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:

Tomorrow morning will mark the first report out session for the six theme groups in Chapel Hill 2020, the process to create the town's new Comprehensove Plan. These report out sessions are designed so that all the theme groups can get together to find areas of agreement and discuss agrees of disagreement. The theme groups have a good deal of overlap, so these large group meetings are necessary to ensure that the plan is cohesive while still being comprehensive.

First, the leadership team will be providing a summary of the process. They’ll give a little more explanation as to where we are and where we’re going in the near future, and they’ll highlight some of the resources available on the web and outreach efforts that are being conducted by the town.

You may have noticed an editorial in Wednesday’s edition of the Durham Herald-Sun concerning the Chapel Hill 2020 process. It’s author—Chapel Hill resident and writer Joe Buonfiglio—points out some conflicts of interest that may be present in the theme group structure and argues that the public input process will result in a plan with only “the mere appearance of citizens running the narrative.” While Mr. Buonfiglio makes some legitimate points about the weaknesses of the process thus far, I would argue that the 2020 process features more involvement than past planning efforts in Chapel Hill and than can be seen in other similarly-sized cities around the country. 

I would label last night’s meeting generally successful, but reflecting back on what I observed and participated in. Before I get into my reactions, a quick few notes on what actually happened. The meeting took place entirely in small groups. As noted above, I participated in the transportation group. The official title of the theme is:

Getting Around: Transportation: (transportation of all forms, regional assets, partnerships, potential for shared success)

All of the groups basically followed the same format, kicking off with an introduction by the group go-chairs and then moving into the meat of the discussion, which was supposed to touch on four different questions, all with a tilt toward the particular theme’s interest area.