The Easthom Page

I am submitting the following resolution to be considered at our council meeting on November 21, 2011. I am not sure how else to do this but it would need formal action by the council, so I drafted an “apology” in resolution form. I have spoken to some council members about it but not sure how the whole group feels. We will see tomorrow night.

I figure I don’t need to wait for an internal investigation to apologize for what the reporters went through on the afternoon of November 13, 2011 when they were “detained” for up to 30 minutes, of which half the time they were forced to lie down and told not to take any more photographs.

I am surprised at the action of the police with these reporters. I look forward to understanding their thoughts at the time. I have been criticized by some citizens for even asking questions about the general police actions of that particular day. My response is, what country do we live in? If a council member cannot ask questions about the performance of our staff in any particular situation, we really have transparency issues.

Resolution follows:

Resolution of Town Council November 21, 2011

WHEREAS the police took action to detain and arrest several citizens at the Yates Motor Company on November 13, 2011 for breaking and entering, and in the course of so doing, detained two members of the media, Ms. Katelyn Ferral and Mr. Josh Davis, and

WHEREAS Ms. Ferral and Mr. Davis were forced to lie on the ground and were handcuffed and Ms. Ferral was told not to take any further photographs;

WHERAS Ms. Ferral and Mr. Davis positively identified themselves as a member of the press, had visible press badges, and vocally stated their positions;

WHERAS Ms. Ferral and Mr. Davis were not attempting to disrupt the police in their work;

WHERAS Ms. Ferral and Mr. Davis were told they would be detained and arrested if they were “caught on the premises again”;

THE TOWN OF CHAPEL HILL officially apologizes for the actions taken against Ms. Ferral and Mr. Davis and will begin a review of current policies and relationships between the press and the Town of Chapel Hill Police Department.

This day, November 21, 2011.

I had the pleasure of attending, as an audience member, the League of Women Voters Town Council/Mayoral Forum. Highlights: it began with two of three candidates for Mayor, for a twenty minute allotment out of the 1.5 hours total, with the third candidate arriving roughly 5-10 minutes into it (Kevin Wolff). In the intros, mayoral candidate Sookram mentioned he would love to meet Kevin Wolff at some point (Kevin Wolff hasn’t been actively campaigning), and his wish of course came true a few minutes later. I’m not sure they actually “met”, but perhaps they had some time after the mayoral portion to spend some time. Maybe not.

Obviously I didn’t “live blog” this event, as I truly admire those that do this on other events, but I thought this was a good forum. It’s too bad though that there was simply not enough time to answer! I think the candidates had a hard time with the “yes or no” answers and raising their hands. But, it goes with the territory. I guess you didn’t HAVE to answer one way or the other. What’s the penalty? If you weren’t sure and didn’t raise your hand, as a viewer sitting out there in the audience, (and as a voter), I didn’t hold that against you. Donna Bell did mention in the forum itself that it was tough to answer those yes/no’s, given she might not have had enough information. Candidates had so little time to answer in general…but they did a good job of trying to get the info out in that little time.

Impressions on council candidates: incumbents did a great job of pulling their “experience” into answers and being very educated on the topics (and well spoken). Challengers showed very well their reasons for wanting to enter the fray (equally well spoken). In fact, I was so impressed and grateful for a group of smart candidates who want to give their time (and that is a lot!!) to this job of making Chapel Hill a better place.

I know I write in platitudes on this and am somewhat vague on my opinions, but I really, really feel that there are tough choices to make this time around (for council). All of the council candidates will bring different perspectives, and important perspectives, to the table.

Bottom line? PLEASE ATTEND A FORUM. THERE ARE OTHERS COMING!

I must say I am not going to be able to keep up with the campaign’s breaking news and scheduled
forums. I simply have too much going on this fall! The luxury of time to spend on this has gone
with the summer…
I will though keep my blog active for some of the issues that I am currently working hard on. One
particular issue is taking up all of my time but it is well worth it.
More on that later as a separate post.
I will continue to provide updates along the way on the council election, but not as frequently as I had
hoped. I still welcome posts.

Last election cycle for Town Council I remembered something like 17 forums for candidates. I recall one or two forums with more candidates than audience members.
Here is the first forum that I know about, as I got an email. I understand this group routinely meets on Thursday mornings, and thus they are scheduling their forum during that time, but many of us who have to work obviously won’t be in attendance.

Friends of the Downtown
The Franklin Hotel
Chapel Hill

August 25, 2011

The 2011 Friends of the Downtown Candidate Forum will take place on Thursday, August 25th at the Franklin Hotel and will be one of the “opening acts” of this election cycle. We hope you will be able to attend.

We plan to begin promptly at 10:00 a.m. with questions prepared by our Board members for the Town Council candidates. Once complete, we will ask questions of our candidates for Mayor. After each question, someone from the audience (chosen at the discretion of the Moderator) will be allowed to ask one follow-up question on the topic.

We look forward to seeing you on August 25th and to an exciting beginning to the election season with the Friends of the Downtown.

Gatherings of the Friends of the Downtown take place on the second floor of the Franklin Hotel. Parking is located behind the hotel. Socializing and networking begins at 9:30, meetings start at 10 a.m. Meetings are free and open to the public. We encourage you to forward this announcement and invite your friends and colleagues.

Pat Evans, Chair

It’s that time of season again! Municipal election season. I would like to open up this post to respectful comments on candidates, their platforms, differences and similarities, and what they would bring overall to a seat on the Chapel Hill Town Council. Even though I am not running this time (as I am midterm), I expect to attend many of the forums and keep up with the whole process. I love this season because of the interesting debate about general Town issues that sometimes gets lost in the day to day business of the Town Council. So what do you think? Who is going to run? Who won’t? ETC! What do candidates think are the pressing issues of the day? (Chapel Hill Town Council only please).

I recently learned that OWASA is considering clear cutting and thinning out of large parcels of woodlands that it owns, in order to preserve water quality.

OWASA’s hired expert True North Forest Management Services has a website that prominently displays the article : “How to get the best price for your timber”. I know that OWASA wants this to be revenue neutral, but this was worth noting. According to this expert, there would be a “maintenance schedule for each tract, beginning with the removal of damaged, old and low-quality trees, like red maples, dogwood and beech. Other steps could include controlled burns, herbicide application and reforestation.” I shudder to think that my red maples and dogwoods in my backyard are poor quality and pose a problem for water quality.

What do herbicide applications, controlled burns, and chopping down trees have to do with improved water quality?

Studies from literally all over the country, specifically California, have looked at logging and its effects on water quality: I summarize:
• Increased sedimentation, nutrient loading
• Increased stream temperature
• Injury to fish, amphibian and other wildlife populations
• Water yield changes
• Increased high flows from storms and spring run-off
• Decreased low flows in summer, negatively affecting riparian and aquatic habitat

And in some studies, even drier conditions are created by deforested areas because complex mechanisms of photosythesis and reflection of energy are disrupted.

I know OWASA is trying to do the right thing, but I encourage and and advise them to please do more major research prior to a final plan. Please consider minimizing or eliminating the destruction of our forests in the name of water quality. There MUST be another way.

Sadly the Chapel Hill Museum, housed in the Town’s old library building on Franklin street has announced it is closing its doors because the Town Council could not fully fund its request for this year. The museum has maintained the Town ‘s history for fifteen years, and sadly will no longer exist. How ironic and odd that the Chapel Hill museum resides in the same building our library once did before it moved to its current location. This year the council decided to spend 16 million dollars to expand THAT location, and decided to assume another one million dollars annually for IT’S operating costs. The library I must add was never at risk for closing its doors.

It’s hard for me to understand how the Town could not afford 50,000 dollars this year for the museum that maintains it’s history but could find 16 million dollars in construction costs and 1 million in annual operating costs for the library. Not a dime of the library construction cost and very little of the operating costs actually comes from tax payers outside of the Chapel hill town limits. PERHAPS THIS IS A CASE OF being financially penny wise and pound foolish.

I think the values we hold in Chapel Hill are reflected not just in our desire for excellence in education and library services, but are reflected in our appreciation of our history as a town as well and our willingness to pay for all of those things. I am sorry that the museum that housed our history did not have priority this year and hope the Council will be consistent in their funding sustainability and equity expectations for the library.

I am willing to work very hard with our museum as it exists to perhaps keep them open or delay this closure. I attended a meeting with the Museum Board last night (June 22) and they are requesting a meeting with Roger Stancil and Mark Kleinschmidt to explain their predicament and help everyone understand how they HAVE provided performance criteria and financials and that they are a viable institution that had every intention of remaining solvent, with a little help from the Town. They aren’t an “unaffiliated nonprofit” and consider themselves the keepers of the only history the Town has. They are also having a hard time understanding how they will tell thousands of school children they cannot attend programs there as a part of their curriculum. They intend to state that they had every impression and every intention of one day being “absorbed” by the Town and had worked in recent years towards that goal. It was their most recent petition asking a nominal amount for the next year that was a “first step” .

The press is invited to that particular meeting as far as the museum is concerned. I have contacted Roger Stancil and have asked him to coordinate a meeting with everyone within the next two weeks. Hopefully a meeting will be a good airing out and a discussion of where everyone is, and maybe, just maybe there is a small pinpoint of a light at the end of the tunnel that suggests that the council revisit their request in the fall….if it isn’t too late. I hope it isn’t too late. I will post an update on when that meeting will be.

UPDATE June 24: I received a call from Stephen Rich from the Museum Board inquiring as to a meeting with Roger and Mayor Kleinschmidt. I let him know that Roger was informed and that he was coordinating a meeting with the mayor, but both of them were out of town currently. Mr. Rich said that despite the article in today’s N&O, there was no hope in keeping the museum doors opened and the meeting to occur was merely to know about next steps on transitioning out of the building and figuring out what to do with some of the programs for the kids; also to inform the Mayor and others that the museum was led to believe for some time that they would in fact be absorbed by the Town and they feel completely let down (quite the understatement). I asked him wasn’t there a there a glimmer of hope if they could just wait until September, and he said based on the letter that Roger wrote Mr. Boulton, they had no idea what the Town’s intentions were, the amount of money the Town allocated was not their request and was not enough, and they could not continue to operate in this manner (Roger indicated that one of the results of the September lease re-negotiation meeting could be the Town would completely take over the building).

I completely understand! and would feel the same way. I am not sure that this part of the letter reflects the spirit of the council’s budget discussion nor its intent in wanting to keep the museum open (majority of council) , however one could argue that if the lease was not acceptable to both parties in September that the result could be the Town indeed taking over the building. I would NOT have been a council member supporting that position, and I’m sure that there are other council members who probably feel the same way (at least Matt C for sure).

Again, when I hear back from Roger about when the meeting is scheduled, I will let everyone know.

UPDATE ON JUNE 27
The meeting between the Town staff and Mayor and Museum Board will occur on Wednesday, July 21 from 9-10 a.m. at Town Hall, presumably in the Mayor’s office. (This works for mayor, Roger, museum, unfortunately for me though that is my day I work in Raleigh all day so I am hoping that another museum supporter council member like Matt C will attend this meeting, but also hope some of the council members who do not support the museum would attend too to learn more about the museum and the reason it says it needs to close). I still have a glimmer of hope within me that maybe we could work something out with the museum but maybe it’s false hope.

The Chapel Hill Town Council voted to move forward on the 16 million dollar expansion of our Library. I emphasize the word “our” in that the Chapel Hill tax payer alone has completely footed the 16 million dollar expansion with their property tax dollars, and has agreed to a tax increase in order to fund the operational costs even though 40% of the users of the library don’t pay taxes in Chapel Hill and aren’t paying for the expansion and very little of the operational costs.

For over a year I have tried to have the council and staff entertain other options for fiscal equity in our library. Is it fair for every 100 dollars that a Chapel Hill taxpayer spends towards the library a Carrboro library patron pays 4 dollars? In April of 2009 I petitioned the staff to look at a financial model similar to Chapel hill Transit where pay is based on use. Either that, or come up with a realistic scenario for the council to consider to charge those that live outside Chapel Hill. Then there was the question as to whether or not the county would pay more than the 11% of operational costs that they have paid over the last 15 years (considering 40% of the patrons are from orange county, and actually that Chapel Hillians are from Orange County too so we are really pay for more than 40%).

Nothing was worked out at the time the deadline arose for the vote for expanding the library on June 7. I voted no to the expansion that night, but my “no vote” was not a vote to NOT expand the library. My no vote was a desire to delay the issuance of the bonds until we finally worked out the financial challenges that our library will have for Chapel Hill tax payers. If I had confidence that night the Library would not be an immense burden upon the Chapel Hill taxpayer, I would have voted in favor of the expansion that night. Perhaps we only needed a few more months to figure this all out, and then we could have voted to spend the money then.

I didn’t feel it right to spend so much money without an uncertain financial future. How could we feel good about asking our police, fire, landscapers, and other staff to save, save, save; accept no salary increase and pay higher medical copays for doctors visits, and then spend 16 million dollars on the library with an inevitable tax increase just for that??

The timing may have been right on the value of a piece of wood or steel, but the timing wasn’t right for me in assuming most of the costs of the library with very little outside help. I wanted to expand the library……but in the most fiscally equitable manner. I am only looking out for the average Chapel Hill citizen, which I fear may become more of a rarity as we continue to become, as WRAL-TV put it, “one of the most expensive places to live in the triangle”.

There were several surprises at the Town Council retreat #2 this past Saturday morning. (The first retreat was in February and the staff did not feel they had direction so this additional retreat was scheduled). The first surprise was the retreat itself was truly a “retreat” in every sense of the word since not one private citizen or even member of the press showed up! The meeting was advertised with public notice, etc. as usual, so I guess the 70 degree sunny weather and a host of fun community events in town kept people away.

The second surprise was that the Council decided to direct staff to report back on how the council might approach revising the comprehensive plan (of 2000). This was a surprise since the council had expected to receive the report and advice of the Sustainability Visioning Task Force this month on how the Town should grow, and use that information in creating a plan and vision for growth. Instead the council may go back to the existing framework of the comprehensive plan, and we will have the manager report back on how we might use that plan and information that came out of the Task Force. Apparently, from what I was told, the Task Force was not able to formally complete its charge or task but did come up with some good guiding principles generally that we might be able to use. I’ll be interested to learn more about this when the Task Force chair presents on where the Task Force ended up.

The third surprise was more of a business meeting type of agenda item, since the Mayor reported back on his meeting with the chair of the Orange County Commission and their manager on the status of the Library and the possible increase of county funding. However with a brief intro about the fact that a meeting was held over lunch, the Mayor went on to announce that he has a mini council task force in mind that would be charged with meeting with the commissioners and negotiating how much the county will fund the library (if at all) over the next several years and put that in some sort of writing. The mayor picked Sally Greene who has publicly stated she wants to expand the library right now, and Gene Pease who is leaning towards expansion and working out the financial equity situation at the same time. Apparently Mark had already talked with Sally about this prior to the retreat, but had not yet informed Gene (who willingly agreed to participate).

I raised issue with this whole thing at first because Sally does not share my opinion on the library, and I’m not sure how she can go forward representing me when I don’t agree with her and when her sole goal is to work out a financial arrangement with the county. But she agreed that she would mention that there was not uniform agreement on the council about how to proceed. I also raised an issue about this because this process is moving forward with the total effort on how we can squeeze more money out of the county….(if we can) and nothing to do with my petition of a couple months ago (and Gene’s) about the consequences of charging nonresidents a card, and the possibility of doing that and waiting a year to see how usage would drop at the library and see how that might affect the expansion. So apparently work will continue on that petition simultaneously.

Mark mentioned from his lunch meeting that the county would not be increasing their allotment this year at all, any increase would occur in later years. Everything ended up with a general agreement that these two council will meet with Barry Jacobs (and another commissioner) and their manager (with our manager) and try to get the county to agree to some sort of phasing of increased contributions and put it on paper, and then report back to the council in May. Along the way our manager will be providing information on what would happen if we charged nonresidents a certain fee, and I asked that he also provide information on if usage dropped by X % then what would that mean in terms of physical need for expansion of the library. Decision overall needs to be made by June in order for no extension of our bond. There is no penalty in requesting an extension….it’s just that some people on the council just don’t like the idea of extending anything out and they want to proceed right NOW.

There was some discussion about the possibility of a future southwest branch library downtown, as suggested by the Orange County Commissioner’s manager. Several council members wanted nothing to do with that and a few had support of keeping that option on the table, and perhaps be discussed briefly at that meeting. Donna Bell in particular spoke in support of such a southwest branch given the proposed branch’s proximity to Northside and Pine Knolls.

I asked Mark if he would provide this update to the public at our business meeting on Monday night.

Another surprise was considering the item of tweaking our boards and commissions. Several council members were initially confused as to the intent of the information presented. The staff presented the council the fact that we have significantly more boards and commissions than other towns and cities, to which Sally said she thought the number was fine because they all allowed for more citizen input. Matt C argued that maybe some of them could be combined maybe at least when listening to the same SUP. The surprise (to me) was that when council members were individually polled about what they thought about our boards and commissions, Jim Ward thought that council members should be required to attend all of those commission/board meetings that they are assigned to (right now the council is not required to attend all of the meetings, but should give an annual update to the council on how the board is doing). The council has well over 36 boards and commissions to which they are assigned….well over because that is not counting various council committees. Gene Pease argued as I might have when he said that such a requirement would be a barrier to those seeking to serve on the council given how much time would be involved in having to be at all of those meetings. I could not agree more with that. We spend enough time as it is without that extra burden and I think that we can adequately serve those boards and commissions by attending some of the meetings and checking in with the chair or meeting with the chairs separately. The council job would most definitely turn into a full time job. My experience is that coming to all of those separate meetings is really not useful to the board since we can’t vote, but occasionally we do need to go to help out on a situation or advise the board on what the council is doing relevant to whatever item they are discussing.

So this is my own personal view of the council retreat, and another council member who might write some post might highlight other things they felt were important. I left the retreat a bit disgruntled, I must admit. It was a nice sunny day, but that was not enough to get me out of my funk on how things are going.

The Town Council is getting busier and busier. I have written before on this subject about balancing a family life and Town Council and regular employment. I was even asked by the press during the campaign about that “balance”. In my first term I was able to balance everything, however it was during one of those four years when I tried to work full time that I discovered it was very difficult and I would need to cut back to part time employment. I have been lucky to work part time and everything has been fine.

However now I’m discovering that the actual time spent on council is changing. I am spending far more time than I ever have in additional meetings and preparation. We have just learned that in addition to the Sunday and Monday retreat this past weekend (each from 4:30-9:30) that we need an additional full Saturday in April because the staff doesn’t have enough direction from the retreat and we didn’t have enough time to discuss all of the issues.

Last week was undoubtedly tough and isn’t that way all the time, but I can let you know what it looked like. Monday we had a council meeting. Tuesday I had a Public Transit Meeting (midday). Wednesday I had a Greenways Commission Meeting and Thursday was the Transportation Board meeting. Sunday we had the retreat and Monday we had the retreat. (Council member Rich had to miss Monday because of her work schedule which I can completely empathize with.)

I cannot imagine what last week would have looked like for someone who worked full time and had small children. I’m glad I only worked two full days last week (in Raleigh).

Coming up we have regular council meetings, an additional retreat, budget work sessions, etc. Yes I signed on to it. Yes I want to do the work and am not scared of it. But for the first time in five years council work has taken on more of my time, and due to economic situations I am going to have to work more in a regular job. And Lord knows my kids deserve my 100%. How am I going to do it all? I guess it’s amazing what the human body can endure, so I will keep plugging away. I’ve done it before.