Chapel Hill Town Council member Gene Pease said he hasn’t decided the next step in his disagreement with a Planning Board chairwoman, but it’s raising important questions.

“I don’t have an issue with disagreement. I don’t have an issue with suing the town,” Pease said. “I do have a big issue with a member of the Planning Board disagreeing with a decision and suing the town over that when they’re still involved” in the town’s business.

Planning Board Chairwoman Del Snow is part of a lawsuit over the town's approval last year of the Charterwood mixed-use development on MLK Boulevard. Pease said that is a problem, and Snow’s email to the mayor and the Town Council objecting to another recently approved project was the tipping point.

In her email, Snow said the council was wrong to approve the Bicycle Apartments, because it did not reflect the town’s 2020 Comprehensive Plan, a document guiding town growth.

Pease responded to the email by asking Snow to resign her Planning Board seat. Pease also questioned whether she and other Planning Board members are using personal bias to make development recommendations instead of facts.

You can read both letters by clicking on the link below.

Documents:

Orange County Commissioner Penny Rich takes issue with the phrase "minority report" in today's Raspberry in The Chapel Hill News. We razzed the former Town Council woman for calling on her former council colleagues to ask for the resignation of Del Snow as chairwoman of the Planning Board. Snow recently spoke at a county commissioners meeting, asking the county to delay the start of the half-cent sales tax for transit.

"Now it is unusual for one government’s adviser to speak to another government, especially without letting the first government know," we wrote. "But if sharing a minority report of an appointed advisory board is a firing offense, we’ve got more serious problems than a breach of protocol. Rich is no political novice; she and the rest of the commissioners were more than capable of taking Snow’s comments in context and assigning them whatever merit they wanted."

For the record, Rich says she can take the Raspberry -- she even thanked us for it -- but she also says it's not accurate to call Snow's comments a "minority report." A minority report technically is a report by a small number of group members on the losing end of a vote, a formal way to get a dissenting opinion out there. We know that, and perhaps we should have said minority viewpoint.

Rich says she welcomes minority reports from advisory boards and doesn't want to squelch or be perceived as squelching community discussion -- our main point. The planning board's opposition to the regional transit plan was unanimous, she notes.

Her concern, she says, was with Snow leapfrogging her board and the town's elected leaders to press her case with the county commissioners. Snow didn't tell her board or anyone at Town Hall that she was going to speak to the commissioners. The Town Council supported the regional plan and the first they heard about Snow's end run was on the radio, she says. (OK, Rich didn't use the phrase "end run." That was me just now.)

"Really it was a pretty bold move," Rich says. "I have to tell you I know he (Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt) was disturbed by this too. It was bad. It was a bad thing to do. My opinion."

Reasonable people can disagree, we said in our Raspberry. Tell us what you think here, in a letter to editor@newsobserver.com or on my Facebook page. Thanks.

County Commissioner Penny Rich asked the Chapel Hill Town Council this week to seek the Planning Board chairwoman’s resignation.

Rich’s letter to the council references remarks Chairwoman Del Snow made Dec. 11 to the Orange County Board of Commissioners. Snow asked the commissioners to delay a regional transit plan and a half-cent sales tax to pay for it while considering other options. Snow spoke about the Planning Board's opposition to the plan during the public comment portion of the meeting. The Town Council supported the plan.

Rich said it was “highly unusual” for Snow to represent the town’s Planning Board in speaking to the commissioners without having been asked to do so by the council. She also questioned Snow’s ability to serve in light of her part in a pending lawsuit over the town’s Charterwood development approval.

“Ms. Snow’s interests are in conflict with the town and the citizens of Chapel Hill and I don’t see how she can vote on issues to move the 2020 Comprehensive plan forward given her stated positions,” Rich wrote in her letter.
Snow responded in a letter to the council that Rich’s analysis “is just plain wrong.”

The Charterwood lawsuit is irrelevant to the discussion, because people who pursue a legal dispute with the town do not give up their right to serve the town. Policy disagreements also do not disqualify residents from serving, she said.

Here is a look at today's local headlines. Please see The News & Observer and newsobserver.com for complete coverage of President Obama's visit to Chapel Hill. (The CHN goes to press Monday nights, too early to get that Tuesday story in today's edition.)

COUNCIL PANS HOUSING: "Icky," "a nightmare" and "lousy timing." The Chapel Hill Town Council had strong words for a planned hotel an student housing at MLK and Estes Drive Monday night. Katekyn Ferral has our report.

CHAIR TO SIT OUT VOTE: The Chapel Hill town attorney explains today why a citizen advisory board member can vote on a project even if she has already expresssed opposition to it. So why is Planning Board Chair Del Snow planning to recuse herself from her board's next vote on Charterwood?

FAIRIES, AND DRAGONS AND KNIGHTS, OH MY!: Durham school teacher Jeff Kass didn't find the Renaissance fairs "fantastical enough," he told me Saturday. So he's started one himself. Read about the Festival of Legends.

Bair Pollock says Carolina Flats has some pluses, too. Margaret Gifford and Jackie Helvey have proof squirrels like pizza.  And parents in the CHCCS are still upset with plans to end Chinese dual language instruction and make Frank Porter Graham a Spanish magnet school.

Thanks for writing, and if you're planning an endorsement letter, please keep it to 200 words and get it in by noon Monday to give it the best chance of getting in the paper. The CHN reaches 38,000 homes Wednesdays and Sundays from Fearington Village to Hillsborough.

Thanks for reading,

Mark   

Sunday’s guest column by Carol Ann Zinn has generated several responses. Zinn recently sold land off N.C. 54 to the UNC Foundation at a major financial loss after failing to win approval for her Aydan Court condominium project (See story here). In her column, she said Chapel Hill’s development process is influenced by no-growth activists and forces developers to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars modifying plans in a lengthy review process that has no guaranted outcome and drives up housing costs.  

Here are a few excerpts from letters that have come in this week. Look for the full versions of these letters Sunday in The Chapel Hill News and at www.chapelhillnews.com.

From Suzanne Haff: "Ms. Zinn has designed and built many wonderful residential communities around Chapel Hill; but, in my opinion, she made a poor choice when she purchased this property –  not a very buildable parcel – and then proceeded to hammer the town with request after request to modify the topography – until it lost all its uniqueness, needed fancy and costly mechanics to control run-off when completed. ...  There is no right as far as I know to do whatever you want to the natural terrain when you purchase a piece of property. She gambled she could convince the council otherwise  and she lost."

From Del Snow: "Carol Ann Zinn is, in fact, an experienced developer with many projects that have been approved in Chapel Hill. Before purchasing the proposed Aydan Court property, she, more than most, should have been clearly aware of all the constraints of the state-designated Significant Natural Heritage Area and the three major ordinances that would have had to be overturned for any development to occur. At every point in the process, these issues were pointed out in staff reports. Our town ordinances are in place to protect our environment, our future, and us. Why did she decide to keep pouring money into a losing proposition in order to force an approval?"

From: Kristina Peterson: "Ms. Zinn should get past this long temper tantrum she’s been having. The development review process does not need to be made easier for flawed development proposals. I am grateful for all the citizen groups and their leaders who give their time freely and generously to support our interests. What would Chapel Hill look like if we hadn’t had heroes like them throughout the years?"