November 2006

Just read on BlueNC that someone is trying to trick Chapel Hill voters by representing a list of Republican judicial candidates as Democrats. Don't they know we are some of the most educated voters in the state?

Yesterday, I received various complaints about deceptive Republican tactics during the early voting in Chapel Hill. Apparently, Republican canvassers are approaching people entering the polls and asking if they're Democrats. If the answer is “yes,” they are given a flyer and told "This is a list of our judicial candidates." The problem: the list contains only the Republican candidates! Because Party affiliation isn't listed on the ballot, voters are being misled.
- North Carolina Democratic Party Chair Jerry Meek quoted in Cheaters | BlueNC

If this is true, Republicans are even dumber (or more desperate) than I thought.

Weaver Street Market is having their annual member meeting this Sunday at noon. This is your last chance to meet the candidates and cast your vote for the Board of Directors.

From their newsletter:

The Weaver Street Market Annual Meeting will be held on Sunday, November 5 in the Carrboro Century Center. Free buffet lunch for all owners of the co-op will start at noon, followed by a “meet and greet” with the Board of Directors candidates and the business meeting. Mark your calendars and come learn about your co-op!

Hope to see y'all there!

...must it always rain on election day?

Here are some hastily assembled maps of the general election results based on unofficial data from the Orange County Board of Elections (November 7, 2006). The first maps below show the results of the county commissioner election. Individual candidate maps are available here. They include charts that show the five best and five worst precincts for each candidate.

Local governments are practically salivating at the prospect of several new buildings that Orange County is planning to build in Hillsborough.

"What makes this different is we have 93,000 square feet of space in our inventory that we literally didn't have this time last week," Pam Jones, the county's purchasing director, told the board.

On Nov. 2, the commissioners approved an agreement of intent to build a central library, office building and parking deck off West Margaret Lane, as well as leasing the top two floors of the nearby Gateway Center. After one year and one day, the county has the option to buy those floors.
- heraldsun.com: County eyes department moves

This move will cause a lot of shuffling of departments, but also promises to serve the community by creating a new meeting room that will hopefully have more modern technology (for recording and broadcasting meetings). This and other new resourcs will be an asset to the whole community.

This is as comprehensive an analysis as I could write for my 800 word column, but it's a start. I'm sure our many citizen pundits will have interesting perspectives to add.

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on November 11th, 2006:

Despite being a ‘blue moon' election year with no major statewide races in North Carolina, Tuesday night's election has some interesting implications for Orange and Chatham Counties.

One lesson learned is that we have the most popular senator in the state. With 74 percent of the vote, Ellie Kinnaird received a higher percentage of votes than anyone else in a contested seat throughout North Carolina. While some people like to peg her as a liberal kook from Carrboro, the fact that she won all but one precinct in Orange County points to her wide appeal.

Thanks to the Chamber of Commerce for passing along this information so we needn't have our annual heart attack when Chapel Hill is invaded by noisy, low-flying military planes:

Our F-15's have had a change in their schedule and will be arriving in
Chapel Hill this Thursday (Nov. 16th) for their practice runs. The time will remain the same - between 3-4pm. PLEASE pass this information along to anyone who needs to be kept in the loop. Let me know if you have any questions.

Again, F-15 practice runs will take place over Kenan this Thursday between 3-4 pm.

Michael

Michael Beale
Assistant Athletic Director for Marketing
University of North Carolina Athletics

I must admit, I still don't get why they need to do this in the middle of our busy town. Don't they have military bases for this kind of thing?

So I'll be gone for the rest of the week doing dual duty as a granddaughter and conference panelist. I'll be speaking about OrangePolitics at the National Forum of the Alliance for Regional Stewardship. I'm not telling you this to brag but to a) let you know what a special thing we have going here, and b) ask for your input on the topic:

Communicating Regional Issues in a New Media World: More than one report has noted the demise of newspapers as the principle means by which citizens learn about their region and its opportunities and challenges. In their place, many organizations are now making creative and effective use of new communications technologies to reach constituents. This session will be filled with practical insights into putting the new communication tools to work.

[ X-Posted from CitizenWill.org]

Did you know that UNC has created an online discussion forum?

Hey, I wouldn't have known but for this email:

Hello all,

I'm writing to let you know that the public discussion forum for Carolina North is now accessible online at http://research.unc.edu/cn/view_comments.php. If you would like to post a comment, click the "leave a comment" link at the bottom of the page, and you'll be asked to register your name and e-mail address. Once registered, you'll receive a confirmation e-mail, after which you can post comments.

Thanks,
Colie Hoffman
Office of Information and Communications
962-6137

Looks like Allen Baddour will get the second Superior Court seat as he has retained the same small margin he had after the provisional ballots were counted last week.

It took all day Tuesday for the ballots to be recounted, but when the final count was in, Baddour had received 17,228 votes, and Stein had received 17,165, a 63-vote difference.
- heraldsun.com: Baddour retains Superior Court post

Since we had four very talented and qualified candidates running for these two seats, I knew we'd have a good judge coming out of it either way. I do regret that our community will never get to have Adam Stein on the bench, but we still benefit from his work in so many other ways.

Congratulations, Allen. It's certainly nice to see someone my own age in a respected position of authority. Give 'em hell!

The unchecked growth charted for NW Chapel Hill will not only effectively choke off many of the neighborhoods in the area, but will, in a metastatic line of attack have negative effects on the entire town.

Can schools absorb 1000 new students?
Can roads (especially Weaver Dairy Road) absorb thousands of additional cars?
Can an over stressed environment absorb more impervious surfaces, pollution, and waste?

We cannot continue to just focus on each of these proposals as though they were an entity unto themselves. We must see how each one of them fits into the greater whole of the huge number of residences already here.

This “gateway” entrance into Chapel Hill will be one that greets people with bumper to bumper traffic. Neighborhoods to the west of MLK Jr. Blvd. will be isolated from the option of walkability that this area has the potential to offer.

There must be a moratorium on all plans in the NW Quadrant. There must be a study done on how this area can continue to exist as a viable part of the community if development continues in this haphazard fashion.

I was pleased to read recently that the Town of Hillsborough is working with the county to develop plans for a rural buffer which will limit sprawl and guide development in areas where it's considered desirable.

Town elected officials and staff have been working with their Orange County counterparts and consultants all year to determine how large Hillsborough should grow and how the town and county can work together better along the boundaries. Under the plan, Hillsborough would have a rural buffer, an understanding with the county about what land eventually will be annexed into the town, and a limit on the expansion of water and sewer services.
- newsobserver.com | Hillsborough weighs future

Click for full-size map.

I wasn't planning to blog this, but I just attended the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership's Annual Meeting and Public Forum and there are a few things continuing to nag at me.

DP chair Tom Tucker started the meeting by discussing their three "clients": UNC, the Town of Chapel Hill, and downtown businesses. These are the same constituencies represented on the DP's board. For all their talking about importance of residential development downtown, no-one is working to include the voices of those who currently live downtown (or would like to). If they did, I think they would hear a very different set of priorities and concerns.

For example, many families who want to live in urban settings also want to be able to walk to work, the grocery store, and the playground. We have to get out of our suburban single-family-home mindset to understand the needs and desires of our potential downtown dwellers.

On Will Raymond's blog post Chapel Hill Downtown Development Initiative: The Debate, there are links to TWENTY ONE separate videos of twenty one different people speaking at a November 20th public hearing on downtown development. To make it real easy to choose which one to watch there are screen shots from the video of the people who spoke with their names captioned at the bottom. (I've copied them below.)