Welcome to the open thread for tonight's Chapel Hill Town Council candidate forum. There are nine candidates for four seats:

• George Cianciolo
• Sally Greene
• Ed Harrison
• Gary Kahn
• Loren Hintz
• Paul Neebe
• Maria Palmer
• Amy Ryan
• DC Swinton

You can observe the forum at http://orangepolitics.org/elections-2013/forums/chapel-hill-town-council.

We hope you'll use this open thread to post your thoughts and reactions. Also, if you want to propose additional discussion topics, you can reach the editors during the forum via Twitter, Facebook, or the contact page. The forum moderator will have final say in question selection.

The Central West draft plan was presented to the Planning Board last night. Given the issues the Central West steering committee had coming to an agreement on a plan, and how the committee ended up costing much more than was expected, I had low expectations for the output of the steering committee. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the draft plan. The plan is mostly multifamily residential, and not particularly tall (3-4 stories, with one 5-8 story area that is completely separate from all the other areas on the map by open space). It makes ample use of trail connectors and other infrastructure to increase bike and pedestrian safety, which will be a welcome improvement to the area. I personally think the buildings at the corner of Estes and MLK could be a bit taller, but credit should be given to steering committee co-chairs Amy Ryan and Michael Parker for putting together a plan that tried to acknowledge and address the wide range of issues and viewpoints of  those that participated in the process.