advisory boards

Put your money where your mouth is

Or more to the point, put a night or two a month where your mouth is.  Spring is coming, and spring means many things: bird starting to return, daffodils and hellebores popping up in bloom, Bradford pears soon to be unleashing their terrible stench upon anywhere unlucky enough to have planted them.  But spring is also the time when, at least in Chapel Hill, most of the appointments are made to advisory boards and commissions.  According to the town's current vacancies page, there are almost 20 seats on various boards that are currently sitting empty.  But on top of that, since most board terms are three years long, about a third of current board members will be coming up for reappointment. While terms officially end June 30, most appointments are made in the Spring - last year, most of them in April or May. So, right now is a great time to get your application in.

Orange County Consolidating Boards and Commissions

The Orange County Commissioners are apparently considering a proposal from the County Manager to reduce the number of citizen advisory boards and commissions. This may not be a bad idea since the county has over 70 such advisory groups.

Until last week I was a member of the Human Services Advisory Commission (HSAC) which I think is likely to be disappear - transferring its responsibilities to various existing boards, such as, the OPC mental health board, the DSS board, etc. I think eliminating HSAC will not have a detrimental effect because the advice of this group was not taken very seriously, anyway.

However, I do wonder if the elimination of some of the other boards and commissions might cause problems. 

Chapel Hill may disband two boards

I was pretty shocked to read today that Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy has written a memo to the Town Council proposing that they should end the Horace Williams Citizen's Committee (old web site, new web site). Just a few months ago, I helped to draft a plan for how the HWCC would proceed in the next year or two to study some of the issues surrounding Carolina North and to make recommendations on them to the Town Council.

In all of the discussion of Ken Broun's new committee to advise UNC's leaders, it has always been made clear that the HWCC would still exist to advise Chapel Hill's leaders. I have not seen any change in situation that would mean we don't need this service any longer. This decision would be a major reversal and it deserves more explanation than the Mayor has given.

Open letter to UNC students

The Daily Tarheel ran a pretty good article on Wednesday about student involvement (or lack thereof) in town issues. In 1991, I got appointed to the Chapel Hill Transportation Board and I helped get a fellow undergrad, Mark Chilton, get elected to the Town Council. Ever since, I have been advocating for a greater student voice in local politics. There can be no doubt that students are impacted by town policies (transit, sidewalks, housing, downtown businesses, University development, just to start.).

But many people forget how very much students have to offer the rest of the town. Students created what would later become the municipal bus system in in the 1970's. Students have brought many important social causes to the community's attention, from apartheid and sweatshops far way, to housekeepers and cafeteria workers and the civil rights movement here at home.

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