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Off to a fun start
No full moon Monday night. Nevertheless, two unusual discussions bookended the Town Council meeting. Early on, council discussed a petition to remove stop signs from three all-way stop intersections...
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Save Del Snow
If you had told me six months ago that someday I would lead the cheering section for Planning Board chair Del Snow, I would have called you crazy. And now look. After Town Council’s Feb. 27 vote...
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Good data
Garbage in, garbage out they teach you in business school, though maybe not in those exact words. The idea is that a decision is only as good as the information backing it up. Rely on inaccurate or...
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Who’s the boss?
A while back, someone I know made a disparaging comment to a Town Council member about town manager Roger Stancil. The council member responded sharply, “Don’t talk about my boss that way.” Pause...
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What we do best
Decades ago, a running coach told me, “The only way to run faster is to run faster.” Pre-empting Nike’s “Just Do It” slogan by nearly a generation, the coach’s advice has proved useful in all sorts of...
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Walking the talk
Every once in a while an insight emerges from those early-morning meetings that makes them worth getting up for. Take the Community Prosperity Committee meeting last Friday morning (8 a.m., first...
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What makes a house historic?
Last week, the Historic District Commission reluctantly pulled the plug on a house in the Gimghoul Historic District by approving a request by the owners of 704 Gimghoul to demolish the home. The...
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Ask the experts
Lead, follow, or get out of the way. When it comes to working on the problem of not enough affordable housing, town and county elected officials would do well to choose Door #3. At the joint board...
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Fireworks at stadium, not council meeting
Viewers expecting fireworks at the last Town Council meeting of the 2015-16 season turned off their TVs and computers disappointed. Though we had reserved time on June 29 for a spillover meeting...
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Think of the possibilities, then plan
How many times have we heard, usually from people who make money by developing or selling real estate, that affordable housing is not possible in Chapel Hill? That we might as well admit defeat and...
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To a Healthy New Year
My husband and I gave each other matching colds for Christmas this year, not the gifts we had intended, but a result of getting out and into the community more than I have in years past. When it comes...
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Historic professionalism
Days after the Historic District Commission meeting last week, the unsettling exchanges have stayed with me. Once again — and this happens routinely — an applicant requesting a Certificate of Approval...
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Fitting in our dreams
Chapel Hillians tend to go big or go home, and that proved true in feedback we got after Town Council authorized buying the American Legion property. When we asked residents how to use the 36-acre...
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Sitting on the Historic District Commission
In an interview aired on National Public Radio recently, Magazine Editor Hall-of-Famer Tina Brown described her desk-on-a-treadmill, noting, “Sitting is the new smoking.” That shot a little dart of...
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What’s worth preserving
Would a time traveler from the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, walking through one of Chapel Hill’s historic districts, recognize the neighborhood? Amber Kidd, a preservationist with the N.C....
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Views across the board
When my computer failed last month, I spent a few hours at the Apple Genius Bar, a sort of emergency room for digital devices in distress. As I waited for new software to install itself very slowly, I...
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Sanctuary city
A couple of years ago, after Donald Trump had taken office and begun threatening punishments to sanctuary cities, a member of the Justice in Action Committee proposed that Chapel Hill take a stand and...
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Our tenuous link to history
I haven’t been inside the Cathedral of Notre Dame since I went sightseeing after running the Paris Marathon some 30 years ago. Yet when I heard about the fire that destroyed the ceiling and spire of...
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Kneecapping our best intentions
Chapel Hill residents take housing affordability seriously. Are we on Town Council poised to undermine progress we’ve made? The budget we passed last week included a property tax increase that would...
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Exclusive boards
Consider the irony: At the same time town staff are making considerable efforts to encourage more people to get involved in the town decision-making process by applying to advisory boards and...
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