Chapel Hill Police Chief Brian Curran and Parks and Rec director Butch Kisiah are presenting three options to the Town Council tonight to curtail the annual Halloween celebration on Franklin Street:

-- Establish a multi-year plan to reduce the size of the crowd and create a community-focused event.

-- Restrict access to downtown like the town did in 2001 when checkpoints cut the crowd in half.

-- End the celebration abruptly with intensive law enforcement activity.

Which do you support?

NOTE: Please provide your name if you would like your comments to be considered for publication in a future edition of The Chapel Hill News.   

Orange County Commissioner Mike Nelson is on record: He won't vote to put the county's solid waste transfer station on Eubanks. That's probably not going to happen anyway, given the strong community opposition, but Nelson has been consistent on the issue.

"It's long past time to take that site off the list," he writes on his blog "Leading from the Left." "The community has spoken with a loud voice, and the consensus is that the transfer station should be sited somewhere else. I believe that when we meet next, on October 21st, we will officially remove Eubanks Road from consideration."

Read our story here and Mike's full post here.

Been wondering why there's no water in the fountain outside the Century Center?

Carrboro's public works department turned the fountain off as part of its water conservation efforts in the fall of 2007

Now that the Water Supply Advisory has been rescinded (Sept. 11,
2008), Public Works Director George Seiz says his department plans to start it up again in time for the town's music festival September 28. 

"We will continue with many of our other
water conservation efforts such as using reclaimed water where
possible (e.g. watering plants and street sweeping), and minimizing the
washing of vehicles," he writes in an e-mail. "Unfortunately, we cannot use reclaimed water in
the fountain since there is the possibility of folks coming in contact
with the water."

A developer proposing the renovation of the Cat's Cradle's East Main Street shopping center urged the Carrboro Board of Aldermen to approve the project Tuesday night, saying any further delay could send Cradle owner Frank Heath packing. (Read our story here.)

"It's absolutely an integral part of our project," Laura Van Sant said in an interview Wednesday. "It is a fact he has landlords in Durham offering him free space."

But it's not clear that delaying the 300 East Main Street project would force the Cradle to leave Carrboro. In an e-mail statement, Heath said he gets regular inquiries about relocating the Cradle to a larger space in one of the Triangle's other cities.

"It can get a bit frustrating knowing that our current spot really is where this venue needs to stay, while also knowing that we could benefit from a larger space," Heath wrote.

When asked about Van Sant's claim he'd been offered rent-free space in Durham, Heath answered that it was more along the lines of booking shows elsewhere than a space of his own elsewhere.

From a competitive standpoint, the Cradle could benefit from a capacity larger than its current cap of around 600. Many acts bypass the Triangle for larger clubs such as Asheville's 940-capacity Orange Peel.

The 300 East Main Street project would transform the Carrboro strip shopping center housing the Cradle, The ArtsCenter and other businesses into four five-story buildings, a parking deck and pedestrian plaza.

The developers, most of whom are local, say they want to keep the existing tenants -- and Heath wants to keep the Cradle in Carrboro. Losing the Cradle, Vant Sant said, would be a major setback for the project.

"It's certainly a big fear for us," she said, "and we think it would be a big fear for the town."

Last week's stories on Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell and his opinions on immigration caused a stir.

Tonight at 5 p.m, the conversation will continue in Room 4085 at the UNC School of Law in "Understanding the Tension in Johnston County." (Here's the full story.)

The Hispanic Latino Law Student Association is hosting an open discussion with academics, community leaders, and politicians to address:

• How immigration has changed the demographics in N.C.
• The response to changing immigration demographics
• The underlying issues behind the tension in Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell's comments and anti-immigration rhetoric
• Where North Carolina is headed in respect to these issues

The event also will feature the participation of the Center for Civil Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina, the N.C. Justice Center and others.

Local builder (and OC regular) Mark Marcoplos will have his house featured on Planet Green, a Discovery channel offshoot, at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 17.

The show, "Renovation Nation," is hosted by Steve Stewart of "This Old House" fame and airs locally on DirectTV 286, Time Warner cable 115 and Dish Network 194.
 
Last November, Stewart and his film crew spent a day filming various aspects of the unique house, Marcoplos says. Featured on the program wil be the solar water heater, the photovoltaic generating system, the passive solar design features, the re-used wood from a deconstructed 1930s building (the old Internationalist Books building on Rosemary Street where Dips is now), the composite decking, the bathroom floor made from river rocks, and the cooling system that negates the need for mechanical air-conditioning.

By Andrew Dunn

ANN ARBOR,  MICH. – How do you keep outsiders out of town events? What brings high-tech companies into town? Can a 10-year plan to end homelessness work?

The 112 UNC and Orange County leaders here as part of the Inter-City Visit and Leadership Conference used the forum as a chance to ask their peers from the University of Michigan and Washtenaw County the burning questions facing the Chapel Hill area. The goal of the conference is to see how Ann Arbor – a city a little bigger and a little more urban -- responds to the pressures of growth that Chapel Hill is beginning to face. They arrived in Ann Arbor on Sunday night and will stay until this afternoon.

PUBLIC SAFETY
 
There's no real way to keep outsiders away from big events, but you can discourage them from coming, leaders of the university and city police forces said.

Police have been successful in limiting two events the city did not approve of, Hash Bash and the Naked Mile. The former was a celebration of marijuana use, the latter a traditional streaking event that drew 20,000 viewers.

"We tend to be a magnet," University of Michigan public safety Public Information Officer Diane Brown said. "When we get some of those outsiders in, trouble starts happening."

But by closing parking decks and sending officers out en masse, the events were effectively squashed.

But the police also coordinate several large legal events, including a series of arts festivals that draw 1 million visitors over three days and football games that bring in 100,000 spectators.

Police block off some roads, redirect others and have cars parked on the university's golf course.

HOMELESSNESS

Just like Chapel Hill, the city of Ann Arbor has a 10-year plan to end homelessness. They created theirs in 2004.

As of last year, there were about 580 people homeless at any given time in Ann Arbor, with about 3,400 homeless per year.

The problem, Washtenaw Housing Alliance President Chuck Kieffer said, is rent prices that low-wage workers can't afford. An apartment with no bedrooms costs about $690 per month. A two-bedroom family apartment costs about $942 per month. Kieffer said it takes a yearly salary of $37,680 – or $18.12 per hour -- to afford that.

Kieffer said the 10-year plan has been successful so far, having created 300 new housing units for the homeless or at-risk. The goal is to have 500 new homes.

The plan relies on a partnership between private businesses, nonprofits and government agencies. Its biggest challenge is finding the money to run.

"Only a community that works together in this shared commitment can make this happen," Kieffer said.

ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

Ann Arbor Mayor John Hieftje has led an innovative campaign to make the city a leader in renewable energy policy since he was elected in 2002. Many of his projects are similar to ones Chapel Hill and Orange County are now considering.

Ann Arbor has switched all of its city buses to hybrid technology, much like a project Chapel Hill Transit is working on. Ann Arbor also has harnessed the natural gas emitted from its landfill, which UNC and Chapel Hill are now working on.

The city is also switching its street lights and traffic signals to LED displays. These lights take half the power to run and last five times as long as traditional lights. Police departments can also make the lights in front of their destination flash for easier location during an emergency.

Now Ann Arbor is focusing on how to incorporate solar and wind energy into its operations. A study conducted with the University  of Michigan found that more than 70 percent of rooftops in the city would be able to support solar panels. Hieftje also said he is looking into buying wind power from the eastern part of the state.

And similar to Chapel Hill and Carrboro's moratorium on development in the northern part of the towns, Ann Arbor has begun buying up more than 7,000 acres of current farmland along its borders to create a "green belt" of undeveloped land.

Orange  County leaders said they were impressed by the mayor's environmental vision.

"There's a sense of integration," Hillsborough Mayor Tom Stevens said. "It's not just a series of initiatives. … They are clear about how the money works."

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

A partnership between academia, businesses, nonprofits and government in Washtenaw County called SPARK has helped hundreds of companies and brought in $7.5 million in additional tax revenue from new businesses drawn to the area, said Michael Finney, SPARK's president.

The goal is to make Ann Arbor a "hot spot" for high-tech jobs, similar to the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.

"A lot of our work and effort centers around finding high-value, knowledge-intensive workers," Finney said. "These are things we'll be working on indefinitely."

He said one of SPARK's biggest successes was bringing a segment of Google in to Ann Arbor. One of its latest projects is called "Mich-Again," which promotes job opportunities to out-of-state workers, focusing mainly on 24- to 35-year-olds who went to school in Michigan through college alumni organizations.

Bill Bunch, president of William H. Bunch CPA, said such an organization would be great in Orange  County if local governments and businesses could agree.

"It would be phenomenal," he said.

Separately, the city of Ann Arbor has been working on making its development approval processes more streamlined, said Connie Pulciper, a senior planner with the city. Much like Chapel Hill and Carrboro, Ann Arbor has been criticized for being reluctant to approve projects.

"A simple project can take 8 weeks," Pulciper said. "Even the smallest projects can meet public scrutiny."

When an ordinance approved last week goes into effect, developers will have present their plans to neighborhood groups in advance of the official public hearings to avoid what Pulciper referred to as a "train wreck at the eleventh hour."

Like Carrboro, Ann  Arbor has a downtown redevelopment plan, and like UNC, it has a master plan for capital projects.

Long-term, the county envisions a rail system connecting Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, a neighboring town similar in its relationship to Ann Arbor as Carrboro is to Chapel Hill, and another SPARK organization to spur development on the city's eastern side.

By Andrew Dunn

ANN ARBOR – About 100 UNC administrators, Orange County government officials and local business owners traveled to Ann Arbor, Mich. on Sunday, to learn how that city has handled some of the issues Chapel Hill and Orange County face today.

The inter-city visit tradition was started 20 years ago, when local community leaders visited Lexington, Ky. (home of the University of Kentucky). There have also been trips to Madison, Wisc. (two years ago), Boulder, Colo., and Urbana-Champaign, Ill.

Ann Arbor is a city of 114,000 with a university larger than UNC. Still, the two communities have similar issues: affordable housing, economic insulation, public transportation, suburban sprawl and affordable health care, said Aaron Nelson, president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce.

Monday, Sept. 15
Ann Arbor seems to be a lot bigger than Chapel Hill, but it’s roughly the same size. Ann Arbor just packs a lot more stuff in.
Unlike Chapel Hill — which has very distinct campus and non-campus parts — Ann Arbor has city buildings rising next to UM buildings. Right across from the School of Public Health is the Quickie Burger and a private apartment complex.

That does lead to some town-gown tensions, though, particularly when it comes to student housing. Many of the homes on campus are more than 100 years old, and have traditionally been rented to students. The town and UM have argued over what is historic and should be preserved, and what is just old, said Jesse Bernstein, president of the Ann Arbor Chamber of Commerce.

Sometimes the university wins, and the houses are preserved. Sometimes the city wins, and it gets the go-ahead to erect a 10-story, mixed-use facility.

And because UM hasn’t built any more housing in 40 years, Bernstein said, several private dorms have sprung up. One still under construction will be 25 stories. Still, questions remain over how necessary they are.

Sunday night we had dinner at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum, a children’s science museum in downtown.

The children’s museum had 3,000 student volunteers last year. Jonathan Mills, director of the Kidzu Children’s Museum in Chapel Hill said it was great to see all the partnerships. It was built with a 10,000-square-foot donation from the city, with 25,000 added with private donations.

It is pretty sweet. There are at least four floors of exhibits, with all sorts of science-y games to play.

Mills said the same sort of thing could work great in Chapel Hill. Kidzu is now trying to get space on top of the Wallace parking deck.

“The situation is very parallel,” Mills said. “We’re looking for the town to donate us the space on the rooftop and then we’d raise the rest of the money for the museum.”

More trip tidbits

-- The country’s largest football stadium is undergoing a $225 million renovation. People also use the UM golf course as a parking lot for football games.

-- Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company, announced last year it was closing its huge facility in Ann Arbor, cutting 2,000 jobs in the region. UM has the rights to most of its office space and 8 acres of its land.

-- UM is building a $500 million women’s and children’s hospital.

-- The estimated per-hour value of the time of the participants here is $100,000, according to Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce President Aaron Nelson.

-- Chancellor Holden Thorp (at right) said he wished more students were able to go on this trip.

-- The Chamber of Commerce secured $15,000 in scholarship aid for people to go on the trip.
   
Andrew Dunn, the university editor for The Daily Tar Heel, is providing reports for the local media from this week’s trip to Ann Arbor, Mich.

Billy Collins, the United States’ poet laureate from 2001 to 2003, will be at Memorial Hall on Monday, Sept. 15, to do a reading with commentary and audience Q-and-A.

A lot of people probably came across Collins first on NPR, where he’s been on "A Prairie Home Companion," "Fresh Air" and other programs. His poetry is superb — plainspoken, direct, surprising and frequently very funny. But if you’ve heard him read it aloud — or better yet, seen him before — you know that his delivery is so pitch-perfect that it pretty much constitutes a whole different art form. Once you hear him read one of his poems you’ll never read it again without hearing his soft, wry voice delivering it.

So he’ll be here Sept. 15 at 8 p.m., and get this — it’s free. Until seats run out, you can call the Memorial Hall box office to reserve tickets — (919) 843-3333.

Yet another foodie says we do.

"If you’re visiting the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area, and if you ask anyone where the best barbecue restaurant is, the answer will probably be “Allen & Son,” writes Jason Perlow on his blog, Off The Broiler.

"I have my own biased opinion of who makes the best pork BBQ in the Triangle, but I will say that Allen & Son makes some damned good pulled pork and is an experience that should not be missed, particularly if you are a Yankee like myself that has never experienced the REAL South. The restaurant has been open for 30 plus years and has a devout following."

Read more here.