The Southern Environmental Law Center hasn't decided what to do next about its twice-denied petition on the Jordan Lake watershed, SELC attorney Kay Bond said today.
During Monday's meeting of the Durham County commissioners, County Attorney Lowell Siler said he expected a lawsuit to come over the City/County Planning Department's ruling that the petition is invalid.
"We have not given any indication to Mr. Siler that we would do that," Bond said.
Michelle Parker-Evans is Durham County’s new Clerk to the Board of , succeeding the retired Vonda Sessoms.
A Shaw University graduate, Parker-Evans is currently senior executive assistant to the Durham City Manager.
The board clerk's responsibilities include preparing agendas, maintaining official minutes and managing the clerk's office. Her salary as board clerk is $61,000 per year.
Parker-Evans is a Durham native who has also worked for the cities of Durham and Raleigh and the U.S. State Department.
What promised to be a routine meeting of the Durham County Board of Commissioners turned testy at the outset, when commissioner Becky Heron asked County Attorney Lowell Siler for a report on the Haw River Assembly/Southern Environmental Law Center's protest petition regarding the Jordan Lake Watershed boundary.
Siler said that would be better discussed in a closed session, because he expects the petition sponsors to take the matter to court.
"I hope we don't have to go to litigation," Heron said. "I just want a report."
The Haw River Assembly isn't giving up its fight against changing a watershed boundary line for Jordan Lake.
The Assembly and the Southern Environmental Law Center claim that the Durham City-County Planning Department erred in ruling its protest petition invalid. They want the county to acknowledge the change did not win county commissioners' approval by a 3-2 vote Oct. 12.
Tax breaks for owners of "historic" properties are coming under scrutiny from Durham's City Council and Board of County Commissioners.
With new candidates for "historic" status nominated every year, the number is mounting up and so is the hit to the city's and county's revenue. For the county, the amount is about $42,000 per year, commissioner Becky Heron said during the commissioners' meeting tonight.
“As historic properties build up in your community," commissioner Ellen Reckhow said, "it’s taking a lot of value off the tax books.”
The commissioners approved a set of tightened standards for "historic" nomination tonight, and the council holds a public hearing on the same proposal Monday. But both council members and commissioners are calling for a review of the whole program, adopted years ago to encourage historic preservation.
"We could have hundreds of these houses," Councilman Eugene Brown said during last week's council work session. "There has to be some limitation placed on this program, in my judgment."
Zoning and land-use changes that remove a proposed subdivision site from a critical area near Jordan Lake won approval from the Durham County Board of Commissioners Monday night.
Their 3-2 vote culminated months of controversy, but left multiple matters unresolved, including whether the "751 Assemblage" can be built at all.
Getting a share of sales-tax revenue from Raleigh-Durham International Airport seems to be an idea gaining traction among the Durham County commissioners.
Commissioner Ellen Reckhow suggested asking county staff to find whether and how revenue from other shared airports, such as Dallas-Fort Worth and Minneapolis-St. Paul, is shared among jurisdictions they serve.
Currently, sales taxes from the airport go only to Wake County. The airport lies entirely in Wake County, but Durham County contributes to its funding.
The issue came up for brief discussion during the commissioners' meeting Monday, after commissioners Becky Heron and Joe Bowser raised it at a work session last week.
Getting Durham a share of the airport's sales tax might take an act of the legislature, Heron said, but it's an idea worth pursuing.
"We do play a major role in that airport," she said. "They need to understand that."
The Jordan Lake watershed question is due a public hearing at the Durham County commissioners' meeting Monday, but there probably won't be much to hear.
And County Manager Mike Ruffin wants to get the word out: If you're planning to attend, wait until Oct. 12.
"It's kind of a procedural kind of step," he said.
The contentious relocation (or re-relocation) of a watershed boundary in southwest Durham County has two parts (not to mention a host of related issues): a comprehensive land-use plan amendment and a zoning change.
The Haw River Assembly, which favors leaving the boundary where it is, has requested a postponement on the zoning part, to which it is entitled upon request under Durham's ordinance.
But there's no such provision for a land-use plan change, City/County Planning Director Steve Medlin said. So that related but technically separate item remains for the commissioners to deal with Monday.
Medlin and Ruffin said a "straw poll" of the county board indicates a preference to open a public hearing on the plan amendment and then immediately continue it until it and the rezoning can be dealt with at the same time.
"To inconvenience people as little as we can," Ruffin said.
County commissioner Joe Bowser wants Durham County to get more out of Raleigh-Durham International Airport.
“Raleigh citizens are getting a big benefit out of that airport, more than any other group,” Bowser said during the commissioners' work session this afternoon.
What set Bowser off was the fact that sales-tax revenue from the airport's stores and restaurants goes to Wake County. Bowser said Durham should get a share since the airport serves both counties and Durham County allocates some money to the airport every year.
The business came up during an update on airport doings by Airport Authority members Tommy Hunt and Craigie Sanders. In their report, they mentioned the 25 or so new retailers and eating places in the renovated Terminal 2.
Getting a share of sales taxes could be difficult, Hunt and Sanders said. For one thing, the airport is located entirely in Wake County.
"The one way for us to effect change," said Sanders, a Durham attorney, "would be the legislature."
County attorney Lowell Siler said his office would do some research to see what options are available.
Bowser's concern about other jurisdictions benefitting at Durham's expense has a history. Recently, he has complained about water-quality proposals for Jordan and Falls Lake that would put particular expense on Durham while mostly benefitting Wake and Chatham residents.
Farther back, when he was a freshman commissioner in 1997, Bowser wanted to impose a tax on commuters who crossed the county line to work at the Research Triangle Park; and for the City of Durham to annex the Park.
The tax idea went nowhere, with his board colleagues pointing out that it would invite retaliation in kind by other counties. State law prohibits any municipality from annexing RTP.
Chuck Kitchen was removed as Durham County Attorney this afternoon and immediately replaced by former Deputy County Attorney Lowell Siler.
The reason for Kitchen's termination is that he is named in a lawsuit against Durham County by Southern Durham Development Inc., county commissioners Chairman Michael Page said.
"We want to keep this thing clean and we want to make sure that, because the [former] county attorney is named in that, that he is totally aside from the county," Page said.
Earlier this summer, Kitchen had announced his retirement Nov. 30. He remains on the county payroll until then, as an adivsor to Siler and to handle two other cases unrelated to the Southern Durham suit.
