Elisabeth Penn Jones's blog
This past Monday, April 27, The Chapel Hill Town Council met to discuss potentially filling its vacant seat and to hear from six residents who applied for the position.
While applicant Paul Neebe could not make it, Kevin Hicks, Adam Jones, Michael Parker, Amy Ryan and Gary Shaw each spoke to the board for about 5 minutes to explain why they should be appointed.
The first to speak was Kevin Hicks, who was previously on the town’s Justice in Action Committee, and served on the Community Policing Advisory Committee. He currently serves on a small handful of boards in the Triangle area that focus on youth, bicycling and greenways. He spent the bulk of his presentation keeping an eye towards growth, children, and education. Additionally, he wanted to see more programming directed at children during their after school time and more inclusive efforts to close the achievement gap.
This past Friday, April 24th, marked the last day of classes at UNC-Chapel Hill for 2014-2015, and while many students fulfilled the campus tradition of relaxing on the quad, others chose to reclaim and “occupy” the space as a hub for an open dialogue about the university’s racial tensions over the past year.
The event was organized by The Real Silent Sam, which is a coalition of student, faculty, and community activists working to contextualize the university’s physical landscape and institutional history.
Most notably, the coalition’s efforts to rename Saunders Hall in favor of Hurston Hall have caused a buzz of controversy throughout the community, making local, state, and national headlines.
Saunders Hall is named after William Saunders, a UNC trustee, confederate colonel in the Civil War and a chief organizer for the Ku Klux Klan.
On April 9, Chapel Hill-Carrboro Schools will present an unprecedented living wage policy for full and part-time employees to the Orange County Board of Commissioners.
According to School Board Member James Barrett, the idea for a living wage policy emerged from a cost-savings discussion during the summer of 2014 to move some school janitors from district to contract-based employment. In doing this, the city would save money at the expense of a drop in wage for workers.
The unanimous board-approved wage decrease from about $11.50 to $9.50 an hour infuriated Barrett, who was not present for the vote.
“I raised a fuss about it,” he said. “I didn’t think it was acceptable to give our lowest paid employees a twenty-percent cut while at the same time giving our highest paid employees—our administrators—a three-percent raise.”
Later in September, Orange County Commissioner Mark Dorosin continued the discussion of a living wage for both employees and contractors in a joint meeting between the school board and the Orange County Board of Commissioners.
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