October 2006

It's disappointing to see the Chapel Hill News this week stoking our fears of skyscrapers instead of adding some new ideas or perspectives to the critical dialog about the nature of growth downtown.I am so tired about hearing people simply exclaim over the number of stories a building has without discussing its design, infrastructure, relationship to other buildings to the street and to the sidewalk, impact on transportation, or public service features. It's not that height doesn't matter, but it's meaningless in isolation. You can have an ugly 3-story building or a beautiful 10-story building. We need to move past this one-dimensional focus on height into a more sophisticated vision for the future of Chapel Hill. I am hoping that the upcoming revision of Chapel Hill's Comprehensive Plan will be one venue for this discussion.

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on October 7th, 2006:

I never knew how much trash local residents throw out on the road until I spent last Sunday putting up yard signs with Chatham County resident Staples Hughes.

Hughes, who spends his weekdays advocating for low-income accused criminals in the North Carolina Office of the Appellate Defender, has spent many weekends over the past 15 years putting up signs for candidates he knows or respects along the roads of Chatham County.

The lucky beneficiary of Hughes' handiwork for this election cycle is Superior Court candidate Adam Stein. And there is no doubt that Stein is lucky -- Hughes has this banal but necessary part of local election campaigns down to an art form.

He knows most every intersection in Chatham County and how many signs should go at each of them. He knows that you should ideally put seven staples each on the left and right sides of the folded sign to hold it together.

Since this is Orange County and since the primaries are already over, it's easy to think that the November election will be another ho-hum approval of the Democratic slate. This year that is not the case. In addition to a very competitive judicial race, Orange County voters will be asked to weigh in on a ballot measure to change the way we elect County Commissioners.

While I am quite ambivalent about this proposal, the County is not. They have appointed a District Election Education Committee (meeting Wednesday 10/18 at 5 pm at the OWASA building on Jones Ferry Road), will be holding two public forums on the proposal (7pm 10/18 at OWASA in Carrboro & 7pm 11/1/06 at Battle Courtroom in Hillsborough, and have established a website (http://www.co.orange.nc.us/OCCLERKS/DistElectWeb.htm)!

In 1954 the Orange County Board of Commissioners was expanded from three members to five members. Prior to and since that time, Commissioners have been elected “at large,” which means all registered Orange County voters could select from all candidates.

So has anyone used the new Blue Urban Bikes yet?

For a $10 annual membership fee, riders can rent one and roll out for up to 24 hours.

"For people used to driving everywhere, this is an easy, cheap introduction to public transportation," said Chris Richmond of the ReCYCLEry, an amateur mechanics collective that will maintain the fleet.

The ReCYCLEry runs the bike-loan project with the Carrboro-based environmental group SURGE, which stands for Students United for a Responsible Global Environment.

Similar initiatives have cropped up in other college towns such as Davidson -- home of Davidson College -- Austin, Texas, and near Emory University in Atlanta, Ga.
- chapelhillnews.com | Cup of java and a bike to go, please

Let's take a look at the non-partisan elections on the ballot this November.

Local Judicial Races

There are plenty of judicial races, but there's only one local competition: The much discussed Superior Court race in which we get to pick two from a list of four. The candidates are The Hon. Carl Fox (former DA), The Hon. Allen Baddour, Attorney Adam Stein and The Hon. Chuck Anderson (currently a District Court Judge). Plenty has been said about this race already on another thread so I will leave it at that.

District Court Judge Joe Buckner is running for re-election, but is unopposed on the ballot. He certainly deserves and will get another term.

The state-wide judicial races are also non-partisan, although, as it happens, all of the races have one Democrat and one Republican running. There will be no indication on the ballot as to which party the judicial candidates belong to.

North Carolina Supreme Court

Weaver Street Market has taken an important step forward in the movement toward realizing a more sustainable food system. Calling the new development “authentic food”, the market is looking beyond the organic pedigree of a food product to incorporate additional elements such as the production environment, working conditions, and transportation.

WSM's initiative is in response to the entry of the likes of Wal-Mart into the organic food market, which “mean we risk losing important values traditionally associated with organic farming, such as improving the environment, keeping family farmers in business, and treating farm workers fairly. We also risk losing a labeling distinction that has helped us make meaningful choices on your behalf.”

Michael Pollan, author of “The Omnivore's Dilemma” and who recently visited the area puts it like this:

After the recent bunch of articles (Herald, N & O) about how crappy Estes Drive Extension is and how unlikely it is to get better any time soon, I'd like to make a modest proposal.

There are two other possible ways to get from the railroad crossing on Estes to downtown Carrboro. Both alternatives offer a way for cyclists, pedestrians, and wheelchairs to avoid the Straits of Estes. Right now these routes are informal, only used by those of us willing to cross other people's property and bring a flashlight at night.

The Indy's election endorsements issue came out today. They prefer cumulative voting, but without that option on the ballot encourage a yes vote on the referendum. They also re-endorse the three Democratic Commissioner candidates, Carl Fox and Adam Stein for Superior Court, Ellie Kinnaird, Joe Hackney, and others you might expect.

In the past some people have complained here and elsewhere that the Indy does its readers a disservice by not making the voluminous surveys candidates fill out for it available to the general public. Voters who want to make up their own mind could find this to be a more substantive source of candidate information than anything else out there right now.

Editor Richard Hart notes this week that they're listening and that the surveys will go online later today at http://www.indyweek.com when the paper does. I look forward to looking at them, and hope others will too.

This must have been a great deal of work so hats off to Richard, Jennifer Strom, Denise Prickett, and the other folks at the Indy who made this possible.

I slaved over a hot laptop for a few hours so we could (finally) bring you the updated Orange Politics 2006 Voter Guide. It's mostly links to the candidates and to other websites that did the heavy lifting of assessing and evaluating candidates.

It will continue to grow until the election, so please suggest other links and resources to be added. Maybe next year we can do this on a wiki...

While UNC Hospitals are cracking down on the indigent, it's high living at the top.

Sign the petition to return UNC Healthcare to its mission.

Apologies for any confusion, I just made the necessary change to switch the blog back to eastern standard time. Goodbye daylight. :-(

Join us at Open Eye Café (101 S. Greensboro St. in Carrboro) on Thursday, November 2nd for a good time, good people, and good cakes. We'll be celebrating our twenty-five years of activism and twenty-five years of community support. We will be auctioning off twenty-five cakes, of all shapes and types (some vegan!). Join us for a fun evening of cake, coffee, and sparkling wine, as well as friends and community.

We will also be presenting a first look at our Hidden Histories of Chapel Hill project, which compiles 25 chapters of local history that you probably didn't learn about in school: Floyd Council, laborers at Carr Mill, the 1937 riot, Junius Irving Scales, Elizabeth Cotten, the UNC Speaker Ban, King Nyle, the Journey of Reconciliation, Bob Brown, Joe Straley, Rosemary Ezra, Charlotte Adams and many more.

Internationalist Books & Community Center