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Though most of Orange County's public bodies are still in recess for the holidays, the Chapel Hill Town Concil will hold three important meetings. The first, a work session, will cover the financial side of the town's transit plan. The council will also meet with the county's state legislative delegation to discuss priorities in advnace of the Genenal Assembly re-convening next week, and hold a special on Obey Creek.

CARRBORO BOARD OF ALDERPERSONS

• The Board is in recess until Tuesday, January 13.

CHAPEL HILL TOWN COUNCIL

In a previous post, I detailed the initial steps that the Carrboro and Chapel Hill Police Departments are taking to move toward racial equity in policing. But what about other local government functions?

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education has been in the news recently because of its decisions about board composition. First, in filling the vacancy left by outgoing school board member Mia Burroughs, the school board selected a wealthy, white man, one of only two white men in a field of 15 applicants, many of whom were well-qualified women and people of color. Then, they selected two white men as chair and vice chair, passing up a woman of color who has served on the board much longer than the selected vice chair.

Orange County elected officials and health department staff have recongized the immediate need to address poverty in our county. As a result, the Orange County Family Success Alliance has been launched, modeled on the Harlem Children's Zone. The Orange County Health Department used health and school system data to select six zones with the highest need. More information can be found here. Each zone held community meetings to glean information for their applications. They then made short presentations and fielded questions. The Family Success Alliance Advisory Council developed a rubric for scoring of the applications. Below is a collection of tweets that summarize the presentations and selection process carried out on Tuesday, December 16th.