Orange County

Roofs Leaking at Local Schools

MikeNelson — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 07:57:54 -0600

Some things you have to see for yourself to believe.

I recently took a tour of about a half dozen schools, mainly older facilities, in the Chapel Hill Carrboro school system. Because the County Commissioners fund the school systems' budgets, it's important for me to see first hand what the parents, teachers, and school administrators are complaining about. I took a similar tour of facilities in the Orange County School system a while back and wanted to assess the situation in the city schools.

Boy, am I glad I did.

The airport, AHEC, Bacon and "sick children"

Priscilla Murphy — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:29:26 -0600

Twin stories in this morning's CH News from Mark Schultz on the front page: "UNC Pledges Cooperation on Airport" and inside: "UNC Gave State Airport Bill Language." Kudos (or the candy of choice) to Schultz for digging away at the behind-closed-doors stuff - e.g., just who from the Univ. was talking to the legislature, seeking the eminent domain provision, etc.; and kudos for going after some actual numbers. Would expect, however, that assurances of cooperation will be received by citizens with the usual and appropriate skepticism - keep those cards and letters coming...

Three irksome aspects of the stories, at least for me:

A. The attrition theme - the persistent suggestion that AHEC participants will opt out if they don't like airport location.

New County Tax Values Must Account for Lower Property Values Around Potential Airport Sites

Mark Marcoplos — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 08:31:10 -0600

Airport Action Group

NEWS RELEASE December 15, 2009

A Sad Day For Orange County

randallwilliams — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 14:32:56 -0600

Thursday, December 11, marks a dark moment in Orange County’s history. At the County Commissioners’ meeting that night, all the attending Commissioners, except one, voted to pursue the placement of a Waste Transfer Station in the heart of Orange County’s farming district and alongside the Cane Creek Reservoir.

2009 Estimated Property Valuations

jstrope — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 09:28:57 -0600

Estimated Orange County property valuations for 2009 have now been published and may be accessed here:

http://gis.co.orange.nc.us/land/search.asp

My estimated valuation increased by about 33% over my current valuation and by about 62% over the 2004 valuation, yet it still remains slightly less than what I actually paid for my house three years ago.

Update: The county suggests using http://server2.co.orange.nc.us/Addresses/ for faster GIS searching.

CHPL ver. 4.0

Fred Black — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 08:31:29 -0600

I think we are in about the 4th iteration of the Chapel Hill Public Library debate, but whatever the number, it's an important debate about an important issue. Four things stick out to me:

First, the Town Council has delayed moving forward with the addition. As much as I want to see it built, the current economic situation being what it is gave them little choice. When the situation is more favorable I'm sure that they will move forward.

Community Organizing takes off in Orange County

jcb — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 17:30:06 -0600

From OCOC press release as printed in News of Orange County:

County-wide grassroots effort will hold Dec. 7 meeting
On Sunday, Dec. 7, 300 leaders from 23 faith-based institutions in Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough will gather at 5 p.m. at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Chapel Hill to launch a new agenda called "One County for All." The Church is located at 300 E. Rosemary Street in Chapel Hill.

The event is viewed as a new model for multi-ethnic interfaith collaboration in Orange County. The Orange County Organizing Committee (OCOC) seeks to bring about change on affordable housing, living wages, environmental justice, education, healthcare, and quality of life for immigrant families.
read more

New leadership for County Commissioners

Ruby Sinreich — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 08:44:19 -0600

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 has 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).

Does Orange County need our own airport?

Ruby Sinreich — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:09:27 -0600

* Yes * No * I'm not sure

Capturing the New Spirit of the Campaign for Change in Orange County

MagicT — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:51:33 -0600

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).