Ruby Sinreich's blog
The Town of Chapel Hill's Horace Williams Citizens' Commitee will meet tomorrow (12/18/03, 5:30 pm, C.H. library) to respond to UNC's latest draft plans for Carolina North. This group was created to advise the Town Council on issues related to UNC's development of a satellite campus on Airport Road. I invite anyone who has been paying attention (as many of you have) to share your opinions with the committee and the Town Council.
(By the way, the Town Planning department has put up a great website with tons of resources on Horace Williams/Carolina North, check it out.)
I'll be out of town and have to miss this meeting, here's what I wrote to them:
OK people, you asked for coverage of the entire County. I warned you... we're not qualified. But we'll give it a shot. (It hasn't stopped me yet.)
So you tell us: what's going on north of I-85? Is Hillsborough still quaint? How many Wal*Marts are there now?
Orange County has been looking for a new landfill for many years. Our current space, just north of Chapel Hill city limits on Eubanks Road, is filling up. You won't be at all surprised to learn that none of our neighbors in this vast, friendly county have agreed to take a new landfill near their homes or their favorite recreational areas. There have been expansions near the current landfill, which to me seems to violate the County's 25-year-old agreement not to dump any more on the landfill neighbors (mostly black) on Rogers Road.
According to the News & Observer, we're now teaming up with other Triangle communities to seek some sucker, er I mean, some other helpful county to take our garbage and some money.
Will anyone go for this? Even so, it makes my skin crawl to think of selling our garbage to other communities who surely would rather get the money for their important government services, through nice property taxes or clean industry. Maybe they'd like a UNC satellite campus! We've got one to spare...
It's no secret that UNC plans for Carolina North (CN) to be a research park, along the lines of NCSU's Centennial Campus (CC). In fact, the guys in charge of creating Carolina North specialize in it, which I think is sort of unfairly stacking the deck for research, when earlier plans for CN indicated there would a be significant academic (ie: teaching) activity there.
Associate Vice Chancellor Mark Crowell was recruited by UNC directly after working with CC at State. (He's quoted as saying "We don't give away football tickets, why should we give away technology?" Doesn't that just warm your cockles?) And the leader of development of Carolina North is Vice Chancellor (and UNC alumn) Tony Waldrop, who came to UNC after building a similar institution at the University of Illinois.
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