Dan Coleman's blog

from: Chapel Hill Herald, Saturday, December 04, 2004

For most of us, it would be hard to say no to $500,000 a year, especially if it promises to be followed by a gift of $12 million. But "no" is just what UNC should say to the Pope Foundation in response to its generous yet tainted offer to fund a Western civilization minor for undergraduates.

Much of the controversy surrounding the proposed donation is over the Pope family's association with the Pope Center for Higher Education, an aggressive critic of those areas of the UNC curriculum that suggest the scope of undergraduate education might be broader than the traditional Western canon.

Chapel Hill Herald, Saturday, November 20, 2004
Final Edition, Editorial Section, Page 2

For advocates of controlled growth, Election Day brought some good news. The water extension bond was narrowly defeated in northeast Chatham County. This, coupled with the election of two commission candidates backed by the Chatham Coalition, indicates a tenuous but real change of direction for Chatham.

Sonny Keisler, president of Friends of Rocky River and a longtime developer, told The Independent's Jennifer Strom, "Water lines are a double-edged sword. They can do a lot of good but they can also do a lot of harm."

Given the frantic insistence on growth of the current majority on the county commission, northeast Chatham residents have done well to put the brakes on water-line extension.

The Chatham water situation brought to mind Carl Hiaasen's novels of development politics in south Florida. Hiaasen's stories usually involve corrupt officials, ruthless developers, ethically challenged investors, detectives who'd rather be fishing, slobbery dogs and murder.

There were a lot of people at the End Homelessness Roundtable this morning, enough to make a serious effort to organize more effective ways to provide appropriate levels of housing and services for those in need. One point that stuck with me was that our inability to provide comprehensive services for the chronically homeless in a coherent fashion is very expensive, probably costly enough to pay for a good program if we could focus the resources appropriately.