A new student housing development is not what Homestead Road needs or  what the students at UNC want.

That was largely the message of the council and residents Monday night, after  developers unveiled plans for a new student housing development at 2801 Homestead Road.

Landmark Properties, based in Atlanta, presented their concept plan for the Retreat, a student housing complex with 180 town homes and single family houses, and 809 parking spaces on 39.5 acres on Homestead Road, adjacent to Homestead Villiage and north of Carolina North.

A Town Council member has asked for a discussion on plans to fully enforce restrictions on future public gatherings in public spaces suchas Peace and Justice Plaza.

In a memo to the Chapel Hill Town Council last week, Town Manager Roger Stancil noted that town officials chose not to enforce rules for permits and limits on how long groups can remain on public space during the three-month Occupy tent encampment outside the Franklin Street post office that ended Jan. 10.

The Occupy movement’s departure presents “a timely opportunity for us to consider enforcement,” Stancil wrote in the memo.

In an email, Town Council member Laurin Easthom asked the manager to put the plan on the agenda for a future meeting so the council can discuss it.

The letters are still coming in pro and con on the Chapel Hill Police Department's SERT raid on the former Yates Motor Co. to remove squatters last November. (Read our most recent story here.)

We have repeatedly asked for interviews with town leaders, including the manager and police chief, to ask what we think are simple questions, including why police did not explicity warn protesters to leave before moving in. On Friday, Town Manager Roger Stancil released the following statement. (Note: our requests predate the council's decision to send Stancil's report to the new police advisory committee.)   

“Out of respect for the process that began by the referral of the Yates Motor Company review to the Community Policing Advisory Board, and the Board’s subsequent discussion about a process they could follow, the Town staff will temporarily refrain from individual media interviews about the Yates Motor Company incident.

On June 27, I posted a link on my Facebook page to a short story on the Town Council’s decision not to charge a library fee for non-Chapel Hill county residents this year. I teased into it by saying council members Matt Czajkowski and Laurin Easthom, who voted for the fee, were “not happy.” Easthom gave us permission to publish her Facebook comment.  

It wasn't just Matt Czajkowski and I that were "unhappy."

Former Mayor Kevin Foy fought for years to achieve fiscal equity between the county and the town on library funding, to no avail. He also had an excellent working relationship with the county. He and I talked a lot about this issue.

Town Manager Roger Stancil and the town staff recommended instituting a fee. A great many citizens in this community who lived outside of the town limits that I talked to were fine with paying the fee and looking forward to a newly expanded library.

Don't forget Stancil's budget message looking to the next couple of years, advising that there would be a property tax increase due to JUST the library's increased operational costs, born solely by the citizens of Chapel Hill (in addition to other potential increases).

I support tax increases for increased services generally. But when the financial burden is on Chapel Hill, footing 100 percent of the capital costs ($14 million-plus) and providing library services basically for free to Carrboro residents and others in the county who don't pay property taxes for the library like we do in Chapel Hill, it just seems unfair.

As I said in the meeting, the vote was to continue to subsidize those that live outside of Chapel Hill for use of the town's library. It seems we are basically engaging in an inevitable merger process between the county and the town library systems all in the name of "interoperability." Wonder what will happen to the "increasing" county funding to the Chapel Hill library when the county opens the Southwest (Carrboro) library branch it has been planning. Maybe by that point we will be merged.

What is interoperability anyway? What are the costs to the Town? How are fuzzy numbers and vagueness "my friend" in this process as council member Sally Greene stated.

If books are shipped out of the town's library to Hillsborough, is there a reduction of copies and reduced availability to those that use Chapel Hill's branch? Will more books be purchased to offset this sharing? Who bears these costs? Is it solely the county?

If a merger is beginning in our systems, then does the county ever reimburse the town a portion of the $14 million we paid to expand the Chapel Hill branch? Does anyone care about the $14 million that Chapel Hill paid? Or the over $2 million in costs to run the library in the first year it's expanded (and subsequent tax increase to pay for that)?

I sure would have liked to have given more money to deserving, hardworking nonprofits in our community this year in our budget, and not cut some of them like we did (like the YMCA afterschool program). Heaven knows what will happen in future years with a still sluggish economy and a tax increase on our table as Stancil has predicted.

I guess the council felt that financially helping those in Carrboro and other county areas use our library was the right choice. Perhaps when I look back I will breathe a sigh of relief that it all worked out. But today I'm the skeptic.
 

Jim Merritt started a landslide of campaign slogans at the League of Women Voters forum Monday.

"Remember," he said in his closing statement,"Chapel Hill has Merritt."

Next in line was Matt Pohlman: "I don't have any catchy phrases. Pohlman is limiting."

Ed Harrison revived his slogan from 2005: "Common Sense for an Uncommon Town."

Laurin Easthom deconstructed the whole endeavor: "Chapel Hill Has Merritt. Everybody Votes Raymond. For Pease in a Pod. DeHart of Chapel Hill. All I ask is to just, 'Vote Easthom'. I can't think of anything."