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FYI from from "Letters to the Editor: THE CHAPEL HILL NEWS," Sunday April 20, 2008:
"Do you live, work or own land in Orange County? Are you concerned about whether you and your children can find work here and can afford a home near your job? Do you care if farmland and natural areas are protected? Do you want your county to be a healthy, sustainable place to live?
If so, your voice needs to be heard at the final public information session of the Orange County Comprehensive Plan Update on Wednesday April 23 at 7 p.m. at the Hillsborough Exchange Clubhouse.
The Comprehensive Plan Update will determine how Orange County will develop during the next 20 years. It guides decisions for a wide range of local issues: housing, economic development, transportation, land use, environment, parks/recreation, and services/utilities. This update was begun in 2006 and will be adopted this fall.
This public input session will have an overview and time for citizen comments. Your input will be seen by the county commissioners at the May 19 public hearing on the Comprehensive Plan.
The Community Action Network and the Walkable Hillsborough Coalition are two of the nine organizations in the Orange County Comprehensive Plan Coalition. It is a diverse group of community and business organizations whose mission is to encourage public participation in this update process and encourage outcomes of economic prosperity, environmental health and social equity.
We believe that the Comprehensive Plan should be a positive document, directing appropriate commercial and residential development to designated areas and recommend ordinances and processes that encourage, reward and expedite a sustainable future.
Your voice in shaping the community's long-term future is important.
Learn about the Comprehensive Plan update at the county's dedicated Web site: www.co.orange.nc.us/planning
/compre_cpupdate.asp. -- Dolly Hunter, Community Action Network; Holly Reid, Walkable Hillsborough Coalition
Comments
Um
Where's the Hillsborough Exchange Clubhouse? (And is it the kind of place where peopel like me are allowed? ;-) )
I wonder if any County Commissioner candidates will be there...
Re: Is it the kind of place where people like me are allowed?
The Exchange Club
I was just wondering about the origin of the name. For example in Chapel Hill, The Exchange is a private pool that was originally established to skirt integration. As a Jew, there are still (apparently) country clubs in this country that won't have me a member.
So I actually don't know anything about this place or the meaning of its name in Hillsborough. I definitely don't mean to impugn their good name or good work, and I am all about stopping child abuse. I look forward to checking it out in person tomorrow.
Fighting the past
Ruby,
There are a lot of places in NC where we fight the past. The Exchange Club is no exception. The truth of the matter is the club would welcome you into the club no matter what your religious affiliation is. I'm not going to say that the members of the Club are always open-minded, but religion/race/sex are things that just simply do not matter when it comes to fight child abuse.
Look forward to seeing you there.
Location
Take exit 261 toward Hillsborough
Turn right at Old Chapel Hill-Hillsborough Rd/ Old NC 86
Continue on S Churton St.
Turn left at Orange Grove Rd. (Landmark is the Sun Trust Bank)
Turn right at Exchange Park Ln. (just a short distance off Churton)
Commissioners
I was at the first Countywide meeting on April 9 in Chapel Hill and no County Commissioners or candidates were present. At least 8 County staff were on hand to answer questions and address comments from the public.
Ruby, people like you are certainly welcome and encouraged to attend!
First Meeting
The first public meeting was Monday, January 28th at the Southern Human Services Building. There was a Commissioner present and he indicated that they would not be a part of the public comment phase but would become engaged when the Board of County Commissioners and Planning Board held a Joint Public Hearing to hear public comments on the completed Comprehensive Plan on May 19, 2008, 7:30 PM at the Gordon Battle Courtroom
Nice meeting
I just got back from this, my first foray to the Hillsborough Exchange Club. (Only a small amount of culture shock ensued.) There were about 10 members of the public (including me and Fred) and about 10 Orange County staffers. There were no candidates that I was aware of (I thought some might be interested to come and see what is going on in the County they hope to run).
I haven't had the opportunity to get into the details of the current draft of the plan, but I think it's safe to say that much of it contains goals that few of us would argue with, such as limiting sprawl, increasing housing diversity, strengthening the tax base, encouraging more types of transportation, and providing more and better public facilities. The biggest surprise to me was that there is no mechanism to solicit input from the other governmental bodies (such as municipal advisory and elected boards) that are working on these very issues.
The comprehensive plan is limited to covering only the unincorporated parts of Orange County. But it's not like the County can single-handedly decide how much demand there will be for residential development or schools, for example. And the towns' and county's transportation and land use patterns are entirely dependent on and affected by each other, whether we plan it that way or not. I would really like to see each Town participate in a courtesy review of the current draft plan, and provide comments at the county's public hearing on May 19.
To give you a sense of what it's about, the current draft Comprehensive Plan has 13 chapters. Each section can be downloaded separately on the county web site so you can just look into the parts that interest you. Here are the chapters:
I was amazed to see the county's plan to effectively create a new town spanning between Mebane and Efland. This isn't a new feature of the plan but has been on the county's land use map since 1981! They don't plan to have this incorporated anywhere, but hope for transit-supporting levels of residential (orange) and commercial developemnt (purple). You can see this in the Land Use map above and at left and online (PDF). I think this a strange way to grow a community with no community.
There are also a lot of other cool maps (PDF) in the County Profile Element of the current draft plan.