The Town Council appointed 16 members of the Central West steering committee Monday. They dropped a 17th seat, because no one from public housing applied.

The Central West planning area is immediately adjacent to the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Estes Drive. The impact area runs from Carrboro east to Franklin Street and Homestead Road south to Hillsborough Road.

The steering committee will begin meeting at 6 p.m. Dec. 19. It also will hold a community design charette Feb. 15-16 and community workshops before updating the council in June. The final plan is due next December.

Before the council's decision, Former Transportation Board Chairman Rudy Juliano raised eyebrows by asking to dropped from consideration and recommending his replacement. He and others asked the council to appoint community advocate and former Town Council member Julie McClintock instead.

"I honestly feel that there are other people who would really serve the community better in the context of the Central West study," including McClintock, he said.

Neither Juliano nor McClintock was named to the steering committee. A complete list of members is available at http://bit.ly/SH6WiW

Chapel Hill residents and town staff compared notes Monday in preparation for this week’s Town Council presentation about the Central Estes/MLK Focus Area planning process.

The council will receive three recommendations for the study group and process at 7 p.m. Thursday in the Council Chambers at Town Hall.

There are a few differences – about the group’s name and composition, the planning area and the schedule – but also a number of similarities. The groups have met five times since September.

The Central Estes/MLK Focus Area is one of six small areas identified in the 2020 Comprehensive Plan for more intensive study and planning.

Mary Jane Nirdlinger, town director of policy and strategic initiatives, said a memo with community, Planning Board and staff recommendations was not meant to change or circumvent residents’ desires.

“Your time is valued. We’re here tonight to share our thinking, but I don’t think we would even be at this point if you all hadn’t put the time into those meetings and we hadn’t had a chance to have all the conversations we’ve had, including tonight,” she said.

The Estes Neighbors community group has a petition asking the council to accept the community’s recommendations. The petition – at http://bit.ly/RuyBkg – had more than 200 signatures Tuesday morning.

Two  meetings for the MLK/Estes Drive Focus Area have been rescheduled.

Participants at the first of three meetings last week requested different dates and times. The recommendations developed during that first meeting are posted online at www.townofchapelhill.org/estesdrive and also will be posted in a few days to a blog at www.2020buzz.org.

The remaining meetings will be held:

-Wednesday, 5-6:30 p.m., HR Training Room, Chapel Hill Town Hall, to develop a recommendation about the MLK/Estes Steering Committee structure and application process.

A survey also is being conducted in advance of this meeting. It can be found online at www.surveymonkey.com/s/H67C9B8.

-Sept. 24, 5-6:30 p.m., Large Training Room, Chapel Hill Transit building, 6900 Millhouse Road, to develop recommendations for the committee’s scope and schedule for gathering community thoughts and ideas.

For more information about the MLK/Estes Drive process, go online to www.townofchapelhill.org/estesdrive. Questions and comments should be directed to Megan Wooley, Housing and Neighborhood Services planner, at compplan@townofchapelhill.org or 919-968-2728.

Last week, the Town Council went against the recommendations of some of its advisory boards when it approved a new Walgreens pharmacy at the corner of Estes Drive and East Franklin Street.

As a result, Transportation Board member Roger Lundblad resigned, effective immediately.

"The recent decision ... totally ignores the considerations of the Transportation Board  suggests that the various boards are, at best, impotent," Lundblad wrote to Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt. "I am too busy to waste my time on ineffectual activity."

Both the Planning Board and the Transportation Board had endorsed traffic islands on both South Estes Drive and East Franklin Street to prevent lefthand turns into and out of the Walgreens on both side. But complaints from Caribou Coffee, which would also have been affected by the South Estes median, led the council to drop that traffic island in favor of a "porkchop" within the Walgreens driveway. That will prevent lefthand turns into and out of Walgreens but won't stop them at Caribou across the street.

The entire Transportation Board and some members of the Planning Board had asked for a longer median on South Estes than town staff had proposed. They wanted it to block lefthand turns to and from not only Walgreens and Caribou but also other driveways farther south on Estes. The boards had also endorsd bicycle-activated traffic signals at the intersection so that cyclists don't have to wait for an automobile's weight to trigger a green light, but that was stripped from the final approval in lieu of $4,000 for additional traffic study.

Transportation Board chairman Augustus Cho said the council's decision failed to anticipate future traffic needs.

"Particularly egregious is the movement of the fund[s] for bicycle [signal installation] to a traffic pattern study," Lundblad wrote in an e-mail to Cho. "You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that intersection is a problem and it is not clear what a further study would do except validate the board recommendations. Failure to approve bicycle activation appears go against a desire to reduce automobile traffic."