September 2012
This event is always a good time and a great way to meet your neighbors (if you live in Northside) and community leaders (if you live anywhere). From Facebook:
The GNI Neighborhood Night Out and Block Party is an annual community event and opportunity to build strong, healthy connections between student and non-student residents of neighborhoods surrounding Downtown Chapel Hill and UNC. The event is free, and includes food (BUNS!, Ben & Jerry's, McAlisters), music, games and prizes for all ages. This event is sponsored by the Town of Chapel Hill, UNC-Chapel Hill, the Carolina Union Activities Board (CUAB), Empowerment, Inc., and the Downtown Partnership.
Date:
Thursday, September 13, 2012 - 5:00pm to 9:00pm
Location:
Hargraves Community Center, 216 North Robertson Street, Chapel Hill, NC
The board of elections has now allocated all early votes back to the precinct level from the primary, and here are the precinct-by-precinct totals for Amendment One.
A public information meeting will be held at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 10,
to receive comments and feedback on the UNC-Chapel Hill Carolina North
Annual Report to the Town of Chapel Hill. The meeting will be held in
the Council Chamber of Town Hall, 405 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Carolina North is envisioned as a mixed-use academic campus on
university-owned property along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, two
miles north of the main campus. University and Town representatives
signed a development agreement in 2009 that covers the first 20 years of
development on the site. The agreement contains guidelines and
standards for the development of the first 3 million square feet of a
mixed-use research and
academic campus on 133 acres.
The annual report lets the Town and public know what development
activities have occurred on the Carolina North site in the past year and
the ways in which the University is complying with the terms of the
development agreement. The report is part of the structure established
by the agreement for providing continued town-gown communication. The
report will be posted online at http://www.townofchapelhill.org/carolinanorth
Town Manager Roger Stancil will review the report and the public
input before reporting on Sept. 24 to the Town Council on his review of
the development agreement and its requirements.
Public input is welcome. Send comments about the annual report or other issues related to Carolina North at any time to
carolinanorth@townofchapelhill.org or write Town of Chapel Hill Planning Department, Carolina North, 405 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Chapel Hill, NC 27514.
Detailed information is available online at http://www.townofchapelhill.org/index.aspx?page=900 and http://carolinanorth.unc.edu/. To be added to a mailing list to receive regular updates about the Carolina North development agreement, please contact info@townofchapelhill.org.
Town of Chapel Hill
contact: Catherine Lazorko, 919-969-5055 or clazorko@townofchapelhill.org or UNC-Chapel Hill contact: Susan Hudson, 919-962-8415, susan_hudson@unc.edu
Date:
Monday, September 10, 2012 - 5:30pm to 7:00pm
Location:
Council Chamber, Chapel Hill Town Hall
On the heels of summer, while citizens are getting back from other pursuits, the County is poised to solidify an historic rezoning of a community that had the misfortune to be in an Economic Development District that was conceived of theoretically about twenty years ago. The Eno district, one of three, was generally identified as a place for future business zoning in the early 90's. Nothing was done for a couple of decades. People moved into the area, built community connections, and were unaware of the land-use designation that lay several layers deep in the County's casual planning scheme.
Sample ballots are out, and Orange starts mailing out absentee ballots on Tuesday the 11th.
The key to which precincts get which ballot ind the links to the ballots are at
http://www.co.orange.nc.us/elect/SampleBallot.asp there are four styles because of Orange being in two congressional and two state house districts.
Style 4 is used only in Cameron Park
Style 3 is used only in six northern precincts (Caldwell, Carr, Cedar Grove, Efland, Eno, St Marys, Tolars)
Styles 1 and 2 cover the rest
Tonight the County Commissioners abandoned tradition and moved swiftly forward on two issues. Despite opposition from Commissioners Alice Gordon and Barry Jacobs, they approved the unpopular rezoning of the Eno Economic Development District that Mark Marcoplos told us about. And at the urging of Commisioners Valerie Foushee and Pam Hemminger, who will both be leaving the board in December, they unanimously approved a resolution drafted on the spot to endorse and more forward the Rogers Road community center.
Where have these action-oriented Commissioners been for the last ten years? I don't want to hear another commissioner talk about how overdue something is without also mentioning how long they have been on the board of commissioners and why they didn't do something about it 5 years ago.
So far this week, my e-mail to the school board was trapped in their spam filter (and not discovered until after they voted on the subject of the e-mail), and then I went to a public hearing at which the county commissioners did not in fact accept public comment. Not a great week for civic engagement.
From our own wonderful media access center, The People's Channel:
Returning to the Triangle on the coattails of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC, Amy Goodman, award winning journalist and founder of Democracy Now!, will speak at the Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship on September 8, 2012. Ms. Goodman is on a nonstop book tour as the nation prepares for the 2012 presidential election in November.
The proceeds from the event will go to benefit the local media outlets that broadcast her program; The Peoples Channel & Durham Community Media, WNCU and WCOM. The last time Ms. Goodman was last in the Triangle in 2009 she spoke to a sold out crowd benefiting the same local nonprofit media organizations. If her last visit to the Triangle is any indicator, tickets are expected to sell out fast.
Date:
Saturday, September 8, 2012 - 7:00pm
Location:
Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 4907 Garrett Road, Durham, NC
The Town of Chapel Hill invites the community to participate in information sessions about zoning opportunities
for the Ephesus Church Road-Fordham Boulevard area.
To reach as many residents as possible, meetings with identical
presentations will be held on Thursday, Sept. 20, from 8 to 9:30 a.m. in
the Council Chamber of Town Hall, 405 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., and
from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Church of the Holy Family, 200 Hayes Road.
Current community discussions about the Ephesus Church Road-Fordham
Boulevard area are being initiated by the Town of Chapel Hill as part of
its work to implement the Chapel Hill 2020 comprehensive plan. In a
collaborative community process, residents and Town staff will identify
appropriate form and zoning regulations in and near Ephesus Church Road
and Fordham Boulevard. Technical assistance with the focus area
initiative will be provided through a $20,000 grant to the Town from the
Mayors Innovation Project.
At the Sept. 20 meeting, the Mayors Innovation Project consultant
team, comprising Scott Bernstein of the Center for Neighborhood
Technology and Hazel Boyrs of PlaceMakers, will present information
about zoning opportunities for the area. All community members are
invited to participate in the process and share their ideas. It is
anticipated that the consultant team will return to Chapel Hill to
present their initial recommendations for community consideration.
The 123-acre area surrounding the intersection of Ephesus Church
Road and Fordham Boulevard was the subject of an earlier study adopted
by the Town Council on Feb. 28, 2011. The Ephesus Church Road-Fordham
Boulevard Small Area Plan, led by the Town's Economic Development
Division, defines land future land uses and offers solutions to the
transportation network to encourage reinvestment.
The focus area is located near the intersection of Ephesus Church
Road and Fordham Boulevard and extends from South Elliott Road to north
of Ram's Plaza. It was one of six areas included in Future Focus
community discussions that took place in spring 2012 during the
development of the Chapel Hill 2020 comprehensive plan. The plan focused
on areas most likely to change in the future due to vacant land,
underdeveloped sites, and their location along transportation and
transit corridors.
Questions and ideas are welcome. For those unable to attend the
information session, there will be opportunities for future involvement.
To be added to the email distribution list for the Ephesus Church
Road-Fordham Boulevard Focus Area, contact compplan@townofchapelhill.org or 919-968-2728. To find more information, visit www.townofchapelhill.org/index.aspx?page=1656
Date:
Thursday, September 20, 2012 - 8:00am to 9:30am
Location:
Council Chamber, Chapel Hill Town Hall
The Town of Chapel Hill invites the community to participate in information sessions about zoning opportunities
for the Ephesus Church Road-Fordham Boulevard area.
To reach as many residents as possible, meetings with identical
presentations will be held on Thursday, Sept. 20, from 8 to 9:30 a.m. in
the Council Chamber of Town Hall, 405 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., and
from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Church of the Holy Family, 200 Hayes Road.
Current community discussions about the Ephesus Church Road-Fordham
Boulevard area are being initiated by the Town of Chapel Hill as part of
its work to implement the Chapel Hill 2020 comprehensive plan. In a
collaborative community process, residents and Town staff will identify
appropriate form and zoning regulations in and near Ephesus Church Road
and Fordham Boulevard. Technical assistance with the focus area
initiative will be provided through a $20,000 grant to the Town from the
Mayors Innovation Project.
At the Sept. 20 meeting, the Mayors Innovation Project consultant
team, comprising Scott Bernstein of the Center for Neighborhood
Technology and Hazel Boyrs of PlaceMakers, will present information
about zoning opportunities for the area. All community members are
invited to participate in the process and share their ideas. It is
anticipated that the consultant team will return to Chapel Hill to
present their initial recommendations for community consideration.
The 123-acre area surrounding the intersection of Ephesus Church
Road and Fordham Boulevard was the subject of an earlier study adopted
by the Town Council on Feb. 28, 2011. The Ephesus Church Road-Fordham
Boulevard Small Area Plan, led by the Town's Economic Development
Division, defines land future land uses and offers solutions to the
transportation network to encourage reinvestment.
The focus area is located near the intersection of Ephesus Church
Road and Fordham Boulevard and extends from South Elliott Road to north
of Ram's Plaza. It was one of six areas included in Future Focus
community discussions that took place in spring 2012 during the
development of the Chapel Hill 2020 comprehensive plan. The plan focused
on areas most likely to change in the future due to vacant land,
underdeveloped sites, and their location along transportation and
transit corridors.
Questions and ideas are welcome. For those unable to attend the
information session, there will be opportunities for future involvement.
To be added to the email distribution list for the Ephesus Church
Road-Fordham Boulevard Focus Area, contact compplan@townofchapelhill.org or 919-968-2728. To find more information, visit www.townofchapelhill.org/index.aspx?page=1656
Date:
Thursday, September 20, 2012 - 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Location:
Church of the Holy Family, 200 Hayes Road
Here are a few photos of and by the Orange County delegation at the DNC here in North Carolina. Enjoy!
If you've followed the wealth of tweets that have come out of this first day of the Inter-City Visit you know that three groups of participants got up early this morning and made our way to Indiana by bus, plane, and bus again. We took a bus tour of Bloomington, had an opening reception, and then split into groups to have discussions about housing, downtowns, sustainability, education, and the arts. Over 60 members of the Bloomington community joined us for these conversations.
Here are my impresssions so far.
- Many of the buildings downtown and on Indiana University's campus are made of locally quarried limestone and are really lovely.
- Bloomington has a very large downtown that is laid out in a much more grid-like configuration than Carrboro or Chapel Hill.
- Bloomington is home to IU and is the county seat and has a lot of associated reasons to bring folks downtown.
- Bloomington City Hall is located in a renovated factory (the Showers Factory) that is very attractive.
Today 70 Orange County residents traveled to Bloomington, Indiana for a Inter-City Visit to learn how their community deals with challenges related to public policy, student housing, economic development, and other questions. These trips are only as valuable as the information we bring back to Orange County, and I hope that through my tweets, posts on Orange Politics, and work when I return to Chapel Hill, I can provide insights into our trip and improve our community.
Most of the first day was travel from Chapel Hill to Bloomington. I started the morning by boarding a shuttle bus from University Mall at 7:00 AM, and didn’t arrive in Bloomington until 2:30 PM. That being said, I already have ideas and thoughts about how we can improve Chapel Hill based on experiences in Bloomington.
Sent to the Chapel Hill Town Council on 9-10-12:
Dear Chapel Hill Mayor and Town Council:
I wish to thank those of you planning to vote against approval of the Charterwood development on September 12, 2012. It shows your recognition of the terrible precedent being set by the developer’s legal maneuver of merely recombining property tracts in order to circumvent neighborhood rights associated with the protest-petition.
SAPFO isn't perhaps the most interesting topic the BoCC deals with, but it will become critical if we have to stop all development in town. Agenda (link below) for our joint work session with the county and both school systems includes discussion of some modifications to SAPFO.
Date:
Thursday, September 13, 2012 - 7:00pm
Location:
Southern Human Services Center
The 2nd day of our Inter-City visit was really fascinating, with interesting presentations and lots of good dialogue and ideas. We started with a panel discussion on economic development. Some tidbits from that discussion:
North Carolina political junkies can immerse themselves in Tar Heel politics past and present during a conference Sept. 14 and 15 at Wilson Library at the Univeristy of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The event will feature talks about ten political campaigns in the state from the 19th and 20th centuries.
Registration is $10 per person.
Date:
Friday, September 14, 2012 - 12:30pm to Saturday, September 15, 2012 - 1:00pm
Location:
Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Tonight the Orange County Commissioners had a work session including two items related to technology. In the first, a consultant from the UNC School of GOvernment (how many of those are there?) presented Strategic Information Technology Plan which prioritized investments in tools for citizen engament and delivery of services. They also heard a brief update on the county staff's attempt to make agendas more electronically accessible through clean, searchable PDFs.
I don't have a summary of today's sessions because I had a work conference call, so perhaps another attendee can provide one (I'm talking to you Lee Storrow). However, at the end of the sessions today we talked about what we were going to take away from the Visit. Here is a listing:
I wish Kirk Ross had published "A Tale of Two Towns" a week earlier, before 75 or so of us went to Bloomington.
I gently lobbied Kirk to sign up for the trip in late May when it was announced, and he was essentially non-responsive. It looked to be pricey, even with a scholarship, and Kirk's journalistic mission nowadays appears to be mostly NC politics, which he covers well and which needs covering well.
Orange County already has received 803 absentee ballot applications (processing started just a week ago on September 7) including 200 received from addresses outside the US. Seems to me quite a large number for so early in the "season"
For those who like stats, here's a breakdown of the three types: civilian within the US, military anywhere, civilians outside the US (overseas). I broke out the party breakdown of overseas voters as they are interestingly even more heavily Democratic than the general pool. Overseas voters can be college students abroad, those on personal or business travel, expatriates whose last US residence was in Orange County, and even US citizens by birth who have never even been in the US (children of American born parents where the last residence of the parent was in Orange County)
A friend of mine who is a teacher at a local high school asked me to post the following story. My friend requested that I share this without any identifying information so as not to compromise student trust and confidentiality.
One of my students (a 16 year old) is on the email list for Expressions, the shop on Franklin Street. Over Labor Day Weekend, he received an email stating that if he came in to the store and said the words "purple bud" he would get a good sized free sample of some brand of Spice -- synthetic weed. He did. This particular brand of synthetic weed is "legal" only because the laws regulating most synthetic weed as a class one scheduled narcotic haven't quite caught up to the chemicals that are sprayed on the plants. Apparently, North Carolina has recently joined an initiative with 28 other states banning these forms of synthetic marijuana.
On Wednesday, September 19th, the community will be gathering to
discuss the Steering Committee structure, purpose, and application
process for the MLK/Estes Drive Focus Area (recommended name: Central
West Focus Area). This meeting will be held from 5:00-6:30pm in the HR
Training Room, second floor, Town Hall, 405 Martin Luther King Jr.
Blvd., Chapel Hill.
In order to prepare for Wednesday’s meeting, a survey has been
developed with the purpose of collecting information in advance of the
meeting. Please complete this survey and provide us with your thoughts!
The survey can be found at the following link: Steering Committee Survey
The information from this survey will be compiled and will be a part
of the discussion during the Wednesday, September 19th Recommendation
Meeting #2.
Please complete the survey by noon on Wednesday, September 19th. The
responses from the survey will be published on this blog by Friday,
September 21st.
For more information about this process, please visit www.townofchapelhill.org/estesdrive
Date:
Wednesday, September 19, 2012 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm
Location:
HR Training Room, second floor, Town Hall, 405 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Chapel Hill
By my estimation, five sitting Chapel Hill Town Council members are preparing to vote "yes" on Charterwood, in direct violation of their sworn oaths. Specifically, they will be rezoning a tract of land with full knowledge that their actions will have significant and costly impacts on hundreds of citizens and property owners who live downstream of the development.
How do I know this will happen? All I had to do was open my eyes this morning. Here is a picture of sediment from Weaver Dairy Road running from Cedar Fork Creek into Eastwood Lake.Despite the best, state-of-the-art efforts of the highway contractors working on Weaver Dairy, every significant rain event has resulted in extensive silt pollution that Lake Forest homeowners will have to pay to remove.
Five council members (including Mayor Kleinschmidt) have basically said "tough shit" to people living in Lake Forest and also around Lake Ellen. They have basically said, "We know Charterwood will be a problem for you and we don't care."
The Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership is ramping up YOUR involvement in the Chapel Hill downtown with the "Dream Up Downtown Walks." These walks are moving conversations to explore and engage in our downtown. The walks are on the first Thursday of September, October, November and December, beginning at 6 pm at the University Baptist Church Memorial Garden at the corner of Franklin Street and Columbia Street.
In a crowded meeting last night, the Board of County Commissioners reviewed and discussed the proposed interlocal implementation agreement for the recently adopted transit plan. The discussion centered around a few questions: who would be party to the agreement, who would have control over how much of the revenues brought in from the transit tax. I've excerpted the part of the more than 400-page agenda packet that concerns the agreement here for you to see the draft of the agreement itself.
From the Chair of the UNC Employee Forum
Dear Staff Member:
The
Employee Forum, in conjunction with the Faculty Council and Student
Government, encourages you to attend a peaceful assembly in support of
Chancellor Holden Thorp
on Friday, September 21st from
11:30-12:30 pm in front of South Building. We would like to get as
huge a crowd as possible during this hour, so please take your lunch
period and join us.
The
Forum’s Executive Committee has drafted a statement in support of our
Chancellor (attached). The faculty and students are doing the same.
Petitions are being
drafted that you will be able to sign on Friday, with room for you to
also leave a message to the Chancellor and our University system
leaders. The petitions will be available from 10 until 5 and will be
located in the Pit, in front of Wilson Library, and
in front of South Building.
This meeting does not count as work time, so please use your lunch time or personal leave to attend.
Thanks,
Jackie Overton, Chair
Employee Forum
Date:
Friday, September 21, 2012 - 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Location:
UNC South Building (outside the front entrance)
I was a bit of a doubter
when Holden Thorp was first appointed to be the UNC Chancellor, but he
has turned out to be the best thing to happen to South Building in
decades. I’ve been surprised to see some of my friends blaming Thorp for
UNC’s athletics scandal and acting as if staff abuse of med air flights
was a capital crime.
Thorp clearly seems guilty of trusting Matt Kupec too much, and
allowing him to waste taxpayer dollars. But Thorp is also a tremendously
thoughtful and effective leader of this hugely complex academic
institution. One stupid screw-up wasting money does not outweigh the
great job he has done for many thousands of students, for Orange County,
and for the state of North Carolina. In fact, I think he’s due a lot of
credit for the badly-needed daylight that’s been shed on UNC athletics.
The Chancellor’s position has become untenable now because of athletic boosters and anti-intellectuals like Art Pope
pounding the drums of “scandal.” These people are not concerned with
the quality of education available to North Carolinians. Of course the
Kupec/Hansbrough thing was a big mistake, but it doesn’t make Thorp
unfit to do all the many things required of a good university
chancellor. Let’s don’t blame Thorp for having to clean up the mess left
by decades of athletic corruption and mismanagement.
At the eleventh hour, the BoCC is still working through important issues on the transit plan - including whether Chapel Hill Transit (CHT) can use the new sales tax funds for existing service. Under the current agreement, they cannot. This is of particular concern given CHT's reliance on UNC funds and routing. The current plan does not allow CHT to use sales tax funds to change their routes to fill in possible gaps created by changes in UNC''s routes.
Its hard to understand why this is coming up for the first time -but at least people may finally start talking about how the transit plan impacts CHT and the bus system that everyone loves. Its especially difficult to understand why the county is so anxious to give control over transit to TTA.
Great report by Chapelboro's Elizabeth Friend
http://chapelboro.com/pages/14273726.php
The video of the meeting is a worth a look
http://orange-nc.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=355
Date:
Saturday, September 22, 2012 - 12:00pm to 2:00pm
Location:
Jessee's Coffee & Bar, 401 E. Main Street, Carrboro
Voter registration is heavy in Orange County, with 11,223 new voters since January 1, with 3,320 of those August 1 through September 21.
Conventional analysis focuses on net voter registration e.g. changes in totals (by party) since January 1, but I chose to look also at gross totals to see how registration drives are faring, then subtracting to see cancellations.
One big observation, unaffiliated registration has been at record highs this year for Orange, with Ds and Rs at historic lows. I broke out this year in two parts before showing the total for the year. The cancellations are the total of gross minus net, and covers those who move away andd register elsewhere, die, or have felony convictions recorded.
Looks like registration for this year is likely to set an all-time record at the current pace, as registration was quite high for the May Amendment One vote. Regular registration ends October 12, with registration allowed at early voting October 18- November 3
So, this isn't our usual process for naming a school, but as discussed before, we can view this as rebuilding a school at the site of Northside Elementary. So on the agenda for this meeting (link to come as soon as it is posted) on October 4th is to make this official and name Elementary #11 as the new Northside Elementary.
Date:
Thursday, October 4, 2012 - 7:00pm
Location:
Chapel Hill Town Hall Council Chamber
This week, we’re celebrating nine years of context, coverage, and connections on OrangePolitics. We need your help to keep it going and keep innovating by helping us to cover the costs of upgrading the site. We’re very proud of our accomplishments, and we want to tell you some of the reasons we think you should support OrangePolitics.
Hosting a Forum for Discussing Local Issues. We provide a space for people to share a wide range of views about local issues impacting Orange County. We spark conversation by bringing together the voices of community leaders and activists in an open forum for civil and thoughtful debate.
Providing the Entire Context. OP’s editors and readers combine many decades of experience in local politics. We provide background, and tell the stories behind the stories that you won’t find in the local media. We follow issues from their beginnings through their resolutions--our posts about the transit tax and Chapel Hill 2020 are recent examples.
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?
Thursday marks the 9th anniversary of the day OrangePolitics came to be. A few of you old timers will remember that it didn't always work the way it did today. OP's first platform was MovableType. It didn't offer much in the way of comment moderation, which led to some very crazy things being posted on the site. In 2004, I moved the site to Wordpress, an open source platform that was better, but lacked some key community elements.
Five years ago, I asked for donations from the OP community to help bring us to a proper community platform. Readers donated $1,134 and we were able to move the site to Drupal 5. I think most people agree that having community tools such as real profiles for each user and the ability for everyone to blog without having to publish to the front page are big improvements.
The Orange County Cultural Center (OCCC), a nonprofit cultural arts organization located in Hillsborough, is thrilled to partner with OrangePolitics to help celebrate OP’s 9th birthday on Thursday at Mystery Brewing. The OCCC shares OP’s vision of an open, diverse, and thriving community of ideas where creativity and innovation are nurtured.
We strongly believe that the more rural areas of Orange County are currently neglected in terms of access to arts and cultural events, despite the abundance of nationally known writers, storytellers, artists and other performers who inhabit Central and Northern Orange. There is no large, centrally located performance space serving Hillsborough and rural Orange. Youth do not have a central location for after-school arts programming, often having to drive a significant distance to reach the nearest arts center. The OCCC envisions a cultural arts center in or near downtown Hillsborough. The OCCC will benefit the economic vitality of the region by providing open space and the infrastructure to foster artistic and historic enrichment, collaboration, and education.
First some digital goodies: This site has a few cool tricks and an archive of 3,600 posts that don't get utilized much. One is the random post generator: http://orangepolitics.org/random. Another is what I call "in review." It allows you filter and sort posts by date and rating to find some of the best (and worst) and most commented posts of previous eras: http://orangepolitics.org/in-review. For example, here are the top rated posts of the past 365 days.
And some less virtual treats: at today's birthday party we'll be serving BBQ sliders, catfish bites, and hushpuppies from Hillsborough BBQ, as well as fresh, delicious beer (by the pint) from Mystery Brewing. And there will also be a limited number of cupcakes from Weaver Street Market's bakery for the early birds.
About a year ago, the Town of Chapel Hill amended its bus advertisement policy to spell out rules for ads with political messages. In August, the Church of Reconciliation in Chapel Hill placed an ad that shows a Jewish and a Palestinian grandfather each with a grandchild and reads “Join with us. Build peace with justice and equality. End U.S. military aid to Israel.” The ad stirred up a controversy and led to a petition from citizens to change the bus ad policy to disallow such ads. The current policy is available online at http://www.townofchapelhill.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=15328.
On Friday, the ACLU of North Carolina sent a letter to the Chapel Hill town manager and elected officials outlining why changing the bus ad policy would violate the free speech clause of the First Amendment. Below is the ACLU-NC press release. The full letter is available here.
After years of planning and community discussion, the Orange County Board of Commissioners recently placed a referendum on the November ballot for a half-cent sales tax to support public transit. Together with state and federal contributions, the new revenue will support a 20-year investment in bus and rail service in Orange County. There are many reasons to support the transit tax, like reducing the environmental degradation wreaked by overreliance on car travel and the sprawl it generates. Often overlooked are the benefits of public transit for marginalized populations.
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