Orange Unified Transportation Board survey

The Orange Unified Transportation Board has initiated a survey about transportation in Orange County.  More information is below.

We need YOUR input! Orange County is working with the NC Department of Transportation, the Triangle Area Rural Planning Organization, the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization, and the Orange Unified Transportation Board to create a Comprehensive Transportation Plan (CTP) for the County. It will recommend improvements for highways, public transportation, and bicycle and pedestrian facilities over the next 25 to 30 years. Although the CTP does not schedule or fund improvements, it is an essential tool in guiding the safe and effective use of the County's transportation system. The purpose of this survey is to obtain your opinions and identify transportation issues that are important to the citizens, businesses, and officials of Orange County.

Welcome to the fray

Chapel Hill Watch

When I was interviewed by WCHL reporter Elizabeth Friend for this story, she told me about the new site Chapel Hill Watch started by journalists Don Evans and Nancy Oates. They've posted 17 stories so far, and gotten a smattering of comments. Their "Blogroll" only contains one local site: The Carrboro Citizen. In fact based on their comments to WCHL, I'm not sure that a blog is what they want to be. It sounds more like an online news site. Then again, the writing is quite opinionated, and they're getting corrected by commenters - pretty bloggy!  Maybe the labels don't matter so much anymore.

In any case, I've always said "the more merrier" when it comes to local blogging, and it applies to local journalism, too!  Whichever one they plan to be (or some hybrid), I welcome Don and Nancy's voices to the fray.

Happy Birthday to Us

Today marks six years since I flipped the switch on this blog and started this community of progressive local politics bloggers (and commenters). I looked back at the entries from September 2003, and found some nostalgia (red light cameras) and some the-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same (candidate forums and Carolina North). In recent years, the OP community has developed a tradition of raising money on the occasion of our birthday. However, last year's fund raising only generated $140 toward the $420 that I pay for our hosting annually. (This is high because I use a service that keeps Drupal up-to-date and running smoothly.) 

I hope we can do better this year, and I'm open to suggestions. For example, should I thank the donors more publicly, or should I be more discreet? Would folks like t-shirts or other gifts to acknowledge their support?

Finding the Pulse of Franklin Street

Hey there.  My name is Andrew Neal, and I'm the owner of Chapel Hill Comics on West Franklin Street.  I've had orangepolitics.org in my RSS reader for a long time, but can't remember if I've ever posted anything here despite the fact that I have an account.

As a downtown business owner, I'm primarily interested in orangepolitics for the discussions in the Economy & Downtown category.  With recent posts about the lack of recent posts here, I thought I'd throw something into the mix and see if you're interested in discussing it.

Last week, the Independent ran the following article by Joe Schwartz

Building a Green-Brown-Bridge

Recently I’ve been thinking about Barack Obama, Henry Louis Gates, Van Jones, and Greenbridge.

When tension around race comes up, our society has a really difficult time differentiating between individual incidents of incivility and patterns of bias. South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson thinks that an apology for his single act of disrespect is enough. But others see his “You Lie” comment towards the President to be part of a larger racial pattern questioning Obama’s authority. Henry Louis Gates saw being arrested in his own home in the light of a larger pattern of racial profiling. The police officer who arrested him thought he was just arresting a guy who threatened his authority.

Closer to home, Greenbridge and its developers continue to come under criticism for gentrifying Northside, and some attacks this summer called the Greenbridge developers racist. UNC-NOW and other Greenbridge critics see this project as a part of the larger pattern of African-American displacement in Chapel Hill. Not surprisingly, Greenbridge’s developers say they’re just one project impacting the neighborhood, and one that came relatively late to the gentrification party at that.

Pages

 

Community Guidelines

By using this site, you agree to our community guidelines. Inappropriate or disruptive behavior will result in moderation or eviction.

 

Content license

By contributing to OrangePolitics, you agree to license your contributions under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.

Creative Commons License

 
Zircon - This is a contributing Drupal Theme
Design by WeebPal.