Town Council members Laurin Easthom conceded she was on the end of another losing vote last night. But this time she had company: new colleague Gene Pease joined her on the short end of a 7-2 vote.

The council approved the Bridgepoint project at Homestead Road and Weaver Dairy Road Extension. The project calls for two commercial buildings, including a resturant, and 23 townhomes on 9 acres.The latter could rise to 32 housing units if the developer changes some townhomes to condos.

Easthom, who lives nearby, got into it a bit with developer's rep Jack Smyre when he characterized opponents as a small group from one part of one neighborhood: Northwoods V. Easthom said more residents were concerned and that she shared worries the project will change the nature of Weaver Dairy Road Extension, which she said residents consider a neighborhood street. Smyre said the fears were not based on facts and that Bridgepoint will take cars off Weaver Dairy by gving people less reason to shoot up to Timberlyne and Chapel Hill North.  

Pease said he felt uncomfortable putting commercial activity that far down Homestead. Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt also expressed concern about how the commercial buildings would look from the road, though he voted for the rezoning and special use permit.

You can read more about the vote here. One fact that didn't make it into our story last night: all the buildings will face into the interior of the project and rain will be collected in a cistern under the parking lot, Smyre said. The water will then be used for irrigation on the site.

The Chapel Hill Town Council voted tonight to put itself in charge of approving future homeless shelters.

The move changed rules that allowed shelters as a permitted use in six zoning districts, in some cases with only planning board approval. Those rules also limited shelters to 25 beds.

The vote was timely. The Inter-Faith Council for Social Services wants to replace its current men’s homeless shelter at 100 W. Rosemary St. with a 52-bed shelter off Homestead Road, a few miles north of downtown. The 25-bed cap would have blocked that.

Residents near the site asked the town to keep the cap and/or create a comprehensive shelter ordinance that would consider a shelter’s proximity to other group-care facilities, among other factors.

But town leaders, including Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt, said Monday’s vote was not about the IFC shelter.

By putting future shelters through a special use permit process, citizens will get multiple opportunities to speak on the shelters and the council will be able to negotiate their size.

“That’s one of the reasons we use the special-use permit, because it gives us the opportunity to ask the questions,” Kleinschmidt said.

The Chapel Hill Town Council voted to consider bowhunting deer in 2011.

The vote rejected a staff recommendation that urged the council to prepare information packets on deer-resistant landscaping and repellants.

The council had received multiple requests to reduce deer numbers. Residents of Mount Bolus had submitted a petition, asking for a hunt in their neighborhood.

The town’s sustainability committee had also asked the town to control deer numbers, possibly through a special urban archery program the state allows outside the regular hunting season.

“This is a health and safety issue,” said Lake Ellen Drive resident Mary Mendell. “This is not a question of my bulbs, my hostas or my azaleas.”

Town parks and recreation director Butch Kisiah said a hunt would be ineffective because deer culled from one area would be replaced by others moving in.

But council members said they needed to do something when, as member Ed Harrison said, “a native species goes berserk.”

We'll have more in Wednesday's Chapel Hill News. 

Town staff have rejected a proposed deer hunt inside town limits, saying too many people live too close together to take out enough deer.

The Chapel Hill Town Council will discuss the recommendation Monday night. It follows  three requests to cull herds that residents say destroy gardens, carry dangerous ticks and pose road hazards.

In November, the town’s own sustainability committee, a citizen advisory board, asked the town to join the state’s urban archery program. It sets up a special hunt outside normal hunting season for bowhunters to kill deer in designated areas. The earliest Chapel Hill could implement it would be  2011.

In a memo to the council, staff say a hunt would be safe in only limited areas. It would have to kill a large number of animals and be repeated, and some wounded animals would need to be tracked onto private property.

“We do not believe an urban hunt is a viable option for the town,” says the memo from Parks and Recreation Director Butch Kisiah, Police Chief Brian Curran, Public Works Director Lance Norris and Asisstant Parks and Recreation Director Bill Webster.

Our story in today's N&O got cut because of the fatal train accident in Durham last night. Here is the longer version.

The field for the Town Council’s vacancy shrank Wednesday as candidates dropped out or told the council to appoint one of two black applicants.

The council plans to appoint someone  Monday to serve the last two years of ex-Councilman  Bill Strom’s term. Ten people applied. But before a Wednesday night forum began, three had dropped out: recent candidate  Jon DeHart, ex-Councilman  Lee Pavao and  Joshua Ravitch.

Two others, Jason Baker and ex-Councilman  Joe Capowski, suggested the council appoint a black person, with Capowski naming  Donna Bell.

The Town Council will hear presentations from candidates for the council vacancy at 7 p.m. today (at Town Hall, 405 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.

The candidates are 

1) Jason Baker 
2) Donna Bell 
3) Joe Capowski 
4) H. Brock Page 
5) Lee Pavao 
6) Matt Pohlman 
7) Will Raymond 
and 8) Aaron Shah. Applicants Jon DeHart and Joshua Ravitch have withdrawn their names from consideration, according to the town.

The council may consider the appointment to fill the Council vacancy at another special meeting scheduled on Dec. 14. 



Chapel Hill town traffic engineer Kumar Neppalli is not ready to say how he'll advise the Town Council on the proposed one-way pairing of North Graham and Merritt Mill roads around the Greenbridge project.

Neighboring businesspeople oppose the one-way plan, which is aimed at easing and making deliveries more safely to the seven- and 10-story condominium towers over the next seven months. 

Forty-seven people signed a petition calling the pairing "poorly thought out." The petition was given to the council Monday night by Rob Stephens, a member of the community organizing group United With Northside Community Now. The petition was signed by people affiliated with Tar Heel Taxi, Back Alley Bikes, Passport Motors, Midway Barber Shop, Cut Above, America Tax Service, Dollars Tax, Stephanie's Hair Braiding and DeLaine House of Beauty.

Neppalli says he reviewed the petition Tuesday and will be working on a recommendation to the town manager over the weekend.

Some Town Council members expressed surprise at the proposed one-way routing of the streets Monday night. Will Raymond, a town advisory board member, noted on our previous post that the town reviewed a consultant's recommendation for making part of Meritt Mill Road one way and rejected it. You can see the town report on that here.  

For Augustus Cho, improving race relations will require realizing there are more than two races in town.

Cho, who recently ran for mayor, spoke at Tuesday's forum sponsored by the town's Justice in Action Committee. Panelists were asked how they defined racism and what it would take to eliminate it.

"It's human nature to stick together with people of your own kind," said Cho, who is Korean. While campaigning, however, he said, "I got the sense I could be a good representative of my community, but not Chapel Hill at large."

Race in Chapel Hill is still framed as a black and white issue, even though people of Asian heritage are nearly 11 percent of the town, Cho said. Even the discussion surrounding replacing ex-Town Council member Bill Strom has focused on whether to appoint the fifth-place finisher in the election or a black applicant.

"Is there a quota here?" Cho asked.

A new poll from Public Policy Polling shows Chapel Hil voters evenly divided on whether one of the losing candidates in Tuesday's election should be appointed to fill Bill Strom's seat: 38 percent in favor, 38 percent opposed, and 24 percent unsure.
 
"Trumping that finding with the loss of Jim Merritt though is probably the question we asked about whether Chapel Hillians thought it was important to have an African American on the Town Council," says PPP's Tom Jensen.

Fifty-seven percent of voters said yes to that with just 28 percent dissenting. "I imagine given the strong support from the community that's the direction the Council will now go in with the appointment,' Jensen says.
 
Two other key findings from the poll, neither of which Jensen says is particularly surprising given the returns.  51 percent of Chapel Hill voters support publicly financed elections with only 31 percent opposed. 

"Given Mark Kleinschmidt's win and Penny Rich's first place finish it's clear there was no backlash from that and it's even possible the opposite was true," he says.
 

Kevin Wolff dropped out of the mayor’s race two weeks ago. But he’s still circulating a flier painting Town Council member Mark Kleinschmidt as a gay rights activist who has no children and doesn’t own a home in Chapel Hill.

The flier emphasizes that Wolff and Town Councilman Matt Czajkowski, another candidate for mayor, do have children and own homes and are not gay rights activists.

Kleinschmidt shot back Tuesday, saying the flier reveals Wolff as the fringe candidate. "He shows how different he is, I think, from the people of Chapel Hill by highlighting those facts,” Kleinschmidt said.

Kleinschmidt sold his condominium on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard last year after renting a townhouse off East Franklin Street with his partner. Kleinschmidt said they have not purchased a home together because his partner is still trying to sell his house near Wake Forest.

“It’s where I want to spend the rest of my life,” he said. “This is my hometown.”

We'll have more on this in tomorrow's News & Observer.