Ruby Sinreich's blog

The Chamber ventures far from home

If you thought the Chamber of Commerce's biannual Inter-City Visits were junkets of questionable value, you might be interested to note that now they're organizing a trip to China!  The most amazing part to me is that they charged participants $1,130 for a whirlwind 2-day trip to Michigan, but the cost for their 8-day China trip is only $2,099 (plus travel to JFK airport).  Someone must be underwriting this trip. Who is it and why?

An open invitation to Orange County candidates

Last night, I sent the following e-mail to all of the declared candidates in 2009 municipal and school board races:

Hello, candidates. Congratulations on your decision to stand for election in Orange County this year!  In case you are not aware of it, I'd like to introduce you to the progressive local politics blog OrangePolitics and ask you to contribute to this online community of people interested in Orange County issues.

Bill Strom resigning!

As reported by Kirk Ross of the Carrboro Citizen on OP and on the CC site, Chapel Hill Town Councilmember Bill Strom has announced that he will be resigning as of August 1, and will be leaving the area.

The interesting political implication is that I think the Council will now be expected to appoint a replacement since this resignation did not happen within the 40-day window before an election candidate filing period which would have led to an automatic appointment of the 5th vote-getter.

Election 2009 - let's do this

Hey all! Thanks for doing such a great job of keeping the conversation going while I am jugging a new job and my newly expanded family!  With the municpal and city school board elections coming up, I want to make sure OP continues to be a key source of information for voters. In the past, our election section has carried nonpartisan candidate information, links to media guides, and listing of events.  On the new OP we can do much more.

Since we have a proper calendar now, folks can submit events directly, and we'll all be on top of the latest forums and candidate schmoozefests. We can also use the database power behind the site to make more useful candidate lists (I got halfway there with the 2008 candiate list last year), and maybe even some handy maps like those contributed in 2007.

County-wide book club to discuss homelessness

I usually try to discourage wholesale posting of press releases - as I'm about to do - but this just sounds like a great idea and I don't have anything to add to it.

Orange County’s Partnership to End Homelessness would like to invite the public to participate in a “Community Read” of the book The Soloist by Steve Lopez.  The event is the first in a series of community education activities that will explore the issues of homelessness.

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