Chapel Hill Town Council members Laurin Easthom and Gene Pease asked their colleagues to explore charging a library user fee for non-Chapel Hill residents at tonight's Town Council meeting.

Easthom read the petition, which she apologized for not sharing with the rest of the council before the meeting. She asked members to direct town staff to explore fees to help pay for an expanded library's future operating costs if the town remains dissatisfied with the county's contribution. The petition also asks staff to see what other library systems do. 

The county contributes $250,000 annually to the Chapel Hill Public Library. But the expansion is on hold until the town decides how to pay for increased operating costs that could hike town tax bills $30 a year. 

Easthom details her position on her blog The Easthom Page. (Read it here.) She notes that 40 percent of library user are outside Chapel Hill, but the county contribution represents just 11 percent of the operating budget, down from 20 percent in 1995. She wants it at least back up to 20 percent.

"Until there is a plan in place to address the funding inequities as the citizens of Chapel Hill continue to bear all of this financial responsibility, I am not ready to move forward," she writes on her blog. "I WANT the library to expand. But I want others to help pay for our operational costs based on use. It’s only fair."

Hillsborough police chief Clarence Birkhead filed to run for Orange County sheriff today.

Birkhead, 49, is also the former Duke University police chief. He's run the Hillsborough  department since 2005.

We couldn't reach Sheriff Lindy Pendergass tonight to see if he’s running again. He won his seventh term at age 72 four years ago, with 81 percent of the vote.

As sheriff, Birkhead said he would expand collaboration with neighboring law enforcement agencies and operate a transparent department. He said he supports the county’s policy on illegal immigrants, which stops short of the 287(g) program like Alamance County has in which sheriff’s officers act as immigration agents.

He also said he would look into crowding at the Orange County jail, a persistent problem, according to state inspection reports.

“What Sheriff Pendergrass has done the last 50 years in law enforcement is very good, very solid,” Birkhead said. “I just think it’s time to move the sheriff’s department forward.” 

We'll have more on this and other filings in tomorrow's N&O and Wednesday's Chapel Hill News.  

We're now tweeting breaking news, OrangeChat blog posts and other information on Twitter, Please follow us at chapelhillnews1. (Somebody else already had the name with the '1.')  

Maybe it'd be different if Carolina was having a better season, but a new poll says fans aren't out for much blood when the two teams play each other Wednesday night. Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling sent this out a few minutes ago

"Every year around this time we're saturated with news stories, essays, even books about how much hatred there is in the UNC-Duke rivalry. But do most Tar Heel and Blue Devil fans really hate each other's schools? Our scientific polling indicates no."

"Thirty-five percent of North Carolinians will be rooting for UNC tonight compared to 21 percent pulling for Duke and 44 percent who don't care one way or the other. Among those respondents who do have a team they prefer in the game just 18 percent to 20 percent of Duke fans and 17 percent of UNC fans say that they “hate” their rival."

"We broke that down further by whether folks are “hardcore,” “moderate,” or just “casual” fans of that school. Not surprisingly the most passionate fans are the most likely to express hatred of their rival – 32 percent of them do – 42 percent of Duke fans and 29 percent of UNC fans. But it's still nowhere near a majority."

Read the full analysis here.

Staff writer T. Keung Hui reports  in today's News & Observer that the family of a Chapel Hill High School football player who died in 2008 hours after being evaluated by a paramedic has filed a lawsuit. From Hui's story:

In the suit, the family of Atlas Fraley blames paramedic James Griffin, Orange County and Orange County Emergency Services for not showing proper care that could have kept the 17-year-old from dying. Griffin, who was reprimanded by the county and later resigned from his job, had responded to a 911 call from Fraley hours before he died.

"Atlas was only 17 years old when he called 911 desperately trying to get the emergency medical care that he needed," Donald Strickland, the lawyer for the Fraley family, said on Saturday. "He got an EMS worker to his house, but he received no medical care and was left home alone to die alone."

Read Hui's full story here.

Yes, we have coverage of this week's school board meeting, local activists' protest against UNC's coal- (and natural gas-) burning power plant and more on the state wanting to know what UNC knew and when about treated animal waste leaking into Collins Creek ...

But we also have 

CATHERINE WRIGHT: with a wrenching My View column sharing the struggle of her brother and sister-in-law Magui after she was badly injured in a horrific accident. "He followed her eyes and saw her lift one hand and then the other, one arm and then the other. 'Are you dancing Magui?,' " he asked.

SAMUEL JOHNSON:a local home schooler with an award-winning essay that asks the question: Does America still have heroes? "Today the word hero has been cheapened; famous actors and athletes are called heroes in pop culture. But they are not heroes."

TERRI BUCKNER: on the continuing discussion about whether to pave a path along Bolin Creek from Estes Drive to Homestead Road. "Paving the Chapel Hill section has not detracted from its natural beauty ... Walking along the greenway you can till hear and see owls, hawks, and a variety of songbirds, despite the pavement. There are still wildflowers, amphibians and all manners of wildlife."

Yes, we bring you as much local news as we can. But whether writing about the personal, the political or blending the two, you readers are The Chapel Hill News. 

Thanks for reading ... and for writing,

Mark

Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton is losing patience with the discussion over how Chapel Hill is going to pay for its library.

The library is the most heavily used, per capita, in the state. But an expansion is on hold until Chapel Hill figures out how to pay additional operating costs that could raise taxpayers annual town tax bills $30 a year.

The problem? Forty percent of items circulated go outside Chapel Hill, but Orange County government contributes only 11 percent of operating costs. Chapel Hill has tried to get the county to pony up and even floated the idea of asking Carrboro for money.

Now Chapel Hill Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt, stuck on county negotiations, wants a meeting with Carrboro.    

“I suppose we have to, although I do not look forward to it,” Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton replied in an e-mail.

Libraries are a county function and that’s where Chapel Hill needs to solve its problem, the mayor said.   

“I am no way – no how – never going to vote to put Carrboro into the same dysfunctional relationsip with either the County or Chapel Hill that the two of them already have with each other,” he wrote.

In an interview, Chilton said Carrboro is a small town and can't afford to pay for using Chapel Hill's library.  In his e-mail he says Chapel Hill and Orange County should open a branch downtown instead of expand, putting library services in walking distance of much of the population, including low-incom people of color who might have difficult getting to libraries farther out.   

The state has dropped plans for a controversial bypass around historic Churton Street, a DOT official said Thursday.

“Overwhelmingly, we have gotten negative comments and opposition to the project,” Jamille Robbins, of the Department of Transportation’s Human Environment Unit, told Chapel Hill News correspondent Tammy Grubb today.

Since it was proposed in 1969, the Elizabeth Brady Road extension had faced tough opposition. Last year, more than 1,000 residents signed a petition against building the road, saying it would harm Hillsborough’s natural and cultural resources, as well as force residents to move. The road was expected to pass through historic sites Ayr Mount and the Occonneechee-Orange Speedway.

Hillsborough Mayor Pro Tem Mike Gering was glad to hear the news. “That is consistent with everyone’s position,” he told Grubb. “This decision is fiscally responsible and sensitive to the community’s needs.”

An organization serving Latinos in Durham County will open an Orange County office this spring to replace a similar program that closed last fall.  

El Centro Hispano plans to open a satellite office in Carrboro Plaza on N.C. 54 in April. The move will dovetail with the Latino Community Credit Union opening a branch there, said Pilar Rocha-Goldberg, El Centro’s executive director.

In Durham, the two offices are near each other downtown and it makes sense to pair them in Orange County, Rocha-Pilar said. Each will have its own storefront.  

A public meeting to talk about the plans and meeting the needs of the Latino community in Orange County will be held at 7 p.m. Feb. 16 at the Seymour Senior Center, 2551 Homestead Road in Chapel Hill.

El Centro Hispano will need to raise money to run the office, which does not yet have a name. The program will be run out of Durham, with no separate director in order to save money, Rocha-Goldberg said.

Orange County’s El Centro Latino closed its office on Carrboro’s Main Street in November when its board of directors said it could no longer afford to operate.

Four days before Sam Taylor arrived in Iraq three men were killed by rocket attack 20 yards from where he now sleeps.

You learn quickly to hit the ground when someone yells “incoming!” Taylor says you’ve got about 20 seconds before the rocket hits.

But for some reason, these three ran for the bunker instead of hitting the ground, he says.

“They just got torn apart.”

Three wooden crosses mark the ground where they died.

On Sunday The Chapel Hill News started running a series of dispatches from Taylor, a 24-year-old chaplain’s assistant in the 34th Infantry Division. I met the 2007 UNC grad during a brief break home to visit his family in Chapel Hill.