Tom Jensen's blog

Two groups with an eye for social justice announced their endorsements yesterday.

The Hank Anderson Breakfast Club describes itself as a group of Chapel Hill/Carrboro community leaders that has met regularly every Saturday morning for over 20 years to discuss and influence the public policy decisions made by local governments that affect African Americans in this area. The Breakfast Club's endorsements are important to those voters who do not have the time to stay current with the civil rights struggles that are so important to racial minorities here.

The Friends of Affordable Housing is a non-partisan Political Action Committee that has been active in selective elections within Orange County during the last 10 years. The organization was first organized to support the Orange ballot for Affordable Housing Bond Money. The committee has also periodically sent questionnaires to candidates running for Orange County Commissioner and Chapel Hill Town Council.

At this time a couple years ago there had already been two forums and an endorsement released in the Chapel Hill Town Council race. It's been comparatively quiet this year, although the forum season is about to heat up.

One candidate who to date was pretty much a mystery fired an opening salvo against the Town Council today. Matt Czajkowski had a half page ad in the Chapel Hill News on Sunday which criticized the Council for:

-Lacking a 'true voice' for fiscal responsibility

-Lot 5

-Its unfriendly reputation toward commerical enterprise that 'keeps businesses from even trying to open here.'

-A Franklin Street that is 'nowhere close to what it 'should and can be'

His ad was long on complaints and short on solutions. There was no statement about what his plans would be to deal with any of these problems or what relevant experience he had for fixing them. I would have liked to go to his website to find out but he doesn't seem to have one.

Cam Hill asked me to post his guest column in the Herald today about Carolina North:

For several years UNC has been talking about developing a research campus, Carolina North, which is slated to contain as many as eight million square feet of buildings. UNC owns the Horace Williams tract, some 900 acres that currently is the home of the Horace Williams Airport, a couple of toxic dump sites and the old town of Chapel Hill public works and transit facility locations. UNC wants to put Carolina North there. Because the property is largely undeveloped (with the above exceptions), surrounded by existing neighborhoods and not served by any existing (or planned) transit or large-scale utility infrastructure, and because this is Chapel Hill; there has been some considerable discussion about this. Oh yeah, and the airport is still open.