A few days ago I sent the following message to my fellow members of the Outreach Committee for Chapel Hill 2020. Apparently having and stating strong opinions is incompatible with leadership in that process. Rather than spending time struggling to lead the internal outreach process, I think I will be a more effective and way more authentic advocate from the outside. It's a pity the Town can't make room for vocally opinionated comunity members to be leaders in creating our new comprehensive plan. We all have opinions. Some people are just more blunt about them than others. There are precious few "neutral" leaders who are qualified and motivated enough to serve.

Hope some folks will join me in observing the Orange Commissioners' work session on transit, Thursday, 7 PM, at the Southern Human Services Center on Homestead Road.

The title of the agenda item:  Triangle Regional Transit Program – Orange County Bus and Rail Investment Plan; Alternatives Analysis and the Locally Preferred Alternative. There are two attachments. The first was compiled by County staff and is interesting, in many ways.

Ruby (with Izzy) were the bulk of the citizens in the room for the Commissioners' discussion of transit last last month. Because Izzy declared that he had other priorities, Ruby left me to let the Commissioners know that the grassroots organization was out there waiting for a signal from the Commissioners to get going on a transit referendum.  It will most likely happen in the November 2012 election

Tonight I went to the Abbey Court HOA meeting about the Human Rights Center.  Here's the short version of what happened…

I suppose you've all heard about how the Abbey Court Homeowners' Association (HOA) is giving the Abbey Court Human Rights Center (HRC) the boot. The Human Rights Center is a great community center providing many critical human services within Abbey Court, including mentoring, after school care, tutoring etc.  In short, the HOA is arguing that the HRC is in violation of the HOA rules by using their unit for non-residential purposes and kicking them out, under threat of a $300/day fine.

The HOA meeting was tonight at 6pm in Raleigh and was closed to the public, however this afternoon it occurred to me that the non-profit organization I work for owns one of the units at Abbey Court, so I went to the meeting to represent our organization's miniscule rights—and to record the meeting.