We’ve heard that House Bill 2 has already had a detrimental effect throughout North Carolina, from PayPal deciding against developing more jobs here to Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr, and Cirque du Soleil cancelling their shows. We have not been immune here in Orange County:
Human Rights Impacts
The June 29, 2016, "Off the Rails" INDY Week piece by David Hudnall, which discusses the Durham-Orange light rail transit project (DOLRT) is a poorly researched opinion piece that does a tremendous disservice to INDY Week readers, residents of Durham and Chapel Hill, and—most importantly—current public transit riders in Durham and Orange counties who stand to benefit greatly from a significantly enhanced bus and rail transit network with DOLRT at its core.
{Cross Posted from Chapel Hill News}
If you boarded a Chapel Hill Transit bus back in February, you might have been greeted by someone with a clipboard asking you to answer a few questions about your ride. The results of this survey were just released and include relevant and interesting findings as we think about the future of transit in our community.
These survey data tell us quite a bit about who rides Chapel Hill Transit. Most riders (88 percent) were somehow affiliated with UNC, and 93 percent of those surveyed were taking the bus to get to college or work. A majority (68 percent) ride the bus five days a week while another 21 percent use it three or four days a week.
In early 2015, UNC-Chapel Hill released an extensive report about the business startups and spinoffs that faculty, students, and alumni have created. This report quantifies the impact of these businesses: 150+ businesses, 8,000 jobs created, and $7 billion in annual revenue for the state of North Carolina.
But what this report doesn’t detail is the direct impact of these startups and spinoffs on our local economy here in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Orange County. There’s a pretty simple reason for that: Few startups coming out of UNC stay in our community. So why can’t Chapel Hill foster a local startup scene when other college towns, like Boulder and Cambridge, have gotten national attention for the startup economies they’ve developed in their own communities?
Officer D here; this is my first post on Orange Politics!
For those of you who don't know me, I'm a member of the Carrboro Police Department's Community Services Division. One of my primary assignments is to create, organize and complete Community Oriented Policing (COPS) initiatives. Our current major COPS initiatives are the Police Department Open House (next event--June 22nd from 6:30 PM to 8 PM) and the Citizen's Police Academy (September 10th, all day). Current ongoing initiatives are Coffee with the Cops, Kava with the Cops, Neighborhood Forums, Pizza with the Police and other similar events.
I'll be periodically posting officer profiles, announcing major events and attempting to keep people posted on what's going on with the Carrboro Police Department!
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