Judging by the posted agenda, tonight's city council meeting looks pretty cut-and-dried. But looks can be deceiving.

There is the tax surcharge on real and personal property downtown (the "Business Improvement District"), but, while that business took up more than three hours during its public hearing two weeks ago, tonight it's due for discussion by council members alone -- and it's a reasonable assumption they'd just as soon approve the thing and get it over with.

That could change, of course.

The evening's most contentious issue, though, does have a public hearing attached. That has to do with appropriations from three federal low-cost housing and homeless-service grants in fiscal 2011-12, which has already produced debate on the council and in some general-public quarters for almost a year.

A special city council meeting on the Rolling Hills/Southside project assumed Biblical proportions this morning, as council members exchanged passages of scripture and finally decided to act on faith.

"Amen," said Mayor Pro Tem Cora Cole-McFadden, one of the six council members who voted to go ahead with the project, and the developer, as planned.

The one nay vote came from Councilman Eugene Brown, who likened the project to a house built on sand that was quickly washed away in the Matthew 7 parable.

Councilman Farad Ali, though, countered with a reading from Hebrews 11, “Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see”; and from James 2, “Faith without works is dead.”

The council vote came only after 31/2 hours of presentation by Larry Jarvis, assistant community development director, and questions, comments, position statements and holy writ by council members in response.

Their approval itself was a statement of policy; some specifics, including the city's conditional commitment of $9.4 million more to the project and a spending plan for about $2 million in federal community development grants expected for fiscal 2012-13 (subject, as Brown pointed out, to budget cutters in Congress), remain to be discussed and voted on at the council's regular meeting May 2.

Today's vote, though, did endorse a continuing role for the St. Louis firm McCormack Baron Salazar as the project's developer. MBS has managed project planning since 2007 and has devised a $48 million plan that includes 211 new apartments, most for rent to low-income tenants, on the Rolling Hills site at South Roxboro Street and Lakewood Avenue; along with 40 to 45 new or rehabilitated homes for sale to low-income owner occupants in the adjacent Southside neighborhood.

For months, nonprofit agencies and private citizens have raised objections to the project, particularly a financing plan based on borrowing against future federal grants. Jarvis, though, convinced the council that proceeding as planned would bring more benefits than two suggested alternatives: to land-bank the Rolling Hills site while proceeding with housing rehabilitation in Southside, or to let local nonprofits redevelop the Rolling Hills site where two previous developers have failed to complete the residential subdivisions they had proposed.

“In many ways, it’s not a perfect plan, but I believe it is a plan we can move forward with,” said Councilman Mike Woodard, who added a scripture.

“My contribution to our Bible study today is Psalm 127,” he said: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.”

And Councilman Howard Clement concluded, “Let’s get it on.”

NCDOT's plan for widening Alston Avenue got a grudging vote of support from the city council Monday night, with hopes the state will go along with city idea for mitigating the project's feared effects on East Durham's reviving neighborhoods.

"I would certainly like at least ... to send a message to NCDOT," said Councilman Eugene Brown before the vote. "We're very very serious about lessening the impact.

"The last thing we need is the state coming in and bulldozing our neighborhoods."
 

Steve Schewel has already spent four years on the Durham Public Schools board. Nevertheless, he’s running for a hometown office again.

“I think maybe [because] I love Durham,” he said this week.

Schewel (right) plans to run for an at-large city council seat in this fall’s election. Candidate filing opens July 1.

Three council seats are up for election this year, and incumbent Diane Catotti has said she will not seek re-election. Councilman Eugene Brown has said he will run, while Councilman Farad Ali has yet to announce a decision.

“I came here as a freshman at Duke in 1969 and I loved the place and I’d enjoy another chance to serve,” said Schewel, who is president of Carolina Independent Publications, parent company of The Independent Weekly newspaper.

Schewel said he hasn’t formulated a campaign platform yet, but he is particularly interested in housing, recreation and public-safety issues.

“I don’t want to inflict a campaign on the public” ahead of time, he said. “I’m just trying to continue to learn a lot.”
 

DURHAM The mayor’s chair and three city council seats are up for election this fall, and three of the four incumbents have made their intentions known.

First-term Councilman Farad Ali has not said publicly whether he will stand for re-election, but five-term Mayor Bill Bell said in December that he expects to run again.

Two-term Councilwoman Diane Catotti has said she is not running again.

This week, Councilman Eugene Brown (right) said he plans to seek a third term.

“I need the money,” he said.

Council members only get $18,835 a year, but Brown makes his living selling real estate.

The City Council had a talk about public art during its work session this afternoon.

Councilman Eugene Brown said he's all for it. He even used the second floor of City Hall as an example, inviting some members of Durham's cultured set to take a look around it.

"As you do that," he said, "you'll be passing my photography display."

Brown also singled out City Attorney Patrick Baker, who for the occasion had donned a necktie patterned in orange, purple and several shades of blue.

"Some of us like to display our art in different mediums," Brown said, "so I would like to thank our City Attorney for wearing his Jerry Garcia tie and showing the courage and leadership to do it."

Mayor Bill Bell made improved public transit a point of emphasis in his "State of the City" speech Monday night, and that was sort of timely since the City Council is getting an update on just that subject at its Thursday work session.

Transportation planners are talking about Triangle Transit's favored routes for rail connections between UNC Hospitals and downtown Durham and from West Durham to southeast Wake County, as well as suggestions for new and expanded bus service in Durham.

Analyzing and estimating for all this is still a work in progress, but transportation authorities and advisors in Durham, Orange and Wake counties are hoping to put a half-cent sales tax for transit upgrades up for voters' approval this fall.

Read more about what's in the update in Wednesday's Durham News.

The council work session, in the second-floor committee room at City Hall, is open to the public, and starts at 1 p.m. The transit briefing is No. 22 on a 25-item agenda, but the council rarely takes up items in agenda order. A memo and presentation pdf are available at www.durhamnc.gov/agendas/2011/cws20110221/AttachmentsList.cfm#7579.

City Hall has set up the schedule for this budget season's Coffee With Council meetings, at which citizens get to hear the city's financial outlook for the coming fiscal year and get to let City Council members hear how they'd like their money spent.

The coffees are arranged one in each police district, but anyone is welcome to any or all events:

• Saturday, Feb. 12, 10 a.m.-noon – W.D. Hill Recreation Center, 1308 Fayetteville Street (PAC 4)
• Saturday, Feb. 19, 9:30-11:30 a.m. – Holton Career and Resource Center Child Care Center, 401 N. Driver Street, 2nd Floor (PAC 1)
• Thursday, March 10, 5:30-7:30 p.m. – City Hall Committee Room, 101 City Hall Plaza, 2nd Floor (PAC 5; Spanish translation provided)
• Saturday, March 12, 10 a.m.-noon – Lyon Park Community Family Life and Recreation Center, 1309 Halley Street (PAC 3)
• Monday, March 14, 6-8:30 p.m. – Durham County School Resource Center, 2107 Hillandale Road (PAC 2)

The council also holds public hearings on the budget during its regular meetings March 7 and June 6.
 

The City Council, which endured a 4 1/2-hour regular meeting Tuesday night, has postponed its next work session from Thursday until Jan. 27.

Not from exhaustion, though that would be understandable. Reason is, too many council members have other places to be and things to do to get a quorum, City Manager Tom Bonfield said.

Among the items on the next session's agenda are a new operator for the downtown convention center and a $5.1 million contract for replacing home water meters.

City Manager Tom Bonfield ducked out early from Tuesday night's 4 1/2-hour City Council meeting, but he left a message for the very end.

The city's finances are in good enough shape they can afford full-time city employees a $1,000 bonus each.

A memo Bonfield left as one last item for the evening's agenda asked the council's support for the bonus.

"Tell the manager that the council supports it," Mayor Bill Bell said, as the council members hurried to leave and go home at 11:30 p.m.

City employees, other than police and firefighters, have gone two years without pay increases due to the depressed economy. When the council approved the 2010-11 budget last spring, Bonfield said the income-outgo ratio might be positive enough to give the city staff a little extra in January; a budget department analysis indicated it was, according to his memo.