Growth & Development

I am on the mailing lists for most of the local governments, and most of the info I get from them is dull press releases, public notices etc. I perked up when I saw this subject from the city schools "Press Release--Planner to visit class" but was even more surprised to see the following content:

Local developer to visit class

Local developer Roger Perry will speak to fifth grade students at Frank Porter Graham about residential planning on Wednesday, April 11, from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

The students have recently completed a unit on using Global Positioning Systems to study and create maps. The equipment was provided through a Student Enrichment Grant awarded to teacher Kristen Bedell by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Public School Foundation. The equipment used by the students in this unit is the same used by professional planners and developers to view plots and design projects.

Almost every day I note a news story that I want to blog about here and save it for later (because I'm usually at work). This week, things have really piled up and if I waited until I had time to write a whole post about them, they wouldn't be news by the time I posted them. So here's a wrap up of some interesting stuff from this week...

Carrboro approved a 6-month moratorium on development in it's northern area, and Chapel Hill moved a similar proposal forward by establishing the Northern Area Task Force . Orange Chat has extended coverage of the Carrboro discussion. I can't help but wonder if our northern areas would have such problems if they were planned to have pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods and connective-streets instead of cul-de-sacs, but the best we can hope for now is to avoid more of the same.

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, March 24th:

One of the great things about our community is that everyone has an opinion. The number of folks coming out to speak at public meetings and writing letters to the editor is far greater than most other places of a similar size.

The volume of people participating in these sort of one-shot ways of expressing an opinion on a town issue are thankfully as plentiful as ever. Unfortunately, though, it seems the number of folks willing to participate in the public service activities that require a sustained time commitment has declined in recent years.

During the last Chapel Hill Town Council election there were only seven candidates running by the time the dust settled. This was the smallest number of people putting themselves forward for service in at least two decades, even as the population of our town increases.

It's not just the number of folks standing for election that has declined, though. There's also been a clear decline in people interested in serving on the town's important volunteer advisory boards.