Orange County
Date:
Wednesday, November 14, 2012 - 7:00pm to 9:00pm
Location:
Committee Room, 2nd Floor of Durham City Hall, 101 City Hall Plaza, Durham
In a February work session of the county commissioners, Chapel Hill mayor Mark Kleinschmidt took the podium to present a sweeping overview of the past 25 years of his town's approach to land use planning. Speaking with the didactic urgency we now expect from Kleinschmidt when he's both prepared and fired up, the mayor encouraged the commissioners to maintain their commitment to long-term planning for public transportation by adopting the Orange County transit plan.
After years of planning and community discussion, the Orange County Board of Commissioners recently placed a referendum on the November ballot for a half-cent sales tax to support public transit. Together with state and federal contributions, the new revenue will support a 20-year investment in bus and rail service in Orange County. There are many reasons to support the transit tax, like reducing the environmental degradation wreaked by overreliance on car travel and the sprawl it generates. Often overlooked are the benefits of public transit for marginalized populations.
The Orange County Cultural Center (OCCC), a nonprofit cultural arts organization located in Hillsborough, is thrilled to partner with OrangePolitics to help celebrate OP’s 9th birthday on Thursday at Mystery Brewing. The OCCC shares OP’s vision of an open, diverse, and thriving community of ideas where creativity and innovation are nurtured.
We strongly believe that the more rural areas of Orange County are currently neglected in terms of access to arts and cultural events, despite the abundance of nationally known writers, storytellers, artists and other performers who inhabit Central and Northern Orange. There is no large, centrally located performance space serving Hillsborough and rural Orange. Youth do not have a central location for after-school arts programming, often having to drive a significant distance to reach the nearest arts center. The OCCC envisions a cultural arts center in or near downtown Hillsborough. The OCCC will benefit the economic vitality of the region by providing open space and the infrastructure to foster artistic and historic enrichment, collaboration, and education.
This week, we’re celebrating nine years of context, coverage, and connections on OrangePolitics. We need your help to keep it going and keep innovating by helping us to cover the costs of upgrading the site. We’re very proud of our accomplishments, and we want to tell you some of the reasons we think you should support OrangePolitics.
Hosting a Forum for Discussing Local Issues. We provide a space for people to share a wide range of views about local issues impacting Orange County. We spark conversation by bringing together the voices of community leaders and activists in an open forum for civil and thoughtful debate.
Providing the Entire Context. OP’s editors and readers combine many decades of experience in local politics. We provide background, and tell the stories behind the stories that you won’t find in the local media. We follow issues from their beginnings through their resolutions--our posts about the transit tax and Chapel Hill 2020 are recent examples.
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