The so-called "Bullet Ownership Bill" will have to wait.

A Thursday meeting of the city council's legislative committee, at which the bill was due for discussion, was cancelled early Wednesday afternoon.

Monday night, the Durham city council passed a resolution directing the city manager "to initiate negotiations on a method to transfer management of West Point on the Eno Park to the State Parks System."

So Bull's Eye sought to ask how the State Parks System feels about it. 

Sensitized by the volume of citizen complaints over recent water bills, the City Council talked Thursday about enlightening the public why their water costs what it does.

Reason is, the rates went up last summer so the city can pay for improving the water system before another drought comes our way.

The city council heard Thursday that Durham's income fell short of expectations last year, but cost cuts in most departments let 2007-08 close with a balanced budget.

Council members also got a signal that new City Manager Tom Bonfield means to run a tight ship

A meet-the-manager session precedes the city council meeting Tuesday. Members of the public may at the same time meet and greet the 60 new members of the Durham Youth Council.

The affair begins at 6 p.m. in the City Hall lobby, honoring Tom Bonfield, who became Durham's City Manager Aug. 11.

Some citizens who live on northern Broad Street are calling on the city to honor a 1995 pledge to consider blocking the street at Stadium Drive.

New City Manager Tom Bonfield put the matter on his office's to-do list after Kelly Mieszkalski, one of the residents, spoke at the city council work session last week and presented a list of 13 accidents at the Broad-Carver street intersection.

"We've had a number of neighborhood concerns regarding accidents, traffic, trash and the level of noise," she said.

An innovative plan for the Ninth Street area that has been two years in the making is going to take at least another 60 days.

Durham City Council voted 7-0 Monday to continue its hearing on the plan after property owners holding 60 percent of the area involved complained the plan amounted to a downzoning, and would cut their property values in half.

Rezoning for a 240-unit apartment complex between Guess and Hillandale roads got the Durham City Council's stamp of approval Monday night.

The council's 5-2 vote came after a protest petition that had been signed by more than 40 nearby property owners was ruled invalid due to removal of signatures. With the protest petition in force, the rezoning would have needed six yea votes to pass.

Overall, crime in Durham was down 3 percent in the first six months of 2008, compared with the same period last year. Violent crime, however, showed a 9 percent increase, due largely to a wave of robberies in January.

Those figures were part of a quarterly report that Chief of Police Jose L. Lopez delivered to the city council Monday night.

Lopez cautioned, though, that his monthly numbers were preliminary and might be adjusted after quarterly review.

Before the City Council got down to business this evening, public-affairs director Beverly Thompson wanted to point out the new bells and whistles in the council's chamber at City Hall.