A grand opening ceremony for Orange County's new Fairview Park is scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday at the park, located at 195 Torain St. in Hillsborough.

Activities for the afternoon include a tennis clinic, horseshoes, basketball and volleyball.  Some remarks from county officials will also be made. Refreshments will be served.

Amenities at Fairview include: a lighted baseball/softball field, lighted basketball courts, hiking trails, horseshoe pits, picnic shelter, playground, lighted tennis courts, volleyball court and a lighted, one-quarter mile walking track.  The tennis courts will be the first public courts in northern Orange County outside of a school campus.
 
A master plan map of the park can be viewed on the main Orange County website, www.co.orange.nc.us .  Look under “What’s New” for the Fairview Park Site Plan.
 
Board of Orange County Commissioners’ Chair Bernadette Pelissier and Board Member Barry Jacobs will speak at Saturday's ceremony, as will Fairview Community Watch representative Brian Lowen.

Funding for this park comes from a 2001 Parks and Open Space Bond, a North Carolina Parks and Recreation Trust Fund grant, Town of Hillsborough sidewalk funding and Orange County Payment–in-lieu funding.  St. Matthews Episcopal Church also provided funding assistance.

Looking at the results from the highly-competitive PAC-6 championship meet, nobody would have ever guessed Wednesday night that East Chapel Hill was missing several swimmers due to illness. The Wildcats easily won both the boys' and girls' titles at the competition in Hillsborough's Triangle Sportsplex.
In typical fashion, East Chapel Hill ran away with the competition early on, and with 743 points, the lady Wildcats beat second place Jordan High by 224 points. Riverside High came in third with 388 points, and Northern finished with 306 points.
On the boys’ side, the Wildcats took home a substantial victory, scoring 712 points compared to second-place Jordan’s 559. Riverside and Northern brought up the rear with 354 and 219 points respectively.
See correspondent Kelly Parson's story in Sunday's Chapel Hill News for more.
 

At least one employee who was supposed to be making sure the Hillsborough Police Department met accreditation requirements was instead conducting for-profit business on work time using her town e-mail address.

After a public records request by The News & Observer/Chapel Hill News, the town released more than 80 e-mails dated from February 2007 to March 2009 showing that former accreditation manager Zina Long Barnett was running a tax-preparation business from her office at the Police Department.

The newspaper had asked for any e-mail messages police employees had used for side businesses. Internet abuse was one of the main problems Peterson discovered after a mock assessment last October found the department out of compliance with accreditation standards.

“Significant numbers of e-mails were found indicating some employees were spending a large amount of work time running personal businesses in lieu of tending to assigned responsibilities, thus contributing to neglect of duty and poor performance,” Peterson wrote.

Peterson said two employees were running businesses on town time. The second employee objected to the release of his or her e-mails on the grounds they are protected personnel information. The town has thus far withheld them.

Between October and June, five employees, including Barnett and former Police Chief Clarence Birkhead, left the department.

Efforts to reach Barnett via e-mail, Facebook and telephone were unsuccessful.

Look for more on this story in tomorrow's N&O and Sunday's Chapel Hill News.

The last two Chapel Hill-area golfers playing in the CGA’s N.C. Junior Championships have bowed out of the match-play competition.
Cedar Ridge junior Casey Ward defeated Kayla Sciupider of Etowah, the medalist of stroke play, 2 & 1, in Thursday morning’s Round of 16. But Ward then fell to Madison Kennedy of Salisbury, by the same 2 & 1 score, in the afternoon's quarterfinals.
Kennedy reached the quarterfinals by defeating Northwood junior Emily Brooks, 3 & 2, in the Round of 16.

Two down, two left.
Both Casey Ward and Emily Brooks advanced in match play to today’s Round of 16 in the CGA’s N.C. Junior Championship at Forest Oaks Country Club in Greensboro. Ward, a rising junior at Cedar Ridge, had to go to the 20th hole yesterday to knock out Stacey Adams of Asheville. Brooks, a Northwood junior, had an easier time with Alaina Yeatts of Durham, winning 5 & 4.
Chapel Hill’s Michael Hocker II downed Sam Goodnight of Lincolnton 5& 3 and went to the 18th green in the Round of 32 before losing to Miller Capps of Denver, 1 up. Chapel Hill’s Benjamin Griffin fell to Patrick Morris Hampstead, 2 up.
The Carolina Golf Association's N.C. Junior Championships for boys and girls conclude this weekend in Greensboro.
Hocker is keeping a busy schedule this week. He and Chapel Hill ninth-grader Justin Curis are both slated to tee off Saturday in the Carolinas Junior PGA Championship. That PGA Carolinas Section event plays out Saturday and Sunday at Quail Creek at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, S.C.
 

Laura Wearn of Charlotte led wire-to-wire in winning her first major championship title by four strokes over defending champion Katherine Perry of Cary at the 61st N.C. Women's Amateur Championship in Gastonia.

Wearn's final round 74 was the highest round she shot throughout the N.C. Women's Golf Association www.ncwga.com event, which was played Tuesday through Thursday at the 6,024-yard, par-36-36--72 Gaston Country Club layout.

Lori Beth Adams of Burlington was third, followed by Corrine Carr of Pinehurst in a tie for fourth. Courtney Rouse of Holly Springs was seventh, and Wendell's Ashley Denton shared ninth.

The Town of Hillsborough has filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by Orange County government over parking at the county’s newly renovated courthouse.

The lawsuit between the two local governments – “fortunately, a rare occurence,” town attorney Bob Hornik said – names the town and the Hillsborough Board of Adjustment as defendants. The town filed its response Tuesday.

The town has refused to grant the county a certificate of occupancy for the Orange County Justice Facility because the county has not provided additional parking the town says the county promised.

The Hillsborough Police Department is now signing up participants for its 2010 Basketball Camp.

The camp for youths ages 10 to 18 years old will be 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., July 26-30, in the gymnasium at C.W. Stanford Middle School, 308 Orange High School Road in Hillsborough.

A registration fee of $5 will go toward a pizza party on the last day of camp.

To sign up, visit the Community Policing Substation, 501 Rainey Ave., to fill out the necessary paperwork. The camp will be limited to 60 participants.

For more information, contact Cpl. Tereasa King at 732-2441, ext. 26.    

The Orange County Board of Commissioners acknowledged they don't have
rock-solid science to defend it, but they went ahead and approved a new
boundary for the Upper Eno Watershed Critical Area Tuesday night.

Responding to criticism from a February public hearing, county staff
exempted about 200 acres near I-40/85 in Efland because of its prime
potential for commercial development.

But Steve Yuhasz, the only commissioner to vote against the critical
area, insisted that thousands of acres south of the interstate should
also be excluded. The original watershed as defined in 1994 presupposed
the potential for a Seven Mile Creek reservoir in that area which the
county is no longer planning.

"I have some real problems with this proposal," Yuhasz said.
"Protecting a reservoir isn't part of what's going on here. It's not
something that speaks to protection of water quality. There's something
going on here that just doesn't make a lot of sense to me."

Hillsborough Town Manager  Eric Peterson has proposed a  $7.2 million budget with no tax increase for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

The fiscal 2011 budget holds the town property tax at  62 cents per $100 of assessed property value, or $1,550 on a house valued at $250,000.

But Peterson warns that stagnant growth could lead to a $1 million shortfall in the budgets for fiscal year 2012 -- and the ones after that -- without eliminating staff or services.  Plugging the hole with a tax increase alone would raise the town tax rate by over 14 cents, or 22.6 percent.

"This clearly would not be an acceptable solution," he writes in his budget message released today. "In short this, requires saying 'no' to many new initiatives and ideas unless they are mission critical and/or likely to produce long term savings."        

Other budget highlights:

- The budget increases spending by  1.9 percent over this year. It includes replacing a 23-year-old aerial ladder fire truck, two police patrol cars  and and investigation car and adding an additional patrol car.

- It includes funding the merit pay system for town employees at 50 percent to give workers an average raise of 2.2 percent.

- It recommends withdrawing  $434,632 from the town’s fund balance, or savings, to help balance the budget. That would leave reserves at  39 percent of annual operating expenses, below the state average of 60 percent to 65 percent for similar-size towns, Peterson says.

- It recommends no increase in water rates and a  5 percent increase in sewer rates. The latter will cost typical in-town customers using  4,000 gallons per month an additional  $1.52 and out-of-town customers an extra  $2.96 per month.