City Hall has been caught in some compromising positions lately, such as tearing up streets that were just repaved to replace a water main and docking a homeowner's bank account almost $83,000 for an erroneous water bill.

Those instances came up Tuesday night when City Manager Tom Bonfield (left) went to the InterNeighborhood Council to talk about the upcoming $20-million bond referendum for repaving streets.

Bonfield was asked how borrowing $20 million for streets might affect the city's similarly overdue maintenance on water and sewer lines. He explained that money for streets and money for water/sewer come out of two different pots. So, he said, the one doesn't affect the other.

"These two projects do intersect though," responded INC President Tom Miller, "in that we have to tear up the streets in order to do the pipes. We just resurfaced Englewood Avenue [in 2008], and now we're tearing Englewood Avenue up to replace water mains."

"That," Bonfield replied, "is a major screwup."

He went on to say the city "has systems in place now" to keep that from happening again; still, there's no guarantee the city won't have to re-repave a street if there's a sewer collapse or utility break or some other unforeseen calamity.

To which Miller said, "If you get that person to pay that $83,000 water bill you could probably pay for some of that."

Bonfield could only smile and say, "All right."

The InterNeighborhood Council wants the city and county governments to commit themselves to continued funding for low-income housing and services before committing any more money to the Rolling Hills/Southside redevelopment project.

"We feel the City Council has an obligation to spread the resources according to need," said INC President Tom Miller, "and tying them up in Rolling Hills isn't very effective."
 

The InterNeighborhood Council is weighing into the 751 South debate, circulating a resolution opposing the mixed-use subdivision near Jordan Lake among its member neighborhoods.

Neighborhood delegates will vote June 15 whether to adopt it or not.

The resolution, released Tuesday, objects to actions by the Board of County Commissioners. The board has, according to the resolution, "at every step, intervened in this matter to twist the process to assist the developers and to confound the neighborhood opponents, and has thereby considerably undermined the trust of Durham citizens and neighborhood organizations in the fairness of the government of Durham County generally and the ordinances governing development particularly."

The INC further "protests the unwarranted and unfair interference of the Board of County Commissioners in the procedures regulating this rezoning, and further that the InterNeighborhood Council, its government and its members, call upon the Board of County Commissioners to deny this rezoning petition in conformity with the recommendation of the Durham City-County Planning Commission because to do otherwise would reward the inappropriate and unfair conduct of this matter at the expense of the trust and welfare of the citizens of Durham."

Craigie Sanders and Tom Miller have staked Durham's neighborhoods to a place in the city's budget process: Holton Career and Resource Center, Driver Street, Feb. 27 in the morning.

"There will be food. I think it's pizza," Miller said.

Sanders and Miller are past president and president respectively, of the InterNeighborhood Council. They, with city budget Director Bertha Johnson, have arranged for neighborhood representatives and city staffers to convene in a "Neighborhood Engagement Workshop" and talk about priorities for 2010-11.

"It isn't so much to decide what the city will spend money on that they haven't spent money on in the past," Miller said, "it's what they won't cut."

The "cafe-style" format, small groups around tables with a neutral emcee at each to keep the conversation on task, is intended to be a more "deliberative" exercise than the annual "Coffee With Council" sessions, Miller said.

There, "ordinary citizens kind of speak for themselves ... in a disorganized fashion," he said. In contrast, at the workshops neighborhood representatives "would come in and ... deliberate and answer questions."

City Council members would show up toward the end to hear the outcome. If it turns out well, the city might make the workshop a "usable continuing part of the budget process," Miller said.

Explaining the notion at Tuesday's InterNeighborhood Council meeting, Miller gave
Sanders most of the credit for instigating the workshop.

"You," Sanders said, "have just as much responsibility ... as I do.” 

Students at the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics are facing a challenge in March.

“We are going for a Guinness world record for the largest food drive in 24 hours at a single location by a non-charitable organization," said coordinator Sue Anne Lewis.

Lewis, a student advisor, pitched the project to the InterNeighborhood Council Tuesday night.

"We need to spread the word because that's one of the things that's going to either make or break us," she said.

In a hurriedly called election, Durham's InterNeighborhood Council voted Tom Miller of Watts Hospital-Hillandale its president-elect Tuesday night.

Reason was, incumbent President-Elect Colin Crossman of Trinity Park announced he couldn't take the job.

Reason was, Crossman said, the demands of his business: The King's Daughters Inn, a bed & breakfast on Buchanan Boulevard. This week's INC meeting, he said, was the first time he'd been able to leave the inn for two weeks.

Since Crossman was due to take over from 2008-09 President Craigie Sanders next month, it was incumbent upon the delegates on hand to do something. Miller volunteered to take the job and was nominated by Bill Anderson of Duke Park.

The Durham way of residential recycling will be explained Tuesday at the InterNeighborhood Council's monthly meeting.

Larrisha McGill, the city's waste reduction coordination for the City of Durham, will speak about the program and answer questions from INC delegates and guests.

INC meets from 7 to 9 p.m. in the
Community Room at the Herald-Sun, 2828 Pickett Road off U.S. 15-501 Bypass.