Comprehensive Plan
On Monday, the Downtown Partnership posted its vision for Chapel Hill on 2020 Buzz, the official blog of the Chapel Hill 2020 process. The vision apparently stems from a meeting that the Chapel Hill 2020 Outreach Committee had with members of the Chamber of Commerce and the business community before Thanksgiving.
The vision isn’t so much a vision as it as wish list. It calls on the town to expedite the review process for development downtown and provide for a whole host of a uses-by-right in the area so that new development downtown wouldn’t need any approval on top of building permits, zoning complains and certificates of occupancy. It also talks about building some new streets (especially in the north-south direction) downtown, making some changes to the way Chapel Hill does it zoning and ensuring regional transit is centered in the area.
A few days ago I sent the following message to my fellow members of the Outreach Committee for Chapel Hill 2020. Apparently having and stating strong opinions is incompatible with leadership in that process. Rather than spending time struggling to lead the internal outreach process, I think I will be a more effective and way more authentic advocate from the outside. It's a pity the Town can't make room for vocally opinionated comunity members to be leaders in creating our new comprehensive plan. We all have opinions. Some people are just more blunt about them than others. There are precious few "neutral" leaders who are qualified and motivated enough to serve.
Though the holiday season is now in full swing, the Chapel Hill 2020 will press forward with the second round of key theme group working sessions Thursday. The meetings will be held at Frank Porter Graham Elementary School on Smith Level Road from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. They promise to follow essentially the same format as the first round of meetings. The key difference is that before breaking off into seperate theme meetings, Town Manager Roger Stancil will give a presentation on the fiscal state of the town.
As
many of you probably know, the first report out session from the Chapel Hill 2020
theme groups was held at Chapel Hill High School. The session included an
overview of the process thus far, advice from UNC School of Government
facilitators as to how best keep discussions focused, updates from each of the
theme groups as to what was discussed at the first theme group meeting, a
community and open-mic discussion of the issues that the town will confront.
The event was fairly well-attended and a poll of those present suggested that
about 20% to 25% of the participants had never attended a Chapel Hill 2020
meeting before. Looking at the meeting through the public participation lens, a
few things emerged:
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