With the newly-elected (and newly-districted) members of the Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) sworn in, they have followed their annual tradition of selecting a new chair and vice-chair of the group. This is a leadership structure that is quite different from other elected bodies in the county in that the chair is accorded with similar responsibilities as a Mayor would have in a municipality, but the seat rotates among the members in a very egalitarian fashion so that every commissioner in recent memory has served at least one year at the helm.

What I found especially interesting is that this year's chair will be Valerie Foushee (an African-American woman) and the vice-chair will be Mike Nelson (a gay man).

Having been very active during the Primary and my wife very active during the General Election, we went to lots of victory parties!

The omnipresent question was "What now?"

I met Stan at such a party and, being of like mind and sense of making something happen, he and I decided to answer that question.  So, we met a couple of times and exchanged some email and phone calls and Stan wrote up a document explaining our ideas. 

Then we invited a group of people to my house to discuss the document.  This blog contains my thoughts from that meeting....

We had several of the "Crew Chiefs" from the Obama 'Campaign for Change' who were the folks that managed several precincts during the campaign.  We also had some folks who may not have had titles but worked their tails off most of the year toward the same goal.  (I don't want to post names here as I did not get permission for that). 

I went to the OCBoCC meeting on Monday about the transfer station. I came away more convinced than ever that locating a transfer station in a rural farming or residential area is a bad idea. I think a lot of good reasons for it being a bad idea were put forth, and as I took notes I realized that the OCBoCC all know most of these arguments and reasons not to do this, so rehashing it is not of any particular benefit. What I think has not been done yet is to put together an outline/timeline of an alternative that involves all of the potential players and describes the benefits with an end goal in mind.

So, rather than rehash, I thought I could take a stab at a plan for a plan. Obviously the outline below is a strawman (the 21st century equivalent of the back of a napkin) and needs refinement. A lot would need to happen and a lot could happen in parallel. I think you'll get the gist though.

First:

Convince yourselves and the community at large.

Since May 2008 I count six posts relating to the County Comp Plan. The event calendar thread of Nov. 17 by far has generated the most comments -- 25 and counting. However, few of these comments actually debate the proposed comp plan -- which will guide growth and development in the county's planning jurisdiction for the next 20 years. Great interest is shown regarding the possible HW replacement airport being build in the county and in the funding of Kenan Stadium. The post from May 17 generated the most debate about the plan of any of the posts -- eight total.

 I'm concerned this "evidence" accurately portrays the degree of disinterest in how County government intends to "plan" for our future.

I am new to this Internet community and surprised that there appears to be no conversation about human service needs or human service programs  in Orange County. We certainly seem to have many examples of both.

Last month Orange County government sponsored a day long retreat for the directors of all non-profit human service agencies that receive partial funding from the County. The purpose of the event was to facilitate discussion among non-profit leaders regarding the impact of the economic downturn on the non-profit sector and on the people it serves. The organizers hoped that non-profit leaders would discover new ways to anticipate future challenges and to collaborate on common goals. The meeting was facilitated by experts from the UNC School of Government.