The Town of Chapel Hill has installed 13 new recycling bins along Franklin Street to collect cans and bottles that were previously thrown in the trash, and another four bins will be placed in Southern Village's central business area.

Chapel Hill High School won a coin flip Saturday to get the top seed in the Carolina-6 Conference's girls basketball tournament. That means, if they win their semifinal game on Wednesday, that the Tigers would host the finals for both boys and girls in the Carolina-6 Conference  tournament on Friday night.

After some confusion on Orange County's position, plans for the light-rail line between Chapel Hill and Durham got unanimous approval this morning from a bi-county transportation committee.

Today's vote for a "Locally Preferred Alternative" route keeps the project on schedule to apply for a federal grant this year. It also moves the project along to another round of public hearings, on environmental effects, in the spring.

A Chapel Hill green energy developer has chosen its home base to build one of the state's largest solar energy plants.

If approved by the N.C. Utilities Commission, Strata Solar's proposed 40-acre solar farm in Chapel Hill would be the biggest solar farm in the Triangle.

It's one of two 5-megawatt projects the company proposed this week and among more than a dozen Strata Solar has developed or planned to date.

Strata Solar also proposed a similarly-sized solar project in Howard's Creek, about 200 miles west of Raleigh. The company was founded in 2009 and has about 30 employees.

In case you're getting a late start on your Super Bowl Sunday paper ...

NO VOTE FRUSTRATES CRITICS: It wasn't Aydan Court, but some say last week's Chapel Hill Town Council vote against Charterwood isn't the first time the town's elected officials haven't listened to the town's appointed officials. The council has a different role to play, of course. Read katelyn Ferral's stor and tell us what you think.

REFUGEES DISCUSS NEEDS: I was driving down Main Street when I saw three Burmese people squatting in a circle on the sidewalk talking. I thought that was interesting, perhaps the way they talked in the refugee camps they came from. I learned a lot when I got to meet soem of the immigrants at the Chapel Hill 2020 meeting at Carrboro Elementary School.

STANCIL, BLUE INTERVIEWS: I want to thank Town Manager Roger Stancil and Police Chief Blue for their candor during last week's interviews about the Yates raid. We have received two letters: one saying I was too hard on the men and one saying I asked good questions. 

New My View columnist Julie Moore discovers UNC's women's gymnastics (they're not all skinny teenagers), Aaron Nelson invites you to his state of the community address at noon today in Chapel Hill Town Hall, and letter writer Sam Schanfarber says there's a drug problem at East Chapel Hill and asks why.

Thanks for reading, and remember you can join us on Twitter (@chapelhillnews1), where we're up to 1,200 followers ) and on my Facebook page, as 800 of you already have. You'll find more news, more photographs (see Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton and the masked anarchist) and more ways for you to share what you think.   

Mark       

Yesterday we brought you an excerpt of our interview with Town Manager Roger Stancil, his first since releasing an action plan and announcing the town has hired a consultant to review police policies and make recommendations for improvement. You can read an account of the interview with Stancil and another with Police Chief Chris Blue in today's N&O and a longer version in tomorrow's Chapel Hill News.  Here is an excerpt from our conversation with Chief Blue.

(In his report Jan. 9, Blue, who was out of town that weekend, describes a single attempt by police to speak with the protesters the night of the occupation "with the hope of persuading them to leave the building." A commanding officer stepped through an open garage door but left when confronted by people wearing masks and shouting insults.)

Q: So you're on the phone with your commanding officer. Does he tell you they didn't ask them to leave? Did you have that information?

Blue: No, we didn't have that conversation.

Q: Why not?

Blue: (Pause) Well, I think the best way to answer that is to say that it's difficult to dictate tactics being removed from the scene. We didn't discuss specific tactics.

Today is National Signing Day, when high school athletes from fall sports make their official commitments to college teams.

While several high school seniors who play Olympic sports are signing as well, much of the emphasis for many schools is placed on football programs.

Locally, offensive lineman William Heine of East Chapel Hill has committed to Georgetown and Chapel Hill's R.J. Quick has signed on for Winston-Salem State.

Heine, a 6-5, 280-pound senior played at right tackle for East, helping to protect record-setting QB Drew Davis in coach  Bill Renner's "five-wide" offense. Heine will be joining his brother James at Georgetown, who's a pitcher for the Hoyas' baseball team.

Quick, not the biggest Tiger at  5-11, 180 pounds, was still one of the biggest guns as a top receiver for coach Issac Marsh as CHHS went 10-3 last season. He was also one of the quickest, no pun intended, with 4.5 speed.

The University of North Carolina is announcing its commitments — including Phil Williamson of Jordan — from the Class of 2012 this afternoon. See UNC Now (http://blogs.newsobserver.com/uncnow) for the latest on Carolina's recruits, and ACC Now (http://blogs.newsobserver.com/accnow/home) for updates on Duke and N.C. State.

The proposal for a new mixed-use apartment tower on West Rosemary, has changed from its early stages, but developers still have some work to do.

Developers for the Shortbread Lofts,a 7-story apartment complex proposed at 333 W. Rosemary Street, presented their modified plan to the Town Council Wednesday night, and opened up the plan for public comment.

The Shortbread Lofts include 85 rental apartments, and 121 parking spaces on 1.4 acres on West Rosemary Street between Mitchell Lane and Church Street. The first floor of the building would include  3,560 square feet of retail.

Several council members said they thought the building, which is depicted by developers has being a mustard yellow color with a modern architectural style, didn't fit with Chapel Hill's style and looked too much like Greenbridge.

"In the end buildings like these will define the aesthetic of downtown for decades to come," said Council member Matt Czajkowski. "I look at his building and I can’t see any basis on which it reflects the nature of Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina ... it does remind me very much dismayingly of Greenbridge."

Today's Chapel Hill News includes my story on a new book of photos from civil rights marches in the 1960s. The photos were taken by Jim Wallace, while he was a student at UNC. What didn't make that article as it went to press for the CHN earlier this week, was a conversation I had with Orange County Sheriff Lindy Pendergrass. Pendergrass was a Chapel Hill police officer from 1961-1964 and is in several of Wallace's photos. Here's an excerpt from my updated story on the book, "Courage in the Moment, The Civil Rights Struggle, 1961-1964." (Read the N&O version of this story here.)

Orange County Sheriff Lindy Pendergrass remembers arresting protestors during the marches in the early ‘60s when he was a patrol officer with the Chapel Hill Police Department.


The current Chapel Hill chief at the time, Chief William Blake, emphasized a calm, non-violent law enforcement response to the marches, Pendergrass said. Blake had a good rapport with march organizers and the department typically knew about sit-ins and marches ahead of  time, he said.


The book shows police officers, including Pendergrass, removing protestors from buildings and roads and putting them in police cars. Officers were always instructed to handle protestors gently, and be impartial, Pendergrass said.


“We approached it with a manner that we wanted to be fair and impartial,” he said. “Chief Blake made a statement to us in the very beginning that we live here and we know these people and we’ll be seeing them every day, let’s treat them how we’d like to be treated and approach it in an impartial manner.”


Pendergrass was a Chapel Hill police officer from 1956 to 1982. He then ran for Orange County Sheriff and has been sheriff since, making him the longest serving sheriff in the state.


In 1961 there were about 20 police officers in the department, he said. Police made more than 3,000 arrests during the marches, he said. Policing the protestors took a lot of extra hours and manpower, he said, but there was never any violence, which is a credit to Chief Blake, he said.


Police treated civil rights marches and Ku Klux Klan marches the same, he said. The Klan marched from Carrboro, down Franklin Street to the planetarium at UNC, in full white robes and hats, but were never violent, Pendergrass said.


“There was a lot of people that didn’t like us taking that approach but after it was over with they all realized they we did the right thing, we didn’t have any violence,” Pendergrass said.