Racial & Economic Justice
According to the right, liberals love to throw money at things. This is just what Dorothy Verkerk and Edith Wiggins did with the cemetery repair issue last Monday night. There was controversy over how to spend the $150,000 allocated to the repairs, so they came up with the idea of spending another $70,000. And, thanks to Mayor Foy's readiness to bang the gavel, a $40,000 cost savings proposed by Cam Hill was not even discussed.
Here's how Cam Hill described the problem in a letter to Foy:
I had met with Gaines Steer (of the Last Unicorn) and Bill Wyatt (an associated welder) and they had assured me of two things:
#1. That the Di/Phi fences are in no immediate danger of irredeemable deterioration. We need not be in any hurry to restore these fences; we can explore all possible options.
#2. There are lower cost alternatives to the proposed $52,000 restoration proposal.
The Chapel Hill Town Council finally bit the bullet and made this name change. Seems like this was not a great process no matter how you slice it. Next question: What should they rename Martin Luther King Street over off of Legion Road?
I'm serious. The previous MLK Street in the Public Housing neighborhood off Legion Road will need to be renamed now that Airport Road is to have the MLK moniker. I have a suggestion, though some might feel that it fails to get away from our history of naming Public Housing streets after African Americans: How about naming the street for late Councilmember Barbara Booth Powell.
Many of you may not remember Councilmember Powell, but she served in the mid 1990's until her untimely death from cancer. Barbara served on the Council with me and was an outstanding advocate for affordable housing and public housing. Her leadership was critical to the development of the Rainbow Heights public housing in Chapel Hill. Her career was spent working for the state of North Carolina in the Department of Commerce investing in affordable housing and economic development projects across North Carolina.
Guest Post by Steven Sherman
On Saturday, December 4th, community members heard powerful, disturbing testimony about why North Carolina needs collective bargaining for public sector workers. The context was a public hearing (the third in the state) held by the International Worker Justice Campaign at the Chapel Hill Public Library.
There were a lot of people at the End Homelessness Roundtable this morning, enough to make a serious effort to organize more effective ways to provide appropriate levels of housing and services for those in need. One point that stuck with me was that our inability to provide comprehensive services for the chronically homeless in a coherent fashion is very expensive, probably costly enough to pay for a good program if we could focus the resources appropriately.
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