhouse or apartment) begin the search as early as September. Every year this fight to find the closest, nicest and most affordable home puts additional stress on UNC students, and our desperation to sign a lease as soon as possible pits students against each other, increasing competition and driving prices up.
According to a 2010 report prepared by Development Concepts Inc., students make up about a third of all rented units in Chapel Hill (and rented housing comprises over half of all housing in Chapel Hill). We are a huge market for property owners and developers – on-campus housing can only accommodate 9,700 students, so the remaining 9,000 or so undergrads must find off-campus places.
Here is a list of candidates:
- Anne DiBella - via telephone
- Desiree Cho
- Gary Winzelberg
- Greg Dye - missing
- Ignacio Tzoumas
- Jennifer Clark
- Jennifer Marsh
- Joanna Cleveland
- Katherine Worley
- Kulwadee Yung
- Mary Ann Wolf - withdrew
- Mary Litsikas
- Rani Dasi
- Theresa Watson - arrived at 6:25, missed introduction
- David Saussy
Candidates got to start with 30-second introductions. First question was about biggest challenges, second about communication and decision-making style. Will post answers to succeeding questions below.
Link to applications is below.
Since Election Day folks have asked me what’s next. Some of those people asked me to consider running for state party chair or for one of the other positions in state party leadership. However, I have decided to run for re-election as the chair of the Orange County Democratic Party.
On election night no one was more disappointed with the results from the U.S. Senate race than me. However, we did a lot of work right here in Orange County and while we don’t have all the data yet, we know that what we did had an impact:
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