In the most likely scenario that Charterwood will be approved tonight, Chapel Hill citizens may choose to make some conclusions about the future of citizen input into how OUR town grows.
Despite significant environmental impact (not only to Eastwood Lake and Lake Ellen but to the Booker Creek headwater streams and the old growth trees), the disregard for neighborhood protection, the bastardization of process, the economic shakiness of the proposed plan, the reversal of affordable housing goals, the widespread public objections, the applicant’s frequent “misstatements,” and the precedent setting nature of the approval, Charterwood is virtually assured of passage.
What does this presage for the 2020 Future Focus Areas? Will citizens, once again, be involved in busy work? Will their work, like the work of citizens involved in the original Southern Small Area Plan, the Northern Area Task Force, and 2020 be ignored?
