Tom Jensen's weekly columns from the C.H. Herald

Thoughts on the Chapel Hill Public Financing System

2007-07-25T15:32:00.000-07:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill News on Wednesday, July 25th:

Since 2003 I've worked heavily on the campaigns of six candidates for Chapel Hill Town Council and two for Orange County commissioner. Six of them raised enough money to do everything they wanted to in the campaign and two of them did not. Six of them won and two of them did not. You can probably guess what the correlation was.

That's why I'm so pleased that the legislature passed a bill last week that will allow Chapel Hill to do a pilot program for public financing in municipal elections.

The core requirement of the bill is that "the candidates participating in the program must demonstrate public support and voluntarily accept strict fundraising and spending limits in accordance with a set of requirements drawn by that government."

The success of the program in encouraging a wider variety of candidates to put themselves forward for public office will depend on how those parameters are met when the specific requirements of it are set.

In order to "demonstrate public support," I think candidates should raise a minimum of $2,500 from at least 50 individual contributors who are residents of Chapel Hill in order to qualify for public financing.

This may seem onerous, but since our tax dollars will be paying for the program we need to make sure that it is spent on serious candidates. For the most part, if someone cannot raise an average of $50 from 50 different people they don't have the level of support necessary to mount a viable campaign.

An additional step to ensure that the $2,500 is raised from moderate-size donations would be to establish a guideline that only the first $100 of the Chapel Hill maximum contribution of $200 would count toward the baseline for public financing. A similar system is used in the federal public financing system. Candidates using public money should also be restricted to donating $200 to their own campaigns. A minimum donation of $10 would be worth considering as well so folks don't load up on large checks and reach the required number of donors by picking up $1 donations.

Candidates that reach the qualifying threshold should receive a matching amount of $2,500 in public funding. In most cycles you can run a perfectly viable campaign for $5,000 in Chapel Hill. In the last election, newcomer Laurin Easthom finished first overall and spent less than $4,000.

Even though Easthom was able to do that, the 2005 election was somewhat unusual in that no single candidate spent a large amount of money. It's sort of like a Prisoner's Dilemma. When one candidate raises a ton, others tend to feel like they need to also. If no one does that, then a cheaper campaign is possible.

It is likely that sometime we will see another campaign like 2003, where several candidates infused a lot of their own money and spent more than $10,000 apiece. So we need to make sure the "strict fund-raising and spending limits" called for in the bill are not too low, to ensure that well-funded candidates who eschew public financing don't get too big of an unfair advantage.

I think a reasonable cap for participating in the public finance program would be $7,500. So candidates would have to raise at least $2,500, would then receive $2,500 in public funds, and could raise another $2,500 on top of that if they so chose.

I cannot see a scenario where a candidate who reached out to voters and had a compelling message would lose a race due to a lack of money by only spending $7,500. It would be because there were four stronger candidates in the field, not because of insufficient funds.

Ideally there could be a $5,000 maximum, but I don't think that does enough to protect against the possibility of some folks running very expensive campaigns. Based on my experience, $7,500 is a good middle ground.

There are also a couple things in the public-financing system for statewide judicial campaigns in North Carolina that Chapel Hill might consider. One is a provision for "rescue" money for publicly financed candidates if an opponent not using the system raises an inordinate amount of funds. This could entail either receiving a larger public allocation or increasing the cap on fundraising. A second thing in the judicial system worth implementing is a neutral voter guide mailed to all Chapel Hill voters so they can be informed about their choices.

I throw out this proposal mainly as a starting point for community discussion. I hope there will be a lot of public input because the rest of the state will be watching us to see how this works, and it would be great if we can develop a successful model that becomes broadly implemented after the five-year study period allowed in the bill has passed.

If we do this right, we will never have a serious local candidate lose due to a lack of money again.

Making the Community Garden grow

2007-05-14T17:43:00.000-07:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, May 12th:

Carrboro Alderman Dan Coleman recently told me that his town is always looking for programs that combine a grassroots economy, community building and environmental stewardship.

The new Carrboro community garden, which will be at Martin Luther King Jr. Park for at least the next few years, certainly fits the bill. This project is a natural for a town that is already home to a cooperative grocery, a community radio station and a housing cooperative.

I recently chatted with Sammy Slade, April McGreger and Jay Hamm of the Carrboro Community Garden Coalition about their plans for this new town initiative.

Hamm told me that they plan to plant basic Southern vegetables, things like squash, tomatoes, okra, beans, peppers, melons and sweet potatoes. They're committed to making sure that nothing they grow goes to waste and will distribute their yield in a variety of ways, including distributing fresh fruits and vegetables to needy people in the community.

The importance of locally grown food is becoming increasingly important in this era of heightened environmental awareness. The shorter the distance food travels, the less carbon dioxide is generated in its transport. It's also fresher, cheaper and healthier. Slade thinks the garden will play a great role in "building community and combating global warming."

Collaborative gardening is certainly an activity that requires teamwork. Right now there are about 20 folks involved in Carrboro's community garden effort and it's increasing rapidly through word of mouth. McGreger said that many of the folks involved in this project had known each other before but have become much closer as they've worked together on the garden, and that the community-building aspect of it is as exciting as the growth of the food itself.

The group is planning to do a lot of its work on Saturday mornings but as of yet has no regular schedule. If you're interested in getting involved you can e-mail ccgc@riseup.net to be added to their electronic discussion group.

Hamm said that their vision is that the garden project will let people see that community gardens can be "abundant, beautiful and doable," and inspire similar smaller projects throughout the rest of the town, state and world. For instance, he'd like to see Carrboro move from this initial townwide garden to having small ones in each neighborhood all over the community, allowing folks to work in even smaller and locally oriented groups to produce food.

McGreger said another nice aspect of the process in getting the garden started has been the opportunity "to learn how to participate in direct democracy."

Many people involved had never worked with town staff and elected officials before, and they've found it to be a positive experience. All three spoke glowingly of the folks they've worked with in the Parks & Recreation Department as well as Public Works. Slade also made sure to say that while the entire Board of Aldermen has been supportive of their efforts, "Dan Coleman has been our main liaison from the town and the person who has kept us informed and worked to move the project forward."

Coleman told me that he first learned to garden in a community garden space shared by a dozen families, some experienced gardeners and some, like himself, newbies. Still very much a novice, he hopes that he can learn more by helping out at CCGC and expose his 6-year-old son to the benefits of community gardening.

This project just makes sense. They're using public space that otherwise might not be put to any formal use before construction of the park begins in a few years. It's going to produce fresh food for local residents who might not otherwise have access to it while providing other folks with fruits and vegetables that might in the absence of the garden have come on a truck from somewhere out of state.

Since local residents are raising their hands to do the work themselves, there's not anything coming out of the town budget to pay for it other than staff time -- a good thing in a year of tight budget times.

The benefits the community garden produces will indeed be far more than the investment Carrboro is putting in to make the program work.

As Jay Hamm said in summing it up, the project is literally "growing community." Kudos to both the folks in the Carrboro Community Garden Coalition for bringing this forward and to the elected officials and staff for the town of Carrboro for working together to make it happen. It's a great example of government functioning well, and one that can serve as an ideal model for other local communities.

Want to seek office? Here's some advice

2007-05-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, May 5th:

Last weekend I had the pleasure of serving on a panel organized by the Community Action Network about running for local office. CAN is concerned, as am I, about the declining number of people putting themselves out to serve the public and its event was a wonderful step in the right direction.

All of the panelists had interesting anecdotes and tips to share about their experiences running for office.

For instance, former Carrboro Alderman Allen Spalt was mortified during his first campaign to open up the newspaper and find that he had been listed as a Republican! An accomplished liberal activist over many years, he used this example to show the importance of swiftly correcting any inaccurate information put out about you in public.

Charlie Lancaster, who has served as a campaign treasurer for Kevin Foy and Laurin Easthom, made some good points about the financial aspect of running a campaign. One key tip he related was that even though you are only required to list the occupation and employer of a donor if they give more than $100, there's the possibility that if they give you $50 in September, they might give another $50 in October. So it's always good to get that information ahead of time!

Former Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board member Nick Didow talked about how much more there is to being an elected official than necessarily meets the eye. It's not just going to meetings. He said that folks frequently came up to him in the grocery story to give him a piece of their mind. He wasn't complaining, though; he said as intense as it got at times, the experience was always very rewarding.

Ruby Sinreich, Chapel Hill planning board chair and editor of orangepolitics.org, talked about the use of technology in the campaign. She noted that we have gotten to the point where no serious candidate for office would go without a Web site, but that doesn't mean candidates need to break the bank either. For instance they could start up a blog to serve as a campaign Web site for free. That's what Mark Kleinschmidt did during his successful re-election campaign.

Kleinschmidt was also on the panel, and he emphasized the importance of working well with the media. He said forging strong relationships with folks in the press and keeping them in the loop about things going on with the campaign makes it much easier for a candidate to get the message out.

I focused most strongly on the mechanics of running a successful campaign. Here are four tips I would encourage any candidate for public office to keep in mind:

* Be organized. Have specific people overseeing specific parts of your campaign, and know well in advance what you're going to do and when you're going to do it. Planning ahead will help keep everyone's sanity intact and ensure that you don't make any critical mistakes, especially by forgetting to do something until after it's too late.

* Get a good group of volunteers and show your appreciation for them. There's no way to run a campaign by yourself. You need folks to put up signs, work at the polls, write letters to the editor and do lots of other stuff. These people could be spending time with their families, going to the movies or doing about a million other things but they're taking time out because they care about you and what your election would do for the community. Make sure to let them know how much you appreciate it as often as you can. It will make for a happier and more productive campaign team.

* Use your friends. Before you pay a graphic designer to make your brochure or give someone a bunch of money to do your Web site, think about who you know that might be able to do it well for free. Odds are they'll be more attentive to you than someone who's more worried about getting a pay check anyway.

* Maintain your perspective. If someone writes something unpleasant about you on a blog or you don't get an endorsement you had hoped to receive, don't let it get you away from your campaign plan. One thing itself will almost never break a campaign, but letting it distract you from everything else you need to be doing could.

This fall there are four seats open on the Chapel Hill Town Council, four on the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board, three on the Carrboro Board of Aldermen and three on the Hillsborough Town Board.

Democracy thrives when voters have a number of strong candidates to choose from.

Check the TV listings for the replay schedule of the Community Action Network's election workshop on the People's Channel -- it's worth a watch whether you're considering a run yourself or even if you're just interested in knowing what goes into a campaign.

Folks gotta be more open minded

2007-05-02T06:14:00.000-07:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, April 28th:

Last week a number of neighbors of Freedom House, an addiction and mental illness treatment center in northern Chapel Hill, came out to speak against a proposed expansion of the facility.
Most of their concerns centered on safety. One neighbor, Cingai Chen, summed up the rhetoric pretty well by saying, "We are very worried about some day those patients will create a safety concern for our community."

The operative words in that statement are "some day." The reality is that Freedom House has been in our community for more than three decades and there have never been problems. It's a well-run place with tremendous success stories and has never created anything resembling a crime problem. There's no reason to believe expanding the facility would change that.

A similar thing happened in the early 1990s when the AIDS House opened up in Carrboro. There was a good deal of rhetoric about what "element" would be brought into the community and the negative impacts it could have. Now, nearly 20 years later, it's provided a great service for some of our residents and it's never brought a lick of trouble.

In both of these cases and others that have cropped up through the years, people are speaking out and acting mostly based not on factual information or what has happened but because of their fear of the unknown.

It's a basic human impulse, but it's also one worth staying away from as much as possible. Instead of making knee-jerk assumptions, folks should put more time and effort into learning about their neighbors and how to best coexist with them. It would make for a more harmonious community.

I think this is pertinent in particular to two issues that we will continue to face in the next couple of years.

One is panhandling downtown. I read a lot of angry letters to the editor about folks asking for money, and if it's keeping residents and visitors from feeling safe there then it's certainly an issue worth finding solutions for. But punitive measures are not the way to go.

The pragmatic reasons are that for the most part folks aren't doing anything illegal, and an ordinance passed four years ago intended to crack down on aggressive panhandling hasn't seemed to do anything to cut down on the complaints anyway.

Maybe even more importantly, morally it just is not right to punish people who are poor for doing what they can to sustain their lives. Instead of complaining about the panhandlers, it would be better for people to write letters to the editor suggesting feasible things we can do as a community to make it so that there is no need for folks to do it.

The way to eliminate the issue of panhandling is to work toward eliminating the issue of poverty. That's a much more productive exercise for a community than coming down on its most vulnerable residents.

The other issue forthcoming where I think it will be important for people to move beyond their fear of the unknown is the location of the new IFC men's shelter. This is an issue that has been around for years, but has not reached any sort of conclusion because every time a new site is discussed neighbors organize and blow the idea out of the water.

It's going to have to go somewhere, and I bet it won't be nearly as bad a neighbor as folks expect it to be. They may be leery because people often show up in the police beat with the IFC shelter listed as their home address. Interestingly though, a study done from April-July 2004 found that less than 10 percent of the folks who listed it as their address were actually staying there when they were arrested.

The perception of homeless people going around and committing crimes is completely overblown. I hope that wherever the shelter ends up being sited, folks in the area will go there and volunteer and get to know the residents instead of coming to public meetings and making negative generalizations. Again, taking the time to get to know that which is unknown will ease our fears and make us a better community.

Issues of homelessness, addiction and mental health tend to be difficult ones to talk about and deal with. But we have to be informed about them and step outside our comfort zones to get a greater understanding of the role they play in our community.

Shoving them aside or trying to leave them for some other neighborhood or group of people to deal with does not help us move forward. Conquering our fears of the unknown is essential to create the kind of society we want to live in.

Seven tips for a winning political campaign in Chapel Hill/Orange County

2007-04-26T06:26:00.000-07:00

Ruby Sinreich over at Orange Politics blogs about a workshop we are participating in this weekend for potential candidates in local elections. Sponsored by the Community Action Network, it's worth coming out for on Saturday from 10-Noon at Chapel Hill Town Hall.

In advance of the event I put together a list of seven tips for winning a local election:

-Be organized. Have specific people overseeing specific parts of your campaign, and know well in advance what you're going to do and when you're going to do it. Planning ahead will help keep everyone's sanity intact and ensure that you don't make any critical mistakes, especially by forgetting to do something until after it's too late.

-Get a good group of volunteers and show your appreciation for them. There's no way to run a campaign by yourself. You need folks to put up signs, work at the polls, write letters to the editor, and do lots of other stuff. These people could be spending time with their families, going to the movies, or doing about a million other things but they're taking time out because they care about you and what your election would do for the community. Make sure to let them know how much you appreciate it as often as you can. It will make for a happier and more productive campaign team.

-Utilize your friends. Before you pay a graphic designer to make your brochure or give someone a bunch of money to do your website, think about who you know that might be able to do it well for free. Odds are they'll be more attentive to you than someone who's more worried about getting a pay check anyway.

-Get your fundraising done early. The last two months before the election you will have so many forums to go to and questionnaires to fill out that time will be precious. Getting your money taken care of before the stretch run is a big help.

-Maintain your perspective. If someone writes something unpleasant about you on a blog or you don't get an endorsement you had hoped to receive, don't let it get you away from your campaign plan. One thing itself will almost never break a campaign, but letting it distract you from everything else you need to be doing could.

-Make sure your campaign is focused on the right audience(s). If you're running for Town Council, going to University Mall and handing out flyers to folks who may not even live in town is not a good use of time. Getting a list of people in your neighborhood who regularly vote in municipal elections and going door to door to their houses is.

-Utilize all the communications outlets you have available to you. Think the newspaper oversimplified your ideas about something? Expand your thoughts on a blog. Think there's a neighborhood your message isn't getting across in? Send them a targeted mailing. Want to get students involved? Go to them where they are. Every individual voter uses a different process and body of information to decide who to support in an election. You should do your best to get your message across through a variety of mediums so that you can reach as many people as possible.

H77, North Carolina Renewable Energy Bill, would do a lot of good

2007-04-24T14:43:00.001-07:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, April 21st:

I was pretty cranky earlier this week. My power went out at 10 a.m. on Monday. I had to go to Greensboro for a business meeting in the late afternoon, and when I got back around 9:30 p.m. I found that my apartment complex was still pitch black.

There has been a rash of crime in my neighborhood recently -- in at least one instance violent. So I moved with trepidation toward my door since I couldn't see anything and then spent several minutes nervously trying to find the lock and the correct key.

I finally got inside safely and went straight to bed. When I got up at 6:15 the next morning I found that there was no hot water in the house. It probably wouldn't have mattered anyway though because there are no windows in my bathroom, making it the darkest place in the apartment. So I went to work unshowered, feeling pretty disgusting.

The thing I found most paradoxical about the entire episode was that our power was knocked out on a beautiful, sunny day!

One person who was not at all cranky about his power situation is environmental leader and Greenbridge developer Tim Toben. His farm in western Orange County, which runs largely on renewable energy sources, was generating "excess power." He relates that "you couldn't see the blades of the wind turbine, because they were moving so fast."

Folks who get a good deal of their energy from solar power were probably laughing at all of us without it the early part of this week, too.

Renewable energy is the way to go in North Carolina, and the good news is that if a bill introduced in the state House this session passes you won't have to install a wind turbine or a solar roof on your house to benefit from it.

House Bill 77 is a bipartisan proposal that would require 20 percent of the power provided by our utilities to come either from renewable sources or energy efficiency by the year 2021.

Recently, Duke Energy proposed building two new coal-fired power plants in Cleveland County, near the South Carolina border. These have been described by some environmental activists as "global warming machines."

Toben says that "wind turbines on the coast and in the mountains, sited safely away from bird migration routes, would produce 1,200 megawatts of power." This would produce roughly the same amount of power as the one coal-fired plant that the North Carolina Utilities Commission has approved at Cliffside, and as Toben points out would do the trick while producing no carbon, no nitrogen dioxide, no sulfur dioxide, no particulates and no mercury.

It's just common sense that if we can produce our energy in a more sustainable way while significantly reducing pollution, we should do it.

Where do our local officials stand? Rep. Verla Insko is one of the bill's 56 co-sponsors. The Chapel Hill Town Council, at the behest of Councilman Ed Harrison, unanimously passed a resolution in support of it at a February meeting. They should be commended for their leadership.

Speaker Joe Hackney is not a co-sponsor of the bill, but in his new position he doesn't really sponsor anything. Considering his long record of environmental leadership he will surely do what he can to be supportive.

Rep. Bill Faison also is not a co-sponsor, even though most of his colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle have already shown their support through that outlet. It surely would not hurt for him to hear from his constituents in northern Orange County about how important it is for him to take leadership on this issue.

Also disappointing is that our major utility companies, Duke and Progress Energy, have not come out to show their support. Duke, in particular, under the leadership of chairman Jim Rogers, has made a lot of noise about moving toward cleaner energy sources. Given this, one might think they should work to see this bill passed. If you are a stockholder at either of these companies, drop them a line and let them know what you think.

Obviously this week's power outages were a minor nuisance, especially in the context of other events occurring both nationally and internationally. Nonetheless, it should help put the spotlight on the emergence of renewable energy sources as valid providers of power.

North Carolina's elected leaders have a great opportunity to show strong leadership on this issue. It's up to them to take the ball and run with it in the coming months, and it's also up to normal citizens to put the pressure on them to make it a priority.

Chapel Hill/Carrboro NAACP showing the right vision

2007-04-14T16:19:00.000-07:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, April 14th:

My very first column last spring dealt with my concern about the lack of young black leadership in our community.

I’m still concerned but the good news is that help is on the way. Local NAACP leader Jesse Gibson has brought forward a great plan for a Youth Council that will help to engage teenagers of all races in serving their community. He and the rest of the organization’s leadership have successfully seen the creation of such an organization through Chapel Hill’s lengthy approval process, and it’s now official.

Chapel Hill/Carrboro NAACP President Fred Battle, who has been a fierce advocate for young people as a long time activist and former school board member, says that frequently the reason they are reluctant to get involved in the community is that they don’t feel adequate to the task. He sees a primary function of the Youth Council as helping these folks to build leadership and become confident in their abilities to help guide the community.

While the Chapel Hill Youth Council is in the planning stages, there are good models of functional ones across the state in communities like Durham, Greensboro, and Goldsboro. Battle envisions members of the council becoming intimate with all aspects of town governance.

This would include things like getting to know members of the Town Council well and understanding the way that operates, as well as seeing how the town’s many advisory boards work. Battle thinks that if the students involved in the program are exposed to a broad array of things involved in the running of the town like greenways, parks and recreation, or planning they will become interested in at least one thing and be motivated to become more engaged in it.

That kind of experience working with individual town departments could also help to inspire folks to enter public service on the staff side, leading them to seek the training and expertise necessary to make a career working in local government.

He also hopes to see the Youth Council have a considerable community service component to it. The steering committee the Town Council has created to oversee the program will help to set the specifics for this but I have an initial suggestion. It would be wonderful if they could work to ensure that everyone in their high schools who will be 18 by this fall’s elections register and vote for their local officials. One of the best ways to engage the members of the Youth Council in the community right away could be to have them take the lead in getting the rest of their peers involved.

Students spend plenty of time in the classroom learning about government from lectures and textbooks. Certainly that’s important, but getting the sort of real world experience the Youth Council hopes to provide should go a longer way in getting people excited about serving the community.

It will take a while to measure the long term success that this program has, but Battle’s hope is that five, 10 years down the line when a call goes out for people to serve on a committee or even to run for office, the young people who have been involved will be eager to raise their hands up to serve.

I don’t know whether or not the Youth Council will have a major effect on the number of younger people engaged in the community, but I do know that the problem is indisputable. Young people vote in paltry numbers; Democracy North Carolina released a report just last week showing that more folks 18 to 25 are binge drinkers than voters. The issue of young black people involved in the community is even more acute, with the number of African-Americans voting in the 2005 Town Council election dropping below 300 in Chapel Hill.

The Youth Council proposal the NAACP has brought forward will work to keep and engage Chapel Hill natives in town and serve as a great partner to the internship program Councilman Bill Thorpe has helped bring to fruition over the last year that hopefully will have the same effect of keeping UNC students around and contributing to the community.

Every new initiative designed to get young people more involved in Chapel Hill is a step in the right direction. The leadership of the NAACP should be commended for its vision and commitment in bringing the Youth Council proposal to the table, and I hope community leaders will do their part to make this new entity a great success. These sorts of programs are what we need to ensure that a new generation of leadership is fostered.

An alternative to Apple Chill?

2007-04-10T14:40:00.000-07:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, April 7th:

We're coming up on the first anniversary of last year's Apple Chill debacle and rightful cancellation, and it seems to be on people's minds. Last week the Town Council approved a plan for a new summer concert series and craft festival conceived at least in part to substitute for the absence of the old event. I think the plans they passed sound nice and will be good for the community. But I still think the lack of a townwide celebration in the spring that brings folks in from around the region before the students go home will leave a void.

I believe there's a solution to that problem, though -- a solution that would bring people together, be unlikely to create the sort of crime problems associated with Apple Chill, and provide a wonderful model of town/gown relations.

Nothing brings the disparate elements of the Chapel Hill community together more than UNC basketball.

Likewise, nothing brings more folks from around the state into our community and spending money than UNC basketball.

It may be too late for this year, but I think we should start a new tradition the third or fourth weekend of every April with a parade down Franklin Street to honor the UNC basketball teams, both men and women.

It would give fans, locally and beyond, one last chance to express their appreciation to the Tar Heels before the beginning of the summer.

When the men won the national championship in 2005, there was a lovely event honoring them in the Dean Dome at 4 p.m. the next afternoon, a Tuesday. That was fine for me as a student living on campus. But it likely didn't do much for the working folks in Charlotte and certainly not much for fans in Atlanta or the D.C. area.

We schedule our lives around the games for five months, pour our heart and soul into them.

But when the season ends, win or lose, it's an abrupt ending. There's not much in the way of closure.

Sure the conclusion of the women's season was disappointing but a Final Four season is still something to celebrate. Yet when they came back from Cleveland, there was little in the way of something to show our appreciation with. The men beat Duke twice, won the ACC tournament for the first time in nine years. Getting back from the Elite Eight at nearly midnight though, they didn't have a ton of fans there to greet them.

The good folks at the Visitors Bureau are always looking for opportunities to bring more folks into town, staying in our hotels, eating in our restaurants, frequenting our shops.

Using the parade as a center piece, it could be the impetus for folks to come spend an entire weekend in Chapel Hill. Show off Memorial Auditorium with a free concert. Do something nice on McCorkle Place. Tie it in with UNC baseball games or the spring football game. Figure out creative ways to showcase Franklin Street.

It would provide the perfect opportunity to create a premier spring event to bring people into Chapel Hill and celebrate the collaboration of our town and university.

So I'd like to see Town Manager Roger Stancil, Athletic Director Dick Baddour, Chamber of Commerce head Aaron Nelson, Downtown Partnership leader Liz Parham, Visitors Bureau chief Laurie Paolicelli and other interested community leaders sit down together sometime in the next few weeks and think about giving it a shot for 2008.

It would be great to get students involved, too. The UNC student government, under the strong leadership of Chapel Hill native and just-departed Student Body President James Allred, this year reinvigorated "Spring Fest" as an opportunity for music and fun at the end of the school year. Incorporating the event into a broader spring celebration between UNC and Chapel Hill could be a good project for new president Eve Carson.

There is no doubt that Apple Chill outlived its usefulness in our community.

But instead of looking at it as a loss, we should seize it as an opportunity. Designing a large-scale event from scratch will allow us to learn from some of the pitfalls of the past, while coming up with ways to accentuate what is good about our community.

We can design a series of events that appeal to a wide array of people, creating an atmosphere of unity while also helping to stimulate economic activity in the area. There's certainly nothing to lose by discussing it, so let's get that talk going.

2007 UNC Baseball team is dominating

2007-04-03T21:16:00.000-07:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, March 31st:

It breaks our hearts that when we turn the television on CBS tonight Roy Williams won’t be there.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean Tar Heel fans won’t get a chance to see our beloved coach today.

There isn’t enough space in this column for me to enumerate all the reasons I love Roy Williams, but one of them is how supportive he is of the UNC baseball team. Lots of folks probably saw him on ESPN in Omaha during the College World Series last year. Fewer folks know that when UNC went to play a road series at Duke last April, Roy was picnicking with his wife on the first base line in Durham.

Far from a bandwagon fan, he’s been to at least four games so far this season, including Wednesday night’s 28-3 thumping of Davidson.

When he heads out to Boshamer Stadium, he sees quite a show. As vaunted as last year’s national runner up was, this year’s team is actually off to an even better start.

Folks thought we would have trouble recovering from the loss of star pitchers Andrew Miller and Daniel Bard to the pros, but so far we haven’t skipped a beat. Robert Woodard was the most consistent if least hyped pitcher of last year’s starting trio and moves further up the list for various UNC pitching records every time he takes the hill. Drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals in the 47^th round last summer, he should move a lot further up in the draft order this time around.

The rotation is rounded out by freshman Alex White and last year’s midweek starter Luke Putkonen. White has pitched better than I ever remember Bard or Miller pitching as a freshman. He is already a star, and it’s hard to comprehend how good he’ll be pitching for the Tar Heels in two years (in baseball, once you go to college you have to stay three years before going to the pros.) Putkonen has adjusted well to the tougher hitters he faces in the weekend games, with an undefeated record so far on the season.

The real excitement this team is providing though is with their bats. Freshman Dustin Ackley immediately became my favorite player on the team in the second game of the season when he blooped a hit to short left center field and ran it out into a double. I liked his hustle then, now I like even more that he is batting an amazing near 500.

Maybe the best example to show how much punch this team has is that catcher Benji Johnson, a Chatham County native, hit two home runs on Wednesday night- off the bench!

Left fielder Reid Fronk always seems to find a way to get on base. In an exciting late February game against nationally ranked Coastal Carolina, he got hit by a pitch with the bases loaded in extra innings to win it. Second baseman Garrett Gore is in the lineup for his stellar defense, but he is markedly improved with the bat and hit his first career home run earlier this week. Third baseman Chad Flack is struggling but will doubtless soon get back to the star form that launched UNC into the College World Series with a dramatic home run against Alabama last spring.

The outfield positions are an embarrassment of riches with a menu of choices including freshmen Drew Poulk and Tim Fedroff, who have each already shown an ability to hit for power, the speedy Mike Cavasinni who started in center field during most of last year’s championship run, and Seth Williams who provides both solid defense and a steady bat.

Orange County’s own Josh Horton is likely to be a first round draft pick this spring and continues to provide a hot bat at the shortstop position. After spending the summer with Team USA, catcher Tim Federowicz is now doing double duty as a strong relief pitcher while continuing to hit well and play solid defense.

Bottom line, this team is loaded, fun to watch, and primed to take care of last season’s unfinished business.

I can’t promise ‘ol Roy will be there this afternoon, but the Tar Heels are at home each of the next two days against in conference rival Wake Forest. Personally I think there’s no better spring experience in Chapel Hill than enjoying a game at the Bosh on a warm spring night, and the opportunity to do that presents itself each of the next four Tuesday nights at 6 PM.

It was a disappointing end to the basketball season but between the women’s basketball team’s trip to the final four in Cleveland this weekend and this outstanding baseball team there’s plenty of sun on the horizon for Tar Heel fans.

Serve on a Chapel Hill board

2007-03-25T10:31:00.000-07:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, March 24th:

One of the great things about our community is that everyone has an opinion. The number of folks coming out to speak at public meetings and writing letters to the editor is far greater than most other places of a similar size.

The volume of people participating in these sort of one-shot ways of expressing an opinion on a town issue are thankfully as plentiful as ever. Unfortunately, though, it seems the number of folks willing to participate in the public service activities that require a sustained time commitment has declined in recent years.

During the last Chapel Hill Town Council election there were only seven candidates running by the time the dust settled. This was the smallest number of people putting themselves forward for service in at least two decades, even as the population of our town increases.

It’s not just the number of folks standing for election that has declined, though. There’s also been a clear decline in people interested in serving on the town’s important volunteer advisory boards.

For instance, last fall there was a real crisis with the Transportation Board. There were a number of open seats due to people quitting. There were some qualified applicants to replace them, but it took several meetings before a recommendation could be made to the Town Council that they be appointed because so many of the remaining board members were missing the meetings that they couldn’t get a quorum!

I can see the decline in the number of people willing to serve even just over the last four years through my own experience. I first applied for the town’s Planning Board in late 2003. Over the next two years I was justly passed over four times when vacancies on the board arose because there were folks who wanted them who had more experience in serving the town than I did. I finally got appointed in late 2005.

Contrast that with the situation that faces the Planning Board next month. Board chairwoman Ruby Sinreich, who has served the community in too many ways to count over the years, faces a term limit. There is only one person who has applied to be on a town board in the last 12 months and listed the Planning Board as their top choice!

With the amount of interest townwide in the development future of Chapel Hill, it’s amazing to me that more folks have not stepped forward to serve on the body where they can have the greatest impact on that short of being on the council itself. In the past four months alone the Planning Board has passed judgment on major projects like UNC’s latest development plan modification, Greenbridge, and East 54. Many folks in the community have stepped forward to speak out on these projects but none of them have stepped forward to help make those decisions in the future.

So I’m asking, maybe begging, interested citizens to apply not just for the Planning Board but any other board that they might want to join for next year. Choices range from the Greenways Commission to the Bicycle and Pedestrian Board to the Human Services Board, among many others.

Seats end on June 30, so over the next month or so the various boards will be hearing from interested applicants, and then making recommendations to the Town Council on whom to appoint. The council will formally make these decisions for the most part in May.

The form for applying is short and easy to fill out, which is good because if you’re interested in serving you should do it sooner than later. I know out board will be hearing from folks as early as April 3 and 17.

Some folks may be reluctant to apply because they think they’re not qualified or that it will be too large of a time commitment.

On the issue of qualifications, the main one is that you care about the future of Chapel Hill and have a genuine interest in serving the town. It’s easier to get up to speed if you have a lot of background in service to the town, but certainly not a requirement. Really, the only attribute absolutely necessary to be a good board member is an ability to work cooperatively with people even when you disagree with them. One bad apple can ruin a whole board.

On the issue of time commitment, it is to some extent what you make of it. For instance, Planning Board takes a huge chunk out of my colleague George Cianciolo’s schedule because he serves as the board liaison to several other committees. But for other folks it’s just coming to a meeting twice a month and carefully reading the packet. Either approach is fine, depending on what you have the time for. Some other town boards meet just once a month.

The next time you’re annoyed about something going on in town, write your letter to the editor, but think about heading over to townofchapelhill.org as well and filling out an application to be on an advisory board. It’s one of the best ways you can serve our community!

Tracey Williams-Johnson plays a key role for the Tar Heels

2007-03-19T06:30:00.000-07:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, March 17th:

The UNC women's basketball team may be kicking off the NCAA tournament this weekend, but assistant coach Tracey Williams-Johnson has spent much of the last few weeks away from Chapel Hill.

Williams-Johnson is far from AWOL though. Rather as the team's recruiting coordinator, she is putting in the hard work necessary to ensure that future Carolina teams are just as good as this year's likely Final Four-bound program.

She spent last March 7, her birthday, in Atlanta recruiting at the Georgia high school basketball championships. March 9, she flew with head coach Sylvia Hatchell to watch the state finals in Arkansas, leaving at 5 and arriving back in North Carolina around 2:30 AM. There's no rest for the weary though, as Williams-Johnson was back up and at the Dean Dome early the next morning for our state championships.

Williams-Johnson has had a tremendous amount of success with recruiting during her eight years in the Carolina basketball program, helping to land such stars as Ivory Latta, Erlana Larkins and Camille Little.

A humble person though, she gives much of the credit to Hatchell, for whom she has a tremendous amount of respect. The pair have been friends since Hatchell's Frances Marion University teams faced off against the UNC-Pembroke teams Williams-Johnson played for in college.

I figured that considering the vital role Williams-Johnson has played during this period of great accomplishment in the UNC program, she might be top level head coaching material for some other program. Her response? “No interest at all. I love it here. There's no one I'd rather be working with than Coach Hatchell and the other wonderful people in this program.”

Williams-Johnson joked that it can actually be a lot harder to convince people to leave the program than to join it! Her newly hired assistant is former player Jessica Sell, who played a key role as a starter on last year's Final Four team. Sell's helping out with recruiting and is interested in becoming a coach some day herself further down the line. She says “there's no better person to learn from than coach Williams-Johnson.”

Sell said that in her own recruitment, one of the things that came across was how much like a family the UNC program was. Williams-Johnson agrees, saying that “the relationships we form here last a lifetime and that the love and respect we have for each other is a big part of our success.”

Williams-Johnson brought an interesting background to the Carolina program, working in administration for both the U.S. national team and for the short-lived women's professional American Basketball League. Although the ABL had a higher quality of play than the WNBA during its year of existence, the lack of institutional backing made it difficult to thrive.

From that background working in professional women's basketball, she thinks Ivory Latta will be good for the WNBA.

“She's a marketing dream. She has so much energy and never backs down and when young girls see that, it makes them want to be a part of this. Camille Little with her versatility and capability to be a threat both offensively and defensively inside and out will also be a tremendous asset to the WNBA.”

In those two positions she did a great job of promoting in general the game of women's basketball, but when the ABL folded she knew where she wanted to be. “Coach Hatchell and I competed against each other, worked as camp counselors at Campbell together, and worked together in the US national program. I knew she was the kind of person I wanted to work with.”

Williams-Johnson is one of the friendliest and kind-hearted people you could ever meet and folks around the ACC know it. For instance, when Miami came to play Carolina last month they had a snafu with their equipment. Their coaches knew that she was the person with the compassion and organization to bail them out with the problem, and she did.

With the duel roles of overseeing the recruitment of future teams while continuing to assist with the coaching of this one, Williams-Johnson doesn't have much time for much else but dotes on her parents in Sampson County as well as her husband.

Hatchell and the players get most of the attention for the team's performance, and they absolutely deserve it. Williams-Johnson says “our success and the relationships we have are all the recognition I deserve.”

Her modesty is appreciated, but coach Williams-Johnson deserves a lot of credit for the great success the team has had over the last few years. Her nature doubtless helps to show parents and potential student athletes what kind of a program they'll be joining at UNC and as her assistant Jessica Sell says, “she has a great passion and drive to win.”

The Carolina program has been doing a lot of that winning during coach Williams-Johnson's time in the program, and as they embark on another potential national championship run this weekend, they're real lucky to have her.

Bev Perdue and Richard Moore's camps should cut down on the negativity

2007-03-10T13:39:00.000-08:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, March 10th:

During the past two months Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue and state Treasurer Richard Moore, both seeking the Democratic nomination for Governor, have been sniping at each other like the election is tomorrow. Problem being that it’s not for another 14 months.

Last month the Moore campaign tried to attack Perdue by dredging up 10-year-old statements she made about the death penalty and criticizing campaign donations she received while still a state senator. Perdue’s camp behaved in an equally petty matter, with her finance chair e-mailing supporters an article in Forbes Magazine that questioned Moore’s campaign contributions.

So what’s the impact of all this action been? Basically nothing; in a poll done this week by Raleigh’s Public Policy Polling Perdue holds a 10-point lead. In the same poll done in January she held a 12-point lead. The race is being defined by lots of interpersonal drama, but very little movement.

Perdue and Moore have each done a lot of great work for North Carolina during their time in statewide office and have solid, thoughtful ideas for the future of our state. Moore has been a tremendous leader on financial issues not just here but on a national basis, and Perdue has traditionally been a strong leader on military and education issues.

They would be well served to quit the banal bickering that is antagonizing many Democrats across the state and focus instead on the positive work they intend to do if elected Governor. There’s plenty of time for in-fighting at a more appropriate juncture, like maybe next March, right before the election.

It can be hard when you’re on the inside of a campaign to remember that no one cares as much about the minutiae of the race as you do. The reality, though, is that when it comes to this sort of insider baseball drama, the general public does not care. This poll shows how little impact it’s having on the race, so hopefully these two candidates, who both have so much to offer, will move beyond these “gotcha” issues to things more pertinent to the future of North Carolina.

On the Republican side there continues to be no candidate who gains any traction. In fact three of four candidates have lower percentages of the vote than they did in January, with the number of undecideds spiking up.

Conservative activist Bill Graham still leads but went from 24 to 20 percent, possibly because more respondents have become aware of the fact that he’s not the Rev. Billy Graham. State Sen. Robert Pittenger has similarly declined from 10 to 6 percent after a well-publicized spat with Congresswoman Sue Myrick that exposed him to be over ambitious and under-intelligent.

His Senate colleague Fred Smith went down 4 points as well. The only candidate getting any traction is former state Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr, and though he’s up from his January performance, he actually had a small dip this month from a February poll.

Some folks have speculated that if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is the Democratic candidate for president next year it could drag down the rest of the ticket. But the only way one of these Republican gubernatorial candidates is getting elected is if the Democrats nominate Al Sharpton or Dennis Kucinich.

In the lieutenant governor’s race the biggest leader is undecided with 62 percent of the vote. Still Pat Smathers, the mayor of the small Western North Carolina community of Canton, is out to a small lead that has surprised many political observers. A look at the events page on his website may hold the clue to his success though, as in the next two weeks he is scheduled to be at functions in Morganton, Greensboro, Raleigh and Wilmington. Keeping up this intense statewide travel schedule has historically been the key to winning these lower-profile statewide races, and Smathers is doing it.

Although Smathers has the slight lead right now, all the candidates are pretty evenly matched. Former Mike Easley aide Hampton Dellinger, who grew up in Chapel Hill, has focused much of his energy on fundraising and has accumulated a considerable war chest. Walter Dalton, who finished second in this latest round of the poll, is busy serving in the state Senate and is also likely to be a formidable fundraiser. Winston-Salem Councilman Dan Besse is the top choice of many in progressive circles and could have a strong grassroots presence behind him further down the line.

There’s been a lot of discussion nationally about how much action is happening so early in the presidential race, and the same is holding true across North Carolina. There’s certainly nothing inherently wrong with that, but it would be great if the candidates used the increased amount of time and attention devoted to the races to communicate their views to the voters rather than ripping each other to pieces.

TTA giving 20 pennies for your thoughts

2007-03-05T12:48:00.000-08:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, March 3rd:

Do you use public transportation very often? If not, what would you encourage you to use it more? Wireless Internet? More comfortable buses?

The Triangle Transit Authority is asking those questions in a creative web survey currently available on its site at ridetta.org. Folks are given twenty “pennies” to spend on a variety of possible upgrades to buses as the agency makes replacements in its fleet.

Some of the items are pretty cheap. One-penny upgrades include things like expanding the front-of-bus rack to accommodate three bikes rather than the current two or to install 10 bike lockers per year at various stops around the Triangle.

Others are so expensive they will use up almost your entire “budget.”

For instance, putting a rear window on the back of the bus would cost 16 pennies and implementing Sunday service would require all of your money.

I take the bus every day to work in Raleigh at the Sierra Club so I devoted my greatest expenditure of six pennies to fuel the buses using B20 biodiesel.

Seems like the right thing to do working in the environmental community. It’s not the cleanest fuel TTA could use but it would still be a definite step in the right direction.

I gave three pennies to have wireless internet on the buses. I actually enjoy its current lack of presence to some extent because the two hours I spend on the commute each day are about the only main chunk of the day where I’m not attached to my e-mail.

On the other hand, I’d like to see a lot more Chapel Hillians who commute to Durham or Raleigh use public transportation, and for the busiest workers out there that extra period of connectivity could give folks the impetus to dump their cars and take the bus. There are also certain days where it would be nice to finish something up on the ride home so it’s not waiting the next day.

Another four pennies went to providing headrests for the seat on the buses. It’s kind of amusing to see all the people in suits napping on the way to work in the morning, and although I try to read books I must admit that the allure of sleep is often too much to pass up.

This expenditure would go a long way toward increasing the comfort of riders.

Those three items were my highest priorities but I still had seven pennies left. This sum wasn’t large enough to buy any of the big ticket things but good enough to get a few other small enhancements.

Four of the pennies went to building five regular bus shelters. Nothing will get you back behind the driver’s seat faster than getting soaked while waiting for a ride. Five is not a lot considering the scope of the TTA system but it’s still a step in the right direction.

I decided to give the balance of my “funds” to installing 10 bike lockers per year at various stops. I’m not a cyclist myself, but I think a lot more folks who don’t want to actually take their bike on the bus would be happy to ride it to the stop and know it was somewhere safe when they got home in the evening.

Some of the big ticket items I eschewed spending my funds on included real-time bus arrival information at 10 stops (the buses are pretty prompt!) and creating a 100 space park-and-ride lot. Some of the smaller ones I can live without were luggage racks and individual high-quality lights at seats.

The “Transit Design Game,” as TTA calls it, is one of the most engaging ways of soliciting citizen input I’ve ever seen a local agency use.

The information the TTA gleans from this should give it a much better sense of how to improve the riding experience for current customers as well as what sorts of amenities are likely to draw more people in the future.

A lot of the time the path to better citizen participation is not just to schedule a bunch more meetings folks have to go to, but to create a way for them to give feedback that is simple and even fun.

With this project TTA has set a good model that other local governments should look to find ways to emulate when soliciting opinions from the public about various issues.

Whether you’re a public transportation user or not, go to ridetta.org and play the Transit Design Game, which will be available through this Friday. It’s a great opportunity to have some fun while also giving important information to the folks who buy our buses.

Why all the fuss over Greenbridge?

2007-02-27T19:32:00.000-08:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on February 24th, 2007:

In my day job for the Sierra Club, I work with volunteers from around the state to get local governments to implement green features into their public buildings. It can often be a struggle to get a few compact fluorescent light bulbs here, some LED traffic lights there. Small victories in the public sphere are much celebrated and appreciated, and in the private sector you can pretty much forget about it even though in many cases those improvements actually would save a lot of money further down the line. That's why it's just beyond me that there's been so much hubbub about the proposed Greenbridge development, which is up for approval by the Chapel Hill Town Council on Monday night. We have a chance to locate in our downtown what will be one of the most progressive and environmentally responsible buildings in the country.

We have a great opportunity to solidify our community's reputation as a center of innovation, and we should take it.

A brief overview of the cutting-edge features Greenbridge will include are geothermal heating and cooling, a green roof, rain water harvesting and the incorporation of solar energy.

The proposed development is at the corner of Rosemary Street and Merritt Mill Road, on the edge of the Northside neighborhood. The big controversy then, at least in the local newspapers, is a concern that this project will cause damage to the vitality of the African-American community that has long defined that area of town.

The funny thing about that is when the project went to Town Council for a public hearing last month, the only person attacking it from that angle was a white UNC student. Every black person who spoke was in strong support of the project.

Three people's words particularly resonated with me.

One was Mildred "Mama Dip" Council who has operated a business just down the street from the proposed development for years. She said that she doesn't feel threatened by Chapel Hill's growth and that she's "happy to grow with it."

Another was Virginia Mason. An older African-American woman, her late father used to own the property where Greenbridge will be built. She said he would be proud to see such a wonderful project in this location.

The third was Delores Bailey, who has done an outstanding job as the director of Empowerment Inc. over the last few years. I've heard some folks say that the people speaking in favor of Greenbridge at the public hearing might not be representative of the neighborhood and that the council shouldn't move forward until everyone has been polled.

Frankly, you could apply that standard to any project since it is almost universally a minority of folks who go to meetings and speak out.

The fact that Delores, who pours her entire life into these neighborhoods, is supportive is good enough for me.

Maybe something different will happen Monday night but the discourse over Greenbridge so far puts the lie to the concept that this project is some white vs. black thing.

Rather the opposite, the process has brought white and black people together to talk about a vision for the future of downtown Chapel Hill and the Northside neighborhood.

That doesn't happen enough around here and it's a great credit to both the folks planning Greenbridge and neighborhood leaders that it has happened in this case.

One of the main concerns the Town Council had when this project was reviewed last month was that the affordable units weren't all on site.

The Greenbridge team, made up of folks who live in and understand our community, took that concern to heart.

Not only will they all now be part of the Greenbridge development, but extra measures will be taken to ensure that they stay affordable for the long haul. Condo fees will be fixed, and they will be subsidized by a transfer tax on the sale of market-rate units.

It's not enough for a good Chapel Hill development just to be environmentally sustainable. It needs to be socially sustainable, and the extra steps taken to ensure that the affordable units will remain affordable are encouraging.

It is a rare opportunity for a community to have a building designed by William McDonough, named by Time in 1999 as a "Hero for the Planet," anchor an end of its downtown.

In Greenbridge, the Chapel Hill Town Council has an opportunity to approve a building that will serve as a living, breathing monument to our status as the most environmentally advanced community not just in North Carolina but across the southeast.

Let's hope the council will do the right thing on Monday night.

Lots of work going into Chapel Hill growth issues

2007-02-20T16:10:00.000-08:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on February 17th, 2007:

Last Monday night's Town Council agenda pretty much summed up the amazing number of growth issues happening now in Chapel Hill. There are three developments on the table this month -- Lot 5 and Greenbridge downtown, the Residences at Chapel Hill North in the northwestern part of town, and East 54 on, well, East 54. There are also the issues caused by the large number of proposed developments -- re-evaluations of the comprehensive plan and tree protection ordinance, and a neighborhood conservation district in the Whitehead/Mason Farm area.

When all this stuff is going on, the Town Council and Planning Board (of which I am a member) get a lot of attention, as do the engaged citizens who speak out and make their feelings known.

Who don't get a lot of attention are the folks doing much of the work behind the scenes to make all of this happen. They're probably perfectly happy to keep it that way too, but the Planning Department, under the direction of J.B. Culpepper, deserves some recognition for all the extra work it's doing to keep Chapel Hill moving forward during this hectic period.

A perfect example of this is the work recently done in regards to strengthening the town's Tree Protection Ordinance. The Planning Board, concerned that the current ordinance is not doing enough to maintain the beauty our trees bring to Chapel Hill, decided to create a subcommittee to look at where improvements could be made.

This required staff members to spend a lot of time pulling together information about what other cities across the Southeast are doing. It also resulted in a bunch of extra night meetings for a crew of folks who already spend far too many evenings in Town Hall and away from their families.

There was never the hint of a complaint about this from Culpepper, development coordinator Gene Poveromo, urban forester Curtis Brooks or Emily Cameron of the Public Works Department, though. This process created a lot of extra work for the four of them, but all they cared about was being responsive to citizen concerns about trees in Chapel Hill.

It appears the council will move forward on some major changes, which will help to preserve one of the things folks most value about our community. The Planning Department should be lauded for the work it did to get us to this point.

Culpepper has aptly filled the big shoes left by her predecessor, Roger Waldon. Fortunately, Waldon continues to make a strong contribution to the town as a consultant for neighborhood conservation district processes.

The five NCDs that have commenced in the past year and a half have also been a big time commitment for the Planning Department. While Waldon and his employer, Clarion Associates, have done a lot of the work, it's also put an extra burden on several town staffers, namely Housing and Neighborhood Services Coordinator Loryn Clark and planner Rae Buckley.

NCDs provide a lot of comfort to folks who are worried about the direction their neighborhoods are headed. Their addition to the universe of Chapel Hill planning over the four years has been a very good thing for the town and is doing a lot to preserve the historical character of our community.

But they're also quite a time-consuming process, and while they go on, the normal flow of development applications does not stop. They, like revising the tree ordinance, create a lot more work for town staff. Chapel Hill residents should take a second to show some appreciation for the good things made possible by the hard work ethic of the folks in the Planning Department.

Renee Zimmermann, an administrative clerk in the department, probably best exemplifies how hard everyone in her office has been working lately. During the first 15 months I was on the Planning Board, she did not miss a single one of our twice-monthly evening meetings.

When she finally did, it was not because of a vacation but due to a death in the family. I wish for her sake she would get away for a while, but she really reflects the effort that's being put in to steer Chapel Hill through this period with a high level of proposed developments.

The high volume of newspaper articles, letters to the editor and blog posts about all the ongoing growth issues in Chapel Hill aren't going away anytime soon. When you read them and think about how much is at stake for our community, please give some thought to the underappreciated town employees who are giving their all to making sure this remains such a great place to live.

Tall buildings are not going to destroy Chapel Hill

2007-02-13T09:16:00.000-08:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on February 10th, 2007:

Several weeks ago I met Mayor Pro Tem Bill Strom and Andrea Rohrbacher, who is a leader in both the Sierra Club and the Downtown Partnership, for lunch at Foster's Market.

It was the day after the partnership had discussed the possibility of bringing street vendors back to downtown Chapel Hill, so we discussed the possibilities of that when we noticed that Linda Convissor, UNC's director of local relations, was in line. I'd never formally met Linda before, although I give her some of the credit for the current state of town/gown relations, which I've never seen better.

We asked Linda to come sit with us, and she told us stories about her days just out of college when she worked as the planning director in Bradenton, Fla., as well as continuing the discussion about how kiosks might potentially bring more folks downtown.

After a little while Town Manager Roger Stancil came in and he too sat down with us. We talked about the recent comments by the board chair of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce, Anita Badrock, about expansions at Fort Bragg potentially bringing more money into the local economy here. We were interested to hear Roger's thoughts, as the immediate past city manager in Fayetteville, about how that would work.

The group we ended up having lunch with that day was pretty eclectic. While we all share a common concern about doing our best to improve Chapel Hill, we also come at that goal from different backgrounds and work through different channels and organizations toward that goal.

It was not a group that ever would have come together by planning, but we had a great time and some very good discussion. I thought it said something good about Chapel Hill that such a random group of people could meet up and talk about the community.

It got me to thinking about the consternation I've heard a lot lately about Chapel Hill "losing its character." This has especially come to the fore with the Greenbridge and Lot 5 proposals coming to the Town Council for approval later this month.

When I think about the character of Chapel Hill, the two main things that come to mind for me are the beauty of its landscape and the kindness of its people. If anything, I think taller buildings downtown will enhance that rather than diminish it.

Chapel Hill is growing and it will continue to grow. As a community, we have a choice. We can grow together, or we can grow apart.

If we build out in the county, we will be moving further and further away from each other. We will be reducing the contact we have with our friends and neighbors, and we will be destroying a lot of the natural beauty that makes Chapel Hill such an attractive and popular place to live.

If we build up downtown, we will be growing closer together. More people will live closer and closer to each other. We'll have more neighbors, and we'll see them more often. We will be growing in places where there is already a building footprint instead of cutting down trees and threatening watersheds.

Building a fence around Chapel Hill simply is not an option. We can't just pass all the growth of our community off to Durham, Mebane and northern Chatham County. I'm sure there are folks in our community who want to shut the door and keep our population where it is, but that's not realistic.

UNC gets bigger year after year, and that means it's constantly hiring more employees. If they're commuting from afar it creates a personal toll in terms of paying for gas and a communal toll in terms of all the extra pollution it creates. It's a win-win to have them living in this community, and it's a win-win to have them living in this community where they can walk places and not have to plow down currently undeveloped land.

Contrast downtown development with the other area of Chapel Hill that has gotten a lot of attention lately, the northwestern quadrant. While downtown population growth will likely generate more walking and bus trips, the proposed rapid growth around Weaver Dairy Road and the surrounding area will just serve to put more and more cars on the road. Certainly some expansion will have to happen both places, but growth downtown is much more in keeping with Chapel Hill's environmental values.

Beyond these land-use issues, it's our personal connections that give Chapel Hill its character. And as a long as a group of random citizens like Roger Stancil, Linda Convissor, Andrea Rohrbacher, Bill Strom and myself can meet for an impromptu lunch and have a good, friendly discussion about Chapel Hill, we'll preserve our small-town charm. Building a few tall structures downtown can never change that.

College Park sparks big-time disgust

2007-02-05T15:31:00.000-08:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, February 3rd:

Sometimes it takes a road trip to make you appreciate how well you have it at home. That's certainly how I felt after going to College Park last weekend for the Carolina-Maryland women's basketball game.

I don't know whether I was more disgusted with the people or the landscape associated with the town and the University of Maryland. There's plenty to discuss about both.

I'll start with the people. Maryland students are not knowledgeable about sports. In the second half of the game, the Terps made a roaring comeback after UNC built a 20-point lead.

The Maryland fans were cheering a little bit about the comeback but what made them really excited was when there was a promotion during a timeout where a loud fan got a pizza. Forget the basketball game, the possibility of getting a free pizza was the thing really worth making noise over!

That left me wondering whether I was at a basketball game on ESPN2 between two of the three best teams in the country or a minor league baseball game. Because the only other time I could think of where some stupid in-game promotion was more important than the action on the field was at a Hickory Crawdads baseball game.

Needless to say the strong minority of Tar Heel fans there far outclassed the Terps fans, even on that hostile ground.

In their defense, it was not just the free pizza that produced crowd noise from the Maryland partisans. They also piped up when the scoreboard told them to! When they put a little noise meter up on the Jumbotron, that really got them going. I guess since Maryland students are intellectually inferior to Carolina's, they just need a little extra help knowing when to get excited.

Cole Field House was the home of Maryland basketball from 1955-2002. In addition to seeing many great Terrapin triumphs over the years, it also played host to the historic 1966 NCAA championship game lost by the all-white starting lineup of Kentucky to the all-black one of Texas Western.

It is in many ways similar to Carmichael Auditorium on UNC's campus. Both were great facilities for many years but eventually became too small for their purposes.

Carmichael has been well preserved as a facility for many UNC sports teams -- women's basketball, volleyball, gymnastics and wrestling.

Cole Field House has been turned into an indoor soccer facility. Blasphemy! One of the most historic venues in college basketball and it has just been ruined. Thank goodness UNC has more respect for its historic sports spots instead of turning it into an after-thought for intramural silliness.

I know a lot of people think UNC has a parking problem, but after seeing the copious numbers of parking lots on the Maryland campus I was grateful for our problem. There didn't seem to be a square inch on campus where you could stand without seeing a surface lot or a parking deck. And they're not nearly as well integrated into campus as the ones at Carolina. I certainly don't approve of the new Cobb deck, but at least it's decent aesthetically and sort of blends into the scenery. I think if the University of Maryland was a shopping mall its name would be "The Parking Lots at College Park."

After the game we were hungry so we decided to go check out College Park's version of Franklin Street. The nicest restaurant we could find was Applebee's. There was also an enormous wall separating the sidewalk from the road. I don't know if there's a problem with motorists trying to run down pedestrians or what but it was certainly unattractive.

My disdain for the university and town notwithstanding, it was an outstanding trip. Ivory Latta's 32-point performance shows that she's the kind of player who steps up to the plate for the big games. She should definitely be the national player of the year. Erlana Larkins and Camille Little had big games as well, and everyone on the team stepped up for a key play at one point or another.

For the second consecutive game I've seen classless Maryland's coach Brenda Frese, who seems to be molding herself on the Bobby Knight school of leadership, hurt her team with out-of-control behavior and a technical foul. It makes you very proud to have Sylvia Hatchell and her universally classy coaching staff.

It was great to beat Maryland, although I'm sure we'll see them again sometime down the road and it will be tough again.

And seriously, if you're ever feeling down on Chapel Hill or UNC, go to College Park and the University of Maryland. It will definitely make you proud of what we have in this community.

Joe Hackney will make a great speaker

2007-01-30T09:30:00.000-08:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, January 27th:

"Throughout his career in the North Carolina House, Joe Hackney has always been a top-rated legislator. These high rankings are not earned by avoiding tough issues ... they are earned by clear thinking, consulting with all the players ... working in good faith to find winning solutions."

I couldn't have said it better myself. Those were just some of the words of Orange County Rep. Verla Insko in nominating her colleague Joe Hackney to be speaker of the House on Wednesday.

I wrote several columns last summer saying that it was time to clean up the legislature. It is unfortunate, but the actions of a small handful of people were allowing the image of the entire institution to be tarnished.

With its selection of the impeccably ethical Hackney as speaker this week, the members of the House have made a strong commitment to improving the image of their body, moving beyond the scandals of the last few years, and getting to work on the business of improving the lives of average North Carolinians.

Hackney struck the right note in his first address as speaker, promising to make sure the voices of all House members are heard and to always emphasize people over politics.

Hackney emerged as the choice of a highly contested race to be the speaker candidate of the Democratic caucus. For many folks there he was not their first choice, but he appears primed to treat all the voices of his caucus with due respect, regardless of where their loyalties initially stood in the speaker election. That is the mark of a noble leader.

It was also encouraging to hear him actually talk about issues during his speech! North Carolina still has a ways to go in terms of teacher pay, the environment and health care, among other items. It was good that Hackney addressed the importance of those issues in his maiden address -- it's even better that he has a record of hard work on them in the legislature.

I was glad to hear him talk about those issues of particular concern to the progressive community, but I was also glad to hear him talk about the need to maintain the state's strong fiscal health.

The knock against Hackney during the speaker race seemed to be that he would not be friendly to business interests. But he certainly knows the importance of maintaining a strong economy and I'm confident that he will be fair and accessible to all of the state's key interests, one of which is certainly maintaining profitable private enterprise.

I want to address a few faulty perceptions the statewide media spread about Hackney over the last few weeks. A common theme was that he had moved to the center over the past few years in order to move up the ladder of the House leadership.

I don't think Joe Hackney has sacrificed his principles to get ahead a bit. What I do think is that he does a good job of representing his constituents.

For most of his career, southern Orange County was the population center of Hackney's district. That meant that in acting on the priorities set out for him by his constituents, he was often pushing what might be considered "liberal" issues.

When multi-member districts were eliminated in 2002 though, he became the representative of a district overwhelmingly composed of the residents of Chatham County, with just a small handful of Chapel Hill and Carrboro residents still in his turf.

With that new constituency came a different set of priorities. When your average constituent is a Siler City farmer rather than a Carrboro peace activist, you have to change your priorities in Raleigh to continue to be an effective advocate for those who elect you. I don't think there's anything opportunistic about Hackney's behavior during the past few sessions -- he's just being a good representative for the folks in his district.

The other theme the press has pushed is that Hackney has a dour personality and is difficult to get along with. This is just a complete disconnect from what constituents of his I've spoken to have experienced as well as what I have experienced myself. He is giving of his time and always respectful and charming.

I think Chris Fitzsimon of North Carolina Policy Watch may have hit the nail on the head about this point when he recently wrote: "The people most often critical of Hackney's less than warm and fuzzy personality are the well-heeled lobbyists who are used to spending evenings with legislative leaders at Raleigh's finest restaurants."

We are blessed to have a speaker of the House who would rather come back at night and meet with his constituents than stay in Raleigh to have fancy dinners with lobbyists all the time.

You can stick whatever ideological label you want on Joe Hackney, but at the end of the day all that matters is that as speaker of the House he will be fair to his colleagues, treat all interests before the legislature with respect and govern with integrity. We couldn't ask for much more.

Tom Jensen is a local political activist and a recent graduate of UNC. Readers can contact him at tjensen@email.unc.edu or c/o The Chapel Hill Herald, 106 Mallette St., Chapel Hill, NC 27516.

Tom Jensen named as 'one of seven who will matter in 2007'

2007-01-22T16:58:00.000-08:00

Here's the original story where the Raleigh News and Observer named me one of their 'Seven who will matter in 2007.'

http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/527554.html

And here is the follow up:

Huffington Post
Sierra Club
Sally Greene
OP
Paul Jones
WCHL
Brian Russell

Thank you to everyone for their support.

Take care of roadkill and rabies

2007-01-22T16:04:00.000-08:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, January 20th:

Orange County won the state championship in 2005, finished a close second behind Guilford County last year, and is already well on its way to another state championship this year.

I wish I was talking about football or SAT scores or something of that ilk. Unfortunately I'm talking about the county's relative standing in the number of rabies cases it has compared to the rest of the state.

It seems like every day when I open up the paper there's been another confirmed rabies case. Most of the time I don't bat much of an eye. The vast majority of the cases are way out in the county, and since I live near downtown Chapel Hill, don't affect me.

But I kind of reached my breaking point when one of 2007's first pair of cases was a rabid fox that attacked someone walking near UNC Hospitals. I walk around there all the time, and that could just as well have been me.

We also had a rabid beaver in Umstead Park last year, right across the street from where I live. He was running right after some folks picnicking in the park. One of them had the ingenuity to jump up on a table and beat the heck out of that thing with a stick. I'd like to hire that fast thinker as my bodyguard because there's no way I would have had the guts and wherewithal to do that. My sense is that few other people would either.

I want to preface by saying that it could well be the case that Orange County does a better job of reporting its rabies incidents to the state than other counties do, and that's a part of the reason for its frontrunner status.

Still, there's no reason I can see that we should have more cases than virtually anywhere else in the state, including counties that both cover a much larger area and are on balance much more rural.

I think it's time for the county commissioners to put some pressure on their staff to figure out why we have such a rabies problem, and what can be done about it.

I don't want to have to move with trepidation every time I see an animal acting weirdly when I'm walking around town.

We have outstanding folks working for the county, and I'm confident that if told to find a solution they will be able to come up with some steps toward resolving the problem. There's lots of thing that Orange County leads the state in, and almost all of them are good. By tackling the rabies problem I hope we can get rid of the bad one.

As long as we're on the topic of public health issues, I'd like to see Chapel Hill look at how it can do a better job of cleaning up roadkill.

One day in October I was on the phone with a Town Council member as I stepped in a dead squirrel right on the sidewalk on Cameron Avenue.

As grossed out as I was by the experience, it had long struck me as inevitable. There is a real problem with roadkill being allowed to sit on the sidewalk for days without being cleaned up. I suppose I could call and report every time I see it, but the onus should be more on the town than individual citizens to ensure that's being taken care of.

The most disgusting piece of fallout from this problem I've ever seen happened one day last summer when I saw a dead squirrel while walking downtown. I made a point of walking back home on the other side of the street -- and I was sure glad I did when I saw a raccoon eating it for dinner!

That's a site I could live without seeing ever again. Needless to say I didn't have much of a dinner that evening.

I'm sure folks are doing their jobs, but I'm equally sure that I've never been in any other community that seemed to have dead animals sprawled across the sidewalk with such frequency. There must be some room for improvement in how we dispose of roadkill, and I'd like to see it made. Chapel Hill's town government is outstanding at virtually everything it does, and this is one more thing to add to the list.

Roadkill and rabies. These are two of the problems that have been bothering me of late in an otherwise outstanding community. Let's hope our elected leaders and the great staffs they oversee can do something about them.

Breaking down the 2008 North Carolina election

2007-01-13T16:21:00.000-08:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on January 13th, 2007:

It’s hard to believe, but we’re now less than 16 months out from the next key election in North Carolina, the 2008 primary that will decide nominees for governor, Senate, and our share of the delegates in the presidential race. It’s never too early to start breaking down the political landscape.

Raleigh’s Public Policy Polling, which seemed to have the most accurate numbers of any firm in the state for the 2006 election cycle, released a comprehensive poll of the presidential and gubernatorial races this week.

On the Democratic side for governor, Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue has a 12-point lead over Treasurer Richard Moore. This is basically in line with what most polling has shown over the last year.

Orange County Rep. Bill Faison, who may or may not be a candidate for the job, pulls 7 percent in the polls with about 40 percent of folks not surprisingly still undecided.

One interesting aspect of this race is that there are significant regional disparities in the results of the poll. For instance, Moore leads Perdue in the Charlotte area. He has been perceived as a strong leader on financial issues and his edge there could reflect the banking-oriented economy in that region.

In the Triangle though, Perdue has a 32-point lead on Moore, carrying a significant 49 percent of the vote.

I’m not surprised by this. When I was the statewide College Democrats President, I saw Perdue four or five times for every time I saw Moore. Perdue is omnipresent at various functions across the state, but particularly in the Triangle.

The Triangle also interestingly had by few the smallest number of undecided respondents, likely reflected by the heightened political awareness of those living near the epicenter of state politics.

There’s less to analyze on the Republican side of the gubernatorial race.

Conservative activist Bill Graham leads with 24 percent of the vote. Former Supreme Court Justice Bob Orr, and state Sens. Robert Pittenger and Fred Smith trail with 13, 10, and 9 percent of the vote respectively.

Graham’s lead is almost certainly attributable to his self-funded ad campaigns on radio and television across the state about the gas tax and immigration. Right now he’s the only candidate with a really strong statewide profile, but I imagine the field will tighten once the other contenders begin to up their name recognition.

I’m still waiting for someone else to enter the race on the Republican side, because I don’t think there’s a shred of a chance any of these guys could win. Of course, it’s fine with me if the NCGOP just throws in the towel!

In the Democratic Presidential race, I’m surprised that John Edwards has only 29 percent of the vote at this point, although he does have a significant leads on Hillary Clinton with 16 percent and Barack Obama with 15 percent.

Edwards’ support is well distributed. For instance he leads Clinton among women and leads Obama among black voters. He also has the advantage in every region of the state.

My guess is that a lot of people are flirting with Obama and Clinton but will come home to Edwards. I would also expect that most undecided voters will end up choosing him as well.

The Republican results for President are more interesting. Rudy Giuliani leads the state with 30 percent of the vote, barely edging out Newt Gingrich’s 29. John McCain is further back with 22 percent and Mitt Romney only has 6 percent.

Gingrich’s strength in North Carolina is stronger than anywhere else in the country I’ve seen. His outpacing McCain would seem to indicate that he is the candidate of choice for North Carolina conservatives.

I found it ironic that Gingrich had by far the most support among voters who listed their top issue as moral or family values, considering his history of marital infidelity. I guess his support comes from the ‘do as I say and not as I do’ wing of the Republican Party.

McCain’s strongest regional support came in the 910 area code, which contains much of North Carolina’s military infrastructure. Although I would never support McCain, I am happy to see that voters in that area appear to appreciate his undeniable service to our country.

I was surprised to see Giuliani in the lead since Republican voters in the state are pretty conservative and he tends to be a moderate. I have a feeling that his support comes from voters who like him because of a perception that he is a strong leader. When Public Policy Polling does future polls on this race, I’d like to see ‘leadership’ be one of the issues they poll on.

It is still a long ways off and there will doubtless be a lot of shifting in these races. Still, this effort from Public Policy Polling gives us a good starting point in seeing what is to come in the 2008 election in our state.

Kudos to Carolina North committee

2007-01-08T15:06:00.000-08:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on January 6th, 2007:

Around this time last year, I was extremely skeptical about UNC's plans for a "Leadership Advisory Committee" on Carolina North. It seemed like just the latest in a series of bureaucratic bodies, at best another pointless waste of time and at worst a cooptation technique designed as an end run around substantive public input on one of the most important issues our area has ever faced.

Twelve months later, I am pleasantly surprised with the work it has done and cautiously optimistic about the direction we are heading in. Folks are engaging in a constructive dialogue about town/gown issues in a way that we have not often seen.

That this committee has been successful is a testament to the quality of the folks leading it. In particular I give credit to the head of the committee, former Mayor Ken Broun. Bill Strom and Cam Hill from the Chapel Hill delegation, and Mark Chilton and Dan Coleman from the Carrboro delegation have also been integral to its productivity. Roger Perry, who has an interesting dual role on the committee as both a Chapel Hill resident and a UNC trustee, has also played a key part.

The thread that ties those folks together is that they've been working on the Carolina North issue forever. Broun and Chilton were on the Chapel Hill Town Council back in 1994 when the first Horace Williams committee was formed. Strom and Coleman were leading progressive activists in the community then, and while Hill is newer to involvement in Chapel Hill politics, he served on the Horace Williams Citizens Advisory Committee before being elected to the Town Council.

Stacking the LAC with folks who have a long background of working on Carolina North is important because they've learned from past experience what sorts of things have allowed previous bodies to stagnate and fail to reach consensus.

That was an important factor in the early stages of the committee, when it worked to set its ground rules. Leaders of the Chapel Hill and Carrboro delegations were criticized for slowing the committee's work by spending a lot of time focusing on what the vision and goals of the body were. Instead they should be commended -- the LAC has been successful because it has clarity about what it is trying to accomplish. Without that, it likely would have become just another in a long list of committees that failed to meet expectations.

Ken Broun deserves a lot of credit here as well. In May 2006, several members of the UNC Board of Trustees, frustrated with the pace of the process, made some thinly veiled suggestions of obstructionism towards the Chapel Hill and Carrboro delegations. Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy responded in kind, and things were pretty hot for a little while.

The committee could have degenerated then and there and lost any possibility of accomplishing something. But Broun worked to help keep the group together and on focus, and in the seven months since that flare up it has entered the period of its greatest productivity.

The goals that the committee has agreed on are admirable. For instance, UNC has committed to including space for schools and child-care facilities. The more the university provides the infrastructure to handle its expansion, the less Chapel Hill and Carrboro will be adversely affected.

Bill Strom has been calling for a transit master plan and a fiscal equity study related to Carolina North for years. Roger Perry has played a key role in getting UNC to agree to fund those projects. He also seems to have convinced the university through the LAC process to agree to the town's stated principle that this should be a transit-oriented plan. The collaboration of Strom and Perry in this group has been something to see, and is a great sign for future town/gown relations.

On this issue, Carrboro's leaders also deserve credit. When transit discussions bogged down last spring, Chilton and Coleman deftly and articulately advocated for a transit-oriented approach that all agreed to.

I was disappointed that UNC wouldn't commit to preserving a set amount of land as open space, but it does seem committed to keeping the tract as beautiful as possible without making specific promises.

The goals that have been agreed on are broad. Former Town Council member Joe Capowski, who has been following the process closely, says "the lower strategic planning level, at which the principles are implemented, will force the difficult tradeoffs."

Capowski is particularly concerned about parking at the site, possibly the greatest area of worry for southern Orange residents and particularly neighbors of the project.

There are difficult decisions that still need to be made. Nevertheless, the process has been the most productive example of town/gown relations in recent memory. This is in no small part thanks to the good will shown by the delegations of Chapel Hill and Carrboro by engaging in the process. Hopefully this positive momentum will continue.

Tom Jensen is a local political activist and a recent graduate of UNC. Readers can contact him at tjensen@email.unc.edu or c/o The Chapel Hill Herald, 106 Mallette St., Chapel Hill, NC 27516.

Support UNC women's basketball team

2007-01-03T10:49:00.000-08:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on December 30th, 2006:

Two Saturdays ago I attended a men's basketball game against UNC-Asheville at the Dean Dome, took a half-hour break and then went to a women's game against South Carolina State at Carmichael Auditorium. Even though I attended about 95 percent of the men's home games while I was a student and about half of the women's games, this was the first time I had ever gone to both on the same day. So how did they stack up in close proximity? Frankly, I enjoyed the women's game a lot more.

That's probably a good thing since in my first year of post-studentdom I'm not likely to get into a lot of men's games without breaking the bank.

Like the men's team, our women's team this year is fast-paced, exciting and ranked in the top five in the country. Unlike at the Dean Dome, women's tickets are generally easy to get, inexpensive and universally close to the court.

Coach Sylvia Hatchell is truly underrated in the Carolina community. She has more than 700 wins in her coaching career and will likely end up with more than Dean Smith by the time she retires. She does it with the same understated humility that Roy Williams does, and it's a shame that Tar Heel enthusiasts don't love her as much as they love him.

Ivory Latta is the most electrifying basketball player in the country, male or female, college or pro. I have never seen an athlete who so visibly loves playing the game and does it with so much enthusiasm.

Last year she won several national awards. It seems less likely that she'll do it this year but that's just because she's such an unselfish player and isn't putting up the scoring totals that players usually need to get that kind of honor. Hopefully the voters will see she's the best player in the country regardless of the numbers.

This team does not start and end with Ivory Latta though. For instance, in their biggest game so far this year, against Tennessee, junior Erlana Larkins really stepped up with a star performance inside that led the team to victory. She is one of the most improved players on the team this year and will be key down low as the team enters ACC play.

Along with Latta and Larkins, Camille Little is the team's third finalist for the Naismith Player of the Year award. She is an aggressive player with a multifaceted game who can score, rebound, and steal with the best of them.

The rest of the starting lineup for the Heels includes sophomore Rashanda McCants, much improved from her freshman year, and LaToya Pringle, a force inside who leads the team in blocks.

The team also has a strong bench. Heather Claytor is the team's best pure outside shooter, freshman Jessica Breland appears to be a future star both offensively and defensively, and Alex Miller compensates for her small size by playing so hard that I'm always worried she's going to get hurt.

Just like in men's basketball, there's an ACC coach whom I absolutely despise and want to see the Tar Heels destroy.

It is not, however, Duke coach Gail Goestenkors. After all, Duke has not beaten UNC in its last five attempts. And that's not going to change this year either. It's hard for me to harbor too much animosity toward an inferior program.

It's Maryland coach Brenda Frese who has earned my wrath, so much that I am going to go to the UNC game at Maryland next month just to yell at her.

The most exasperating sporting event I went to in 2006 was UNC's home game against Maryland. That woman's complaining to the refs makes Mike Krzyzewski look docile. She absolutely should have been double t'd and ejected based on her behavior during that game. But she was effective, I'll grant her that.

Even though Maryland fouled UNC players pretty much every play of the second half, the calls went in the Terps' favor. Right to the last play of the game when Ivory Latta was assaulted on a shot to tie the game and the whistle didn't blow. Frese reminds me of Ann Coulter.

OK, I'm working myself into a frenzy and need to calm down. Bottom line, more people need to attend women's basketball games. There is a home game this afternoon at 2 p.m. against Tennessee Tech. You should go. This outstanding team deserves your support.

Other key upcoming home games include Jan. 15 against Connecticut and Feb. 8 against Duke. It would also be great to fill up Cameron with Tar Heel fans for the Duke away game on Feb. 25.

I fully anticipate that on April 2 and 3, the UNC men's and women's teams will both bring home national championships. I hope they'll do it with the equal support of the Chapel Hill community.

I love my grandmother!

2006-12-26T18:11:00.000-08:00

Ok this wasn't the heaviest column- but it was two days before Christmas!

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on December 23rd, 2006:

As I write this, I am watching "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation," my favorite movie at holiday times. It was one of my grandfather's most-loved movies, one we frequently watched regardless of the time and season when I went to visit him and my grandmother.

I've probably seen the movie seven or eight times since he passed away, far too soon in the summer of 2000, but I still think of him every time Chevy Chase sends a Christmas tree flying through his neighbor's house or destroys the Chicago power supply with his light display.

Fifty years from now, when I'm watching that movie on channel 3,457, I will probably still think of him.

My grandmother probably doesn't quite share our enthusiasm for this holiday classic, but that's OK.

Today I will drive through the countryside of eastern North Carolina to Litchfield, S.C., to spend the Christmas holiday with her. It's always a toss-up whether I'd rather spend the break down here with my extended family or at home in Michigan, where we had a beautiful, white Christmas each of the last two times I was there on the big day.

There's definitely not going to be any snow at the beach this weekend, but being able to spend a significant chunk of time with my grandmother will make it worthwhile.

My grandmother is the most selfless person I know. She seems to worry about pretty much everyone except herself. She does everything from taking personal responsibility for loving and caring for senior citizens without family in the area, to driving the carpool for my young cousins.

Two-and-a-half years ago, she broke her hip and had to go around in a wheelchair for several months.

She never complained, never wavered from putting the interests of everyone else around her ahead of her own, and was back in perfect shape faster than anyone could have expected. I hope that quick recovery was a reward for someone who truly lives by the Golden Rule.

It's amazing to walk around the complex of condominiums where she lives in Greenville, S.C. Everyone she sees, across four generations, stops to say a friendly hello to "Mrs. Patton." I have never seen this kind of reaction to any other person in any other place my entire life. But then again, I've never seen anyone so kindhearted and caring as my grandmother, so I can't say I find it terribly surprising.

I'll always think of my grandmother when I think of UNC's championship run during the 2005 NCAA basketball tournament. We watched the first half of the Sweet 16 game against Villanova together while I was visiting for Easter. UNC didn't play very well. She went to bed. UNC came back and won.

Two days later, we watched the start of the Elite 8 game against Wisconsin. Again, UNC did not start off particularly well. I went to the airport to fly back to Raleigh and, while waiting for my flight, saw UNC get its act together to win.

When I got back I had a message on my cell phone. It was my grandmother informing me that clearly her watching our games was bad luck, because Carolina was playing well when she wasn't watching and badly when she was. So, she was not going to watch them anymore.

She held to her word the next weekend and took one for the team. We beat Michigan State and Illinois to win it all. Did the great success have any connection to my grandmother's selfless act? Maybe or maybe not, but I'm glad she was willing to make the sacrifice.

So today I will drive through Holly Springs, Buies Creek, Dunn, Clinton, Whiteville and Tabor City on the back roads to Litchfield, just south of Myrtle Beach. I am looking forward to seeing my uncle Pat, his fiancâ??©e Terri, my charming cousins Maggie, Annie and Walter, and their parents Garry and Margo, my brother Alec and my parents. We have a close-knit family and the glue that will hold it together with all of us in one house for a week will, as always, be my grandmother.

As all of you travel by road, plane, or just stay at home this weekend, I hope you will be surrounded by family members you love and hold in as high regard as I do my grandmother. We should all be so lucky to have close family members we can be so proud of. Happy Holidays, everybody!

Blogs keep us plugged in on politics in Chapel Hill and Orange County

2006-12-18T15:14:00.000-08:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on December 16th, 2006:

You probably know Sally Greene, Mark Kleinschmidt and Laurin Easthom well as members of the Chapel Hill Town Council. You may not, though, know about another pastime that the three of them also share. They are among the ever-growing cadre of local bloggers.

Greene is one of the most intellectually well-rounded people I have ever met, and it comes through in her blog postings. She practices law, lectures and teaches about racial issues in the South and has edited an essay collection about the writings of Virginia Woolf. Her postings in the nearly two and a half years since she started her blog, titled GreeneSpace, have touched on all of those topics as well as her more public role as a member of the council.

Some of her more recent postings have included a preview of a panel that she will be moderating next month in relation to desegregation in Chapel Hill, a discussion of Barbies and advice on affordable Christmas gifts.

Of course she has also delved into the scale of buildings downtown and other more political stuff.

She does a good job of posting new material most every day, and her blog is definitely like Forrest Gump's box of chocolate -- you never know what you're going to get.

I feel smarter for reading her blog, and I think many readers would, too. Check it out at greenespace.blogspot.com.

Mark Kleinschmidt's focus is a little more narrow than that of Greene, but the topics he covers on his blog still go far beyond that of standard town business.

In his day job, Kleinschmidt works as the executive director of the Fair Trial Initiative, which works to recruit and train death penalty lawyers.

Considering his professional interests, it's not surprising that his blog has become just about the best source of up-to-the-minute information about pending executions in the state.

For folks concerned about the death penalty, Kleinschmidt's blog is one-stop shopping for information on things they can do to help fight against it. It is also a good place to go to read his thoughts about ongoing capital cases across North Carolina, as well as national trends.

Kleinschmidt also provides good coverage of LGBT issues locally and around the country. For instance, last month he provided detailed coverage of a conference he attended in Houston for gay and lesbian leaders across the country.

Kleinschmidt has a unique perspective as one of a very small handful of openly gay elected officials in North Carolina, and that comes through in his writings. You can read his blog at markforcouncil.org.

The most thorough coverage of local government on a council member's blog is provided by Laurin Easthom.

She has provided in depth coverage of her thoughts on the Lot 5 development plans, wireless internet in Chapel Hill and upcoming public hearings.

She also occasionally covers other topics of interest to her. For instance, she has expressed her displeasure at the outsourcing of job duties that many UNC dental technicians have recently faced, as well as her distaste with some of the final actions of the Republican Congress.

Easthom's blog is updated pretty sporadically, but I don't fault her for it because she gets very few comments.

It is very difficult to sustain the motivation to be an active blogger if you don't feel like anyone is listening.

So maybe if you go and read the posts and write some comments at laurineasthom.wordpress.com, she will start writing more frequently.

I don't think elected officials have any obligation to blog whatsoever. Their service to the community through the dozens upon dozens of meetings they attend every month, in addition to all the e-mails and phone calls they have to respond to, is more than enough. But I certainly do appreciate the ones who do take the time to communicate with constituents through this public forum.

Of course, in its fourth year, orangepolitics.org, the baby of Chapel Hill Planning Board chairwoman Ruby Sinreich, remains the best place to go for discussion of local politics. Many local officials who do not maintain their own blogs do a great job of keeping up with and participating in the discussion there. Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton, Alderman Dan Coleman and Chapel Hill council member Cam Hill all post there regularly. Every member of the Board of Aldermen has chimed in at one time or another, as have Orange County commissioners Moses Carey and Mike Nelson, and Chapel Hill council member Ed Harrison.

I think there are very few communities around the country that match the level of connectedness our elected officials in Orange County have.

If you haven't already, you can gain a wider perspective about local politics and the folks you have elected by checking out these four blogs.

We need more variety on licenses

2006-12-13T06:04:00.000-08:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on December 9th, 2006:

When I went to get my North Carolina driver's license this week, I had no idea it would be such a thought-provoking experience. Where else can you go to sit around for 45 minutes while the employees decide whether or not you're a sex offender and be tested on your knowledge of driving farm equipment in the same day?

When I got to the mobile unit that sets up in the parking lot across the street from the legislature several days a month to provide convenient services to the elected officials and those like me who work near them, the first thing they did was look at all of my identification documents. Fair enough.

The next thing they did was put my name into some sort of national sex offender database, which had Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' picture on it.

When they typed in my name, not only did the one registered sex offender in the country named Tom Jensen pop up, but also those of the many Tom Johnsons across our land.

I'm not sure whether this was proper procedure or not but the folks running the office, who were exceptionally nice, felt they had to go through and look at the pictures of every sex offender named Tom Johnson in the country to make sure I wasn't any of them. The unit only had a dial up connection, so this took an eternity.

While they were looking at pictures of 47-year-old men from Missouri, I took the written driving test.

It had never occurred to me to bone up on the rules about driving tractors on the highway or what rules I would have to follow if I was driving a school bus, but common sense prevailed and I passed the test.

Unfortunately, at this point they still hadn't determined my status as a sex offender, so they told me to go to work and call back later to see if they had found me yet among the list of sex offenders named Tom Johnson who live in states I've never been to.

When I got to work, my co-worker and friend Meagan Honnold asked me whether I was going to get the state seal, a lighthouse or an airplane as the background for my license.

I said I would probably get the seal, but that I didn't find any of the options to be particularly compelling. Although I must say I like the airplane because it really ticks off people from Ohio, and if there's one thing I like as a Michigan native, it's ticking off people from Ohio.

But I digress. Meagan, a native of Hendersonville, told me that one thing she didn't like about the choices for license backgrounds was that none of them represented the western part of the state. She's absolutely right -- the airplane and lighthouse are certainly symbols primarily associated with eastern North Carolina. Maybe the bias in license choices harkens back to the days where the state was governed by the eastern gentry.

There's no shortage of symbols of the west that could be added -- Grandfather Mountain, a dogwood tree, Mt. Mitchell or even a generic tribute to the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Adding some of those western choices would also solve another flaw with the current menu. Meagan and I, good Sierra Club employees that we are, also agreed it was strange that with North Carolina being one of the most physically beautiful states in the country all of the options reflected man-made structures.

Having some license designs that represent the physical diversity of the state would be a good thing.

There already are some good choices for the eastern part of the state, and we had come up with ideas for the western part of the state, but how to represent the Piedmont? A few ideas come to mind.

A race track would acknowledge the importance of places like North Wilkesboro and Rockingham as the birthplace of NASCAR.

You could also represent the region's beacons of higher education with the Old Well or N.C. State's bell tower.

Having identified potential solutions to the pressing issue of lack of diversity in driver's license background choices, I realized it was time to head back to the DMV to see if I had been cleared as a potential sex offender yet.

When I got there I was informed that, indeed, "none of the Tom Johnson sex offenders looked anything like you!" You don't say. And I'm sure the nation is that much safer for them having gone through that ever so extensive search.

The process may have been a little more time-consuming than I had hoped for, but it gave Meagan and me a good opportunity to have a discussion about what features of North Carolina we love that we probably otherwise would never have had. I hope someone from the N.C. Department of Transportation will read this column and take our ideas to heart.

Tom Jensen is a local political activist and a recent graduate of UNC. Readers can contact him at tjensen@email.unc.edu or c/o The Chapel Hill Herald, 106 Mallette St., Chapel Hill, NC 27516.

Town should move forward with Lot 5

2006-12-04T16:20:00.000-08:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, December 2nd:

Monday's upcoming vote by the Chapel Hill Town Council on whether to authorize the manager to negotiate a contract for the redevelopment of Lot 5 has led to a high level of public dialogue about the project. A recent public hearing drew 22 speakers on the proposal, and the debate has continued in meetings, letters to the editor and the blogosphere.

The level of interest is not surprising considering the active citizenry we have in this community and the importance of the decision. Nonetheless it is always heartening to see so many people take an interest in the future of our town.

I think the project is exactly what downtown Chapel Hill needs.

Chapel Hill voters have repeatedly supported candidates who are averse to sprawl and support the rural buffer. You can count me in that camp. But the town still needs to grow.

That means dense housing needs to be built somewhere. But at the same time many neighborhoods close to downtown have recently sought protections to ensure that their character is preserved as the town grows larger. I sympathize with their concerns as well.

I was somewhat horrified to hear a speaker suggest at the public hearing two weeks ago that this project should be pushed back to Northside. That kind of gentrification could truly be disastrous to the neighborhood.

So downtown clearly is the most appropriate place for this kind of development. One of its key goals is to attract folks who are transit- and pedestrian-oriented, and will have less of an emphasis on the car.

Some folks have criticized this approach, saying that the lack of a downtown grocery store and the ability of other basic retail needs to be met downtown will make it futile.

But when it comes to businesses that meet folks' core daily needs locating downtown, the adage from "Field of Dreams" clearly applies -- if you build it, they will come.

Those kinds of businesses don't set up shop downtown because the level of population density is not enough to support their existence. But if this project was built, it, combined with the housing developments built or slated for Rosemary Street, would likely increase the population enough that it would become a desirable location for a grocery store and significant retail.

Some folks have criticized the financial aspects of the deal, but the voices I heard in favor of it at the recent public hearing put those concerns to rest for me.

One affirmative speaker was Anita Badrock, the chairwoman of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce (although she was speaking as an individual). Business leaders usually aren't inclined to support something if they think it's a potential boondoggle.

Another speaker in favor was my Planning Board colleague Gene Pease, who has been a citizen leader in fighting for responsible municipal budgeting. He's also a national expert in return on investment, and if he says this is a good one for the town he's probably right.

He was joined in support by Roger Perry, a UNC trustee and respected leader in the local business community. I'm no business major, but if these folks think it's a good deal, that's good enough for me.

Delaying the approval of the project is not a good idea, either. Bottom line, the longer you wait on things, the more expensive they get. We've been working on this project for years. It's time to move forward.

With all the bumps that have happened along the way, this project could have easily been abandoned, which would have been a big waste of time and money. Kudos to the negotiating team, chaired by Bill Strom with support from Sally Greene and Cam Hill, for their work to get the town the best deal possible. When the three of them ran in 2003, this was an issue they all promised to work on, and it's always nice to see elected leaders who keep their word.

On a personal note, one of the reasons I love this project is that I would like to live in it myself.

I don't own a car and I commute by TTA to work in Raleigh every day. Lot 5 is about two minutes away from where I pick up the bus. It would be great to be able to walk right out of my house, catch the bus, and then come home at night and meet my daily needs within walking distance of my condo.

Right now there's nowhere that meets both the niceness and affordability criteria I would need to see to live on Franklin or Rosemary Street.

Certainly the ability to buy any significant number of groceries downtown is not currently being met.

The Lot 5 development is a strong means toward that end. I hope that when the Chapel Hill Town Council takes up this issue Monday night, it moves forward with a unanimous vote to show its strong commitment to a more vibrant downtown.

Jerry Meek has benefited Democrats

2006-11-29T06:14:00.000-08:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on November 25th, 2006:

When Jerry Meek was elected chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party last year, riding the wave of support from activists who thought there should be a greater emphasis on the grassroots, you would have thought from what some folks were saying that the sky was falling.

Meek's hands-on leadership style is certainly different from what people were used to. There were also concerns about his ability to raise money for the party.

Twenty months and an extremely successful election later, those voices seem to have disappeared.

Simply put, Meek's emphasis on making the most out of the strength of the party's individual activists has worked. Across the state Democrats had a remarkable number of volunteers considering the lack of attention-grabbing races. Not only were thousands of new workers, empowered by Meek's commitment to them, coming out of the woodwork, but they were also performing higher level and more creative tasks than they ever had before.

The greatest accomplishment Meek can point to is that even though legislative Democrats could have been tarred by the scandals involving Jim Black, they actually made significant gains in the House and Senate.

One of the keys to that success was simply making a commitment to contesting more seats. For instance Ty Harrell defeated Russell Capps in a western Wake County district that no Democrat even contested in 2004. In another Wake County district, Greer Beaty came within a handful of votes of knocking off incumbent Nelson Dollar, who also had not faced a Democrat in his previous campaign.

There certainly is room for improvement in the number of seats with serious Democratic candidates, but in his first term Meek made significant strides in changing the culture around the party and emphasizing the importance of not writing off any area of the state.

One of Meek's first actions upon taking office was the unveiling of a Western North Carolina task force. Democrats had underperformed in that area of the state for a significant period of time, and Meek thought it was important to get a bunch of party activists together to have some serious dialogue about how to improve the problem in the future.

The results speak for themselves. Democrat Heath Shuler knocked off longtime incumbent Charles Taylor in the region's U.S. congressional seat. Democrat John Snow retained his state Senate seat in a Republican-leaning district by a significant margin, and his fellow party member Joe Sam Queen beat an incumbent Republican to take back the seat he had lost in the 2004 election.

Democrats also nearly swept the statewide judicial races, including the victory of every party-supported candidate for the Supreme Court. While other Democratic successes in North Carolina this fall could be attributed to the national political climate, the nonpartisan nature of these races makes the work the parties do on behalf of their candidates that much more important.

It had been a long time since there was an election where Democrats dominated the judicial races, but it happened this fall based both on the strength of the candidates and based on the work of many activists across the state who got out the vote on their behalf.

Many of those volunteers wouldn't have been there if Jerry Meek wasn't chairman of the party.

I know many people who have been pleasantly surprised by Meek's performance. Orange County's activists knew all along, though. When Meek was elected two years ago, he earned the overwhelming support of our local delegation, and no one I've talked to since the election regrets it.

Meek's re-election as party chairman this winter seems a certainty. Why would anyone challenge a winner?

The party activists who blog at www.bluenc.com, which prominently include Orange County activists Jim Protzman and Robert Peterson, have encouraged Meek to pursue a "100 county" strategy for the 2008 election. This would entail fielding Democratic candidates for every office in the state.

This seems like an admirable goal, and one Meek and his leadership team should subscribe to in the coming months. Frankly, it's one Republicans should pursue as well, since competition enhances the political process.

I think the success Meek has had over the past couple of years with the North Carolina Democratic Party is a good sign for politics in general. Although he's been a fine fundraiser, he has emphasized the power of people over the power of money, and that is how politics should work.

I'm glad that our local Democrats saw the need two years ago to help put Jerry Meek into office, and I'm glad that his work over the last couple years has ensured that they don't regret it.

Joe Hackney is ideal choice for Speaker

2006-11-21T06:19:00.000-08:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on November 18th, 2006:

With Democrats increasing their majority in the legislature and Jim Black's re-election status still unclear as a recount looms in Mecklenburg County, it seems pretty clear that a new speaker of the House will need to be selected.

It's a decision not to be taken lightly for members of the Democratic caucus. I think hardly anyone is exactly sure what's been going on in Raleigh over the past few years but it sure doesn't smell right.

So the first attribute I want in a new speaker is that he or she be absolutely beyond reproach. The individual needs to be of impeccable integrity. Whether it's fair or not, the House doesn't have a very good image right now, and its new leader will need to inspire confidence among peers and the state's citizenry.

The second attribute I want is someone with a long record of experience in Raleigh. The legislature is a remarkably complicated institution, and the state needs someone who knows how to get things done in it. Furthermore, someone who has been there a long time and never had a whiff of scandal is unlikely to have the power of the speaker's gavel tempt them into misbehavior.

The third attribute I want is someone who is a progressive leader, but also a realistic leader and one who will be well respected on both sides of the aisle. I don't see any good in having a speaker who is a knee-jerk liberal and can't get anything done. But I also think there is definite room for improvement in the progressivism of legislative leaders.

When you take these requirements as a whole, there is one person in the legislature who stands far above the rest. As an added bonus, he is one we in Orange and Chatham counties can call our own. The clear choice for the next North Carolina speaker of the House is Joe Hackney.

Joe Hackney is a model elected official. He has represented us now for 26 years, and he is one of the most influential leaders in Raleigh.

But he has never come close to getting in trouble. He has never wavered from his principles to get ahead, or subordinated the trust of his constituents for his own personal advancement. His election as speaker would send an immediate signal to the state that the House is getting its act together and committed to earning back the trust of those it has lost in recent years.

I barely know Joe Hackney but have always respected him from afar. I have hoped ever since Jim Black started getting in trouble that if it got to the point where he had to be replaced, Hackney would be the man.

But it was a meeting with local leaders of the Sierra Club last month that made me even more of a Hackney fan. Folks were giving our local legislative delegation ideas about environmental legislation they would like to see passed during the next session.

Some of the ideas weren't particularly feasible. A lot of the time when I'm in meetings with elected officials and constituents make suggestions that are perfectly valid but not likely to happen, one of two things happens. Some folks will smile and nod and say they'll work on it, knowing full well it's never going to happen. Others will say it's not possible, but do so in a way that's condescending and serves to make the person with the suggestion feel put down.

Hackney calmly and politely would explain why various things were not likely to work out. He did it in such a way that people understood the pitfalls that pursuing particular courses of actions could cause.

They appreciated the fact that he neither pandered nor preached, but gave respectful and useful feedback. And on the suggestions made that were feasible, he promised to take action. His track record shows we can count him on to do it.

I relate this anecdote because I think it puts the lie to what seems to be the biggest strike against Hackney when it comes to the possibility of his becoming speaker. Some people write him off because they think he's too liberal.

Hackney is definitely more progressive than the average legislator. It is highly unfair, however, to paint him as the stereotypical ineffective liberal. He is extremely competent and that's the biggest thing folks should be worried about in picking a new speaker, rather than where they fit in on some ideological spectrum. From his years of experience he knows what will fly and what will not in the halls of the Legislative Building and he's not afraid to say no to his allies. That should put the "too liberal" critique to rest.

Joe Hackney is as fine a public servant as we have in this state. Hopefully his colleagues will recognize that in January and make him Speaker of the House.

Breaking down the local election results in Orange County and Chapel Hill

2006-11-16T05:34:00.000-08:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, November 11th:

Despite being a "blue moon" election year with no major statewide races in North Carolina, Tuesday night's election has some interesting implications for Orange and Chatham counties.

One lesson learned is that we have the most popular senator in the state. With 74 percent of the vote, Ellie Kinnaird received a higher percentage of votes than anyone else in a contested seat throughout North Carolina. While some people like to peg her as a liberal kook from Carrboro, the fact that she won all but one precinct in Orange County points to her wide appeal.

Another lesson confirmed is that a ballot initiative without an organized opposition will always pass. I predicted a month ago on www.orangepolitcs.org that since no organization had formed to fight district representation, the referendum would likely pass with 60 to 65 percent of the vote. It actually received 68 percent of the vote. If folks see a proposal on the ballot and have not heard any arguments against it, they'll generally assume it is fine and vote yes. I don't know if the results really reflect a great concern for representation of Orange County's rural minority or not, but at this point it doesn't really matter.

One of the big winners Tuesday night was former Carrboro mayor Mike Nelson, who successfully sought a seat as an Orange County commissioner. In the closing weeks of the campaign, a small group of residents made an effort to cut into his support by falsely painting him as a merger supporter. The efforts were ineffective, as Nelson received nearly two and a half times as many votes as Republican Jamie Daniel.

Nelson will likely take particular pleasure from receiving the votes of 60 percent of the folks at the new Hogan Farms precinct, where the residents of Carrboro's recently annexed Northern Transition Area vote. Although the folks angry about the annexation certainly make a lot of noise about it, Nelson's success shows that their political capital might be pretty limited.

This could have implications for next year's election. Some of the noisemakers in the annexed areas have promised to boot out the incumbents on the Carrboro Board of Aldermen. Their inability to do so to Nelson certainly calls into question their ability to do so to Mark Chilton, Joal Broun, Dan Coleman and Alex Zaffron. If I was one of those folks I'd be breathing a little easier today.

The Superior Court race, in which I managed candidate Adam Stein's campaign, is still unsettled as the count of the provisional votes and a likely recount looms. Whatever the final result is, Allen Baddour has provided a model for how to run an effective campaign in a local judicial race.

In the primary, dominated by Democratic voters in Orange and Chatham counties, Stein took a thousand-vote lead. It is clear from the precinct-by-precinct data that in the general election, with many more Republicans voting, Baddour made large strides in northern Orange County precincts that went for Bush in 2004.

Baddour is certainly no Republican, nor were any of the other three candidates in the race. But it looks like Republican votes swung the race in his favor, and he must have had the strongest strategy of the three candidates fighting for the second seat behind Carl Fox for reaching out to them. In a closely contested race with four outstanding choices, it appears that may have made the biggest difference.

Of course in such a close race, just about anything could have made the difference. One person even told me they cast a ballot for Baddour because it looked like his father was on the cusp of bringing in former Miami coach Butch Davis to resurrect the football program! I doubt that affected too many votes, though.

It was another outstanding election cycle for the Orange County Democratic Party, whose volunteers ran as effective and efficient an operation this year as it did in 2004, even in the absence of a prominent campaign. They did a good job of turning out the vote and an even better job of ensuring everyone going to vote who wanted a sample ballot showing who the statewide Democratic choices in judicial races were got one.

No doubt state Supreme Court Judge-elect Robin Hudson, whose 11,000 vote victory in Orange County accounted for more than half of her statewide winning margin of 20,000 votes, is appreciative of the efforts made by local volunteers.

This election reflected positively on the level of civic engagement in Orange and Chatham counties, and showed that for the most part we're pleased with our current elected officials. I'm sure many local residents are happy above all else that the robo calls and expensive mailers will stop coming.

Quest for election information in North Carolina

2006-11-07T14:52:00.000-08:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on November 4th, 2006:

It's not often that you will hear me compliment John Hood, the president of the right-wing think tank John Locke Foundation. But when it comes to breaking down the important battlegrounds for control of the North Carolina General Assembly in Tuesday's election, he's provided some important analysis where the state's major newspapers have failed.

With much of my attention focused on the national congressional picture and our local elections, I realized late last week that I didn't really know what races I would need to monitor on election night to find out the new balance of power in our state House and Senate.

The first place I went to look was www.nclive.org, a great service you can access through UNC and the Chapel Hill Public Library that provides archives for 15 of the state's major newspapers, including The Herald-Sun. I figured any worthwhile article about the race for control of the Legislature would include Greer Beaty, an appealing Democrat running against a freshman Republican in Cary. Her race is widely considered to be among the most competitive in the state.

So I searched for appearances of her name in all 15 of those papers. I was stunned to find that her only mention outside the News and Observer of Raleigh was a brief comment I had made about her in a column in early August.

It seemed inconceivable to me that no paper outside the Triangle had done any substantive analysis of the key face-offs for control of our Legislature, so I figured maybe for whatever reason people weren't including her in their lists.

Next I did a search for Joe Sam Queen. Queen was one of the rare bright spots for Democrats in the 2002 election when Republicans swept most of the important contests in North Carolina. He was elected to a Senate seat in the western part of the state, but then narrowly defeated for re-election in 2004. Now he's running again in this seemingly Democratic year in hopes of recapturing his seat.

This may be the tightest legislative contest in the state, but it still has not been covered in any of the state's newspapers besides The Asheville Citizen-Times and a few brief mentions in Associated Press wire stories.

Clearly, North Carolina's newspapers have little interest anymore in providing substantive coverage of state politics. The only news stories that have generated much traction on a statewide level during this election cycle are a nutty state Supreme Court candidate whose antics have led her to be disavowed by the Democratic Party, and a congressional candidate running in a district he doesn't even live in whose campaign has been characterized by crazy attacks.

Political coverage should not be restricted to candidates who make our state look bad. With the scandals that surrounded the General Assembly during its last term, the stakes are high in state legislative elections this year. I believe newspapers have an obligation to go beyond the off-beat news stories that might draw readers' attention.

They should be covering the important races that will determine where power lies in Raleigh for the next two years.

That's where John Hood comes in to the picture.

After realizing I wasn't going to find the information I was looking for in the state's major daily newspapers, I turned to Google to see if any other Web sites were providing the information I was looking for.

What I found were two of Hood's daily columns from early September. In one he outlined the state's six most competitive Senate races.

In the other he breaks down 15 of the tightest House races. His analysis is lucid and relatively nonpartisan and makes for an enjoyable and informative read. If you're interested in knowing what to watch for on Tuesday night check it out at www.carolinajournal.com.

I do think Hood's analysis is slightly off in that he does not include three races in the Triangle that should be close.

One is the aforementioned contest between Greer Beaty and incumbent Nelson Dollar. Also in Wake County incumbent Russell Capps faces an uphill battle for reelection against attractive Democratic challenger Ty Harrell, and incumbent Republican Paul Stam is nervous about challenger Ed Ridpath. These, in addition to those outlined by Hood, should be the ones to watch.

North Carolina's newspapers are failing their readers by not providing more substantive political coverage.

I hope this is a trend that begins to reverse itself in the coming years. It is still important that voters be able to get information from impartial observers instead of the punditry on both sides of the aisle.

Polls will be open from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday. Please remember to get out and vote!

The WSM situation is resolved, but let’s keep the discussion going

2006-10-31T14:58:00.000-08:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, October 28th:

A lot of the civic discourse in Carrboro recently has been about green space and public open space. The most prominent example of this is the Weaver Street Market dancing controversy, which was recently resolved happily, in large part due to extensive public input about the situation.

One positive impact of that dialogue was that it got more people thinking about the importance and meaning of putting beautiful spaces in the community to use for the public good. As with the WSM situation, public participation and input will be vital to the success of the ongoing Carrboro Greenspace initiative, and the Greenways Summit the town of Carrboro is holding today at the Century Center.

A quick look back at the resolution of the "Dancing Man" controversy shows the impact citizen activism has on public space. Early on many folks in Carrboro made it very clear that curtailing Bruce Thomas' dancing on the lawn was unacceptable to them and took action on their concerns. Their letters to the editor, organizational meetings and dance-ins showed the support behind their cause.

When Mayor Mark Chilton and Alderman Dan Coleman took up the issue of the WSM lawn as a place that should be used for the public good, it was clear that they were representing the community's values. When negotiations got dicey, Coleman, a former WSM board member, worked closely with Weaver Street's Ruffin Slater to work out creative solutions. That gave them a lot more leverage in negotiating with Carr Mill Mall's owners, who wanted to see the mall remain as the focal point of downtown Carrboro.

Because citizens had been so active early in the process, it put more pressure on the owners to approve a compromise that would be acceptable to Chilton and Coleman and by extension the folks they represent. That's how we ended up with a solution that allows Bruce to dance, while also making Weaver Street Market a hub for voter registration and other important community causes.

The elected officials did a great job standing up for their constituents, but more importantly citizens did a great job of advocating for themselves, giving their representatives a stronger leg to stand on in negotiations.

One can hope this level of citizen participation will continue in another important community cause dealing with public land use right now, the Carrboro Greenspace initiative. This deals with protecting a beautiful piece of land on Old Pittsboro Road in downtown Carrboro, which is currently facing the threat of development.

I walked the site one day earlier this week and came away impressed. There is a stream on the site, and the day after a significant rainfall it was running faster than any body of water I've ever seen in Orange County. It is also the site of Carrboro's historic "Sparrow Pool," which was in use for swimming by the public into the 1960s. It's been converted into a great space for outdoor theater, movies and gatherings.

There is also a house on the property, currently rented out, which would be converted to an environmentally friendly community meeting space.

In my role as political chair for the local Sierra Club, I frequently struggle with finding good places to hold various meetings. The plans for renovating this house sound like they would make it an ideal gathering place for community groups concerned about the environment.

It would be a tragedy to lose this beautiful space in downtown Carrboro, but it will take a great deal of community participation in order to save it for public use. If you're interested in getting involved, you can get more information by e-mailing carrborogreenways@riseup.net.

Another way citizens can get involved in discussing the future use of public spaces in Carrboro is today's Greenways Summit. This event was organized by Aldermen Randee Haven-O'Donnell and Jacquie Gist as a way to get public input on how the town should plan for and manage its greenways.

The meeting featured a keynote address by Sig Hutchinson, a Raleigh resident who has been a major force in promoting greenways in the Triangle over the years.

Communities around the country are increasingly seeing the importance of greenways both to preserve natural beautiful spaces for the public good and to promote alternative modes of transportation for both personal fitness and environmental reasons.

This summit is a great opportunity for citizens to help shape future initiatives in Carrboro. If you can't make it today, you can send feedback to greenwaysummit@townofcarrboro.org.

The Weaver Street Market dancing controversy was a high-profile example of how citizen activism can effect change.

It is up to you to ensure the dialogue it created about public spaces continues, and the Carrboro Greenspace initiative, as well as the town's Greenways summit, are two great ways for citizens to continue having an impact in these discussions.

Detroit Tigers fan gets a second chance

2006-10-23T14:53:00.000-07:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on October 20th, 2006:

In 1968 the usually moribund Detroit Tigers, in the wake of serious race riots in the city, brought the community together for six months with an exciting pennant victory. The resultant World Series bout with the St. Louis Cardinals posed a serious conundrum for then-14 year old city resident Rick Bednarz.

Back then most baseball games were still, as they are meant to be, played under the natural light of the sun. That gave Rick a choice. He could skip school and take advantage of a rare, possibly once in a lifetime chance, to see two of baseball's original teams face off in the World Series. Or he could be the ever-good student, and settle for watching the highlights on the local evening news in the pre-cable era.

Rick chose to go to school instead of the baseball games, and missed out on the chance to attend the games in the Tigers' epic seven game victory over the Cardinals.

The good times for both the Tigers and the city of Detroit have been few and far between since that 1968 World Series. The bliss created by the baseball success was short-lived, and the white flight that began soon after resulted in a still continuing decrease in Detroit's population. The city also developed a reputation as one of the most dangerous and depressed communities in the country.

The Tigers, meanwhile, only had one season in the last 37 years in which they have won a playoff series. That one World Series win, in 1984, was marred by celebrations that developed quickly into violence and gave the city an even blacker eye in the national consciousness. Over the last 14 years they have been one of the worst teams in baseball, including an amazingly dreadful 43-119 season just three years ago.

Rick Bednarz grew up to become an outstanding teacher, first in the Detroit Public Schools before moving to the Ann Arbor, Michigan, Public Schools. He was my eighth-grade math teacher and although I did worse in his class than I did in any other in my recently concluded 17 years of public education, we bonded over baseball. The national pastime has a way of knocking down barriers between those who love it in a way that few other things can.

Over the last eight years, Rick and I have been to somewhere around 50 Tigers games together (almost all losses!) Without fail, once or twice a year, we have talked about Rick's greatest regret in his life when it comes to sports, missing out on those classic games against the Cardinals in the 1968 World Series. With the benefit of hindsight he realized that the average American with a bachelor's degree goes to school 3,000 times from kindergarten through the senior year of college- but chances to see the Tigers and Cardinals come only once in a lifetime. Thus Rick has rued his decision ever since.

When I chose to stay in Chapel Hill after graduation, I knew one of the biggest things I'd be giving up was a summer of Tigers baseball. But when I went home for a brief trip in June, I did get to go to a few games. The Tigers were off to their best start since I was a toddler, and they happened to be playing the Cardinals, setting off all the necessary retrospectives to the 1968 World Series.

The surging Tigers surprisingly swept that series, and as I said goodbye to Rick before heading back to Chapel Hill, I joked to him that maybe he would get that second chance to see Detroit and St. Louis face off in the World Series yet.

Like the Tigers, the city of Detroit is on the way back. Locating a new baseball and football stadium downtown has helped to spur great economic development in the surrounding areas. Hosting the 2005 major league baseball all star game and the 2006 Super Bowl has brought the city into the national spotlight in a more positive way, even if some media outlets used the occasions as an excuse to take cheap shots at the city.

Recent championship runs by the basketball Pistons and hockey Red Wings have been exciting for the city, but never have I seen something unite the community - black, white, young, old, rich, poor, even Spartan and Wolverine, like this Tigers championship run. Baseball has taken its knocks in recent years and football is clearly the most popular sport in the country. But anything that can bring the citizens of Detroit together under the shine of the national spotlight is a pretty powerful force. In 2006, baseball has done that in a way nothing has- since the Tigers took on the Cardinals in 1968.

There were a lot of bumps in the road along the way, but Rick Bednarz will spend tonight in the seats of Comerica Park for game one of the World Series between the Tigers and Cardinals, given an unexpected chance to rectify a mistake he's regretted for 38 years. Baseball, Detroit and second chances - it doesn't get much better than that.

Jockeying for the 2008 North Carolina elections

2006-10-19T17:38:00.000-07:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on October 14th, 2006:

A crowd of 100 cheering activists gathered in the Pit at UNC two weeks ago to hear a candidate for political office, not particularly surprising during the middle of an unusually intense midterm election.

What was strange about the event though is when the speaker, conservative activist Bill Graham, is widely rumored to be running for office -- he's a 2008 Republican gubernatorial candidate.

Despite the dearth of exciting statewide races this year, there's plenty of political jockeying in advance of the 2008 election when an unusual number of desirable offices will be vacated at the same time.

Plenty of public attention has gone to the Democratic gubernatorial primary, where two heavyweights and one possible local dark horse candidate will face off. Those are Lieutenant Governor Bev Perdue, Treasurer Richard Moore and Representative Bill Faison, from northern Orange County.

There are plenty of folks on the GOP side ready to duke it out as well, al-though they are lesser known. You may get to know Senator Fred Smith from Johnston County during this election cycle, as he's taken the unusual step of running ads on Triangle TV stations. This use of campaign funds seems like it may be geared more toward 2008 than his re-election campaign.

You may have already gotten to know the aforementioned Graham. He's been active in self-funded campaigns on television and radio across the state this year to crack down on illegal immigration and eliminate the gas tax.

Also seemingly in the race is Sen. Robert Pittenger, a strident conservative from Mecklenburg County. All three candidates are terrifyingly to the right, but none seem to be particularly viable candidates either. Republicans may want to coax popular Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory into the race.

I'm pretty sure Richard Vinroot is sitting this one out!

The Democrats also have a packed field already for lieutenant governor. Hampton Dellinger, who has held a variety of top governmental posts, is likely to earn the support of much of the traditional party establishment but is also well respected among the progressive wing of the party.

Another strong contender will be Winston-Salem City Councilman Dan Besse, who is a well-respected environmentalist. The Progressive Democrats of North Carolina have been seeking a candidate to support in this race, and Besse may fit the bill.

Other early candidates with lesser statewide profiles are Senator Walter Dalton of Rutherfordton, Senator A.B. Swindell of Nashville and Canton Mayor Pat Smathers. They each have plenty of time to move into the top tier of contenders.

Another open seat in 2008 will be the state treasurer's. Jim Harrell, a young legislator from Surry County, is the most definite candidate for this post. He passed up a shot at the lieutenant governor's race after the field got too crowded.

Another person who would be a strong candidate for treasurer, or any statewide office for that matter, is Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker. Meeker is as good a public servant as we have anywhere in this state. He is smart, builds bridges and has done a tremendous job in his current role. Many Democratic pundits hope Meeker will make a run against Elizabeth Dole if more prominent candidates defer on the race.

Some activists, not wanting to make the tough choice between Perdue and Moore, would like to see one of them enter the Senate race. That seems un-likely, as does the entry of popular Congressman Bob Etheridge, who would have to give up a safe House seat.

I would not be surprised if Dole chooses not to seek re-election. If that is the case, the face of the Democratic field would be transformed dramatically.

Then there are the incumbents. Secretary of State Elaine Marshall and Insurance Commissioner Jim Long seem sure to cruise to re-election. Likewise, State Superintendent of Public Instruction June Atkinson, although elected under considerable turmoil, seems likely to have less trouble this time around.

The Republican incumbents could face some stronger competition. Former legislator Wayne Goodwin seems primed for a rematch against Labor Commissioner Cherie Berry, whom he fell to in 2004. Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler will also face a strong competitor. One possible candidate is state House Rep. Alice Graham Underhill, the daughter of long-time Commissioner Jim Graham, who has proven to be a successful campaigner.

Former Commissioner Britt Cobb, an honest and decent man who was likely swept out of office because of the Meg Scott Phipps scandal, has been serving admirably in the Easley administration and would be a good return candidate.

In the race for attorney general, former Randolph County manager Bob Crumley is an announced GOP challenger to Roy Cooper. Former Raleigh City Councilman Kieran Shanahan is also a possible candidate, although his interest may have cooled when Cooper announced he would run again.

Needless to say, anyone thinking that this year's election is boring in North Carolina has plenty to look forward to in 2008!

On another note, my column last week about campaign signs referred to my putting them up for Superior Court candidate Adam Stein. I should have made it clearer that I am heavily involved in his campaign and apologize to anyone who wasn't aware of that.

Tom Jensen is a local political activist and a recent graduate of UNC. Readers can contact him at tjensen@email.unc.edu or c/o The Chapel Hill Herald, 106 Mallette St., Chapel Hill, NC 27516.

Stein Volunteer Mixes Campaign Signs and Highway Beautification

2006-10-09T14:53:00.000-07:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, October 7th

I never knew how much trash local residents throw out on the road until I spent last Sunday putting up yard signs with Chatham County resident Staples Hughes.

Hughes, who spends his weekdays advocating for low-income accused criminals in the North Carolina Office of the Appellate Defender, has spent many weekends over the past 15 years putting up signs for candidates he knows or respects along the roads of Chatham County.

The lucky beneficiary of Hughes' handiwork for this election cycle is Superior Court candidate Adam Stein. And there is no doubt that Stein is lucky -- Hughes has this banal but necessary part of local election campaigns down to an art form.

He knows most every intersection in Chatham County and how many signs should go at each of them. He knows that you should ideally put seven staples each on the left and right sides of the folded sign to hold it together.

When you put it on the stake after it's been hammered in the ground you put four staples on each side. It might seem like overkill, but it also ensures that the signs stay up, saving a lot of maintenance time later.

He also knows the hazards of the practice, saying that "ticks and poison ivy are de rigeur when putting up signs." He's contended with many of those over the years, and more recently had an unfortunate encounter with a farm of fire ants.

Once the signs are up, teenage motorists are one of the greatest threats to them. Hughes has noticed over the years that for whatever reason, some drivers find great amusement from swerving onto the shoulder to run over signs.

Hughes has come up with a good solution, though. He hammers campaign signs into the ground near road signs. So if someone wants to run over a Stein sign in Chatham during this election cycle they're more than likely going to ruin the front of the car on a stop sign, too.

What impressed me most about Hughes, though, was somewhat incidental to the cause of putting signs up. Everywhere he stops to put in some signs, he also gets a trash bag out of the back of his truck. And he scours the intersection for litter, picking up every last disgusting piece and putting it in the bag to be properly disposed of later.

I could not believe how much junk there was nearly everywhere we stopped.

There are dozens upon dozens of abandoned drink bottles and beer cans everywhere you look, not to mention random pieces of Styrofoam, candy wrappers and about anything else you could imagine.

It is clear people have no respect for our natural landscapes, and that's exceedingly unfortunate. We are very lucky locally to have citizens like Staples Hughes who go far beyond rhetoric in their efforts to protect the environment. But he shouldn't have as much cleaning work to do as he does.

Staples has a great idea for something that could be done in Raleigh to make politicians better show their commitment to the common good. He would like to see the General Assembly pass a bill requiring all candidates and candidate surrogates putting up signs in the right of way to clean up the surrounding trash in the process of doing so.

It is about the most commonsensical idea for a piece of legislation I've ever heard.

If candidates are truly committed to serving the people they shouldn't have any problem with doing so. It will also work to solve one of the problems North Carolina is plagued with due to the disrespect of some of its citizens.

I hope one of our outstanding local legislators will take the lead on "Staples' Bill" when the legislature reconvenes in January, and I hope there isn't any opposition. It would be a step in the right direction. This is one of those ideas that there really is no negative side to.

I've been putting up yard signs since I was a teenager. I've put up thousands of signs for candidates ranging from school board to president on the roads of Michigan and North Carolina.

I was nearly run over by an 18-wheeler at 3 a.m. one morning putting up signs for Erskine Bowles on U.S. 15-501 and watched my best friend's car start flaming on a ramp to the bypass last fall putting up signs for Laurin Easthom.

But after spending an afternoon with Staples Hughes, I saw that when it comes to putting up signs I'm a complete amateur. We're lucky to have folks like him out there and I hope others will follow the noble lead he has taken in combining candidate advocacy and highway beautification.

Can't stomach rote restaurant names

2006-10-08T16:41:00.000-07:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on Saturday, September 30th:

One day last week when I was riding the TTA down Hillsborough Street in Raleigh, I looked out to the left, and saw something that made me cringe. It wasn't the State campus or the North Carolina GOP Headquarters or anything like that. It was a restaurant named the Golden Dragon.

After four months of my column, you can probably tell that I'm concerned about walkable communities, affordable housing and governments reaching out to their citizens. But another issue I'm really concerned about is the stereotypical naming of Chinese restaurants.

It started one day two falls ago when my best friend and I were driving down US-29 from Charlottesville to Danville on the way back to Chapel Hill from a brief vacation. As we drove through the rural Virginia countryside every 20 miles or so we would see a Chinese restaurant: Forbidden Garden, Red China, Shanghai Dragon, Peking Panda, and the list goes on and on.

By the time we hit Lynchburg we started predicting what the name of the next one would be. It was always a pretty good bet that it would have something to do with a panda, dragon, wall or garden and that it would either have the name of Shanghai or Peking or the color of gold or red in the title.

Since then, as I have traveled much of the Carolinas, I continue to play close attention to the names of Chinese restaurants wherever I go. And I continue to be astonished by how universally these establishments have bizarrely formulaic names, especially in more rural areas.

It seems a sad commentary on the ability of Americans to embrace foreign cultures. I don't necessarily blame the proprietors of these restaurants for the names. No doubt market research has told them that in order to attract business they need to play on this small set of characteristics that Americans comfortably associate with China.

But imagine if you were an American tourist in China, desperately wanting to eat some food that reminded you of home. What if all the restaurants were named New York Big Apple, Red White and Blue Buffalo or Grand Canyon Eagle? Chances are you'd be pretty irritated by the random amalgamations of American symbols. I know that I would find it to be stereotypical and culturally insensitive.

Fortunately, here in Chapel Hill most of our Chinese restaurants don't fall victim to this phenomenon. Arguably the most popular and most tasty one in Chapel Hill has been Village Plaza's Charlie's Chinese, which was recently sold. People liked the food there, but they also liked Charlie Tsui who chose to name his business in a way that clearly identified it with himself. Folks in Chapel Hill evidently get a greater sense of comfort from feeling a personal connection with the owner than they do from hokey cultural generalizations.

Three of the more popular Chinese restaurants in and around downtown Chapel Hill are Hunam Chinese, Asia Cafe and 35 Chinese. A significant bond that these businesses all share is names that don't play on basic American stereotypes about the Far East. Another characteristic they all share is pretty good food.

This phenomenon is by no means restricted to Chinese restaurants. For instance, I will never go to an Indian restaurant that makes any reference to the Taj Mahal, elephants or Bombay. Especially since Bombay is not even Bombay anymore - it is now Mumbai.

It's a good thing there are few Australian restaurants in the United States. I can only imagine the Koala Aborigine or the Kangaroo Opera House. It sounds ridiculous, but if the same naming patterns given to most Chinese restaurants were used, that's about how it would turn out. The only reason their names don't sound absurd to the average American is that they're so used to that just being how it is.

If this trend continued, an African restaurant probably would be called Zulu Safari. If we started eating Saudi Arabian food we could go to the Oil Desert. I shudder at the thought of getting some German food at the Oktoberfest Autobahn or picking up some British grub at the Union Jack Tower of London.

I'm doing my part to solve this problem. Since 2004 I have not gone to any Chinese restaurant whose name contained one of the magic words I outlined earlier. Probably not coincidentally, I've noticed that the food at the places I've been to in the last few years is a lot better than it is at all the Panda, Dragon and Garden establishments I've been to in the past. I think there's a directly proportional relationship between stereotypical names and bad food.

So as you travel Orange and Chatham counties and the world beyond, I hope you'll start paying more attention to the names of the places where you decide to eat. If you avoid the rote names, you will not only be taking a stand for cultural sensitivity but also more than likely getting a better meal.

Tom Jensen is a local political activist and a recent graduate of UNC. Readers can contact him at tjensen@email.unc.edu or c/o The Chapel Hill Herald, 106 Mallette St., Chapel Hill, NC 27516.

Breaking down the Residences at Grove Park

2006-10-01T16:26:00.000-07:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on September 23rd, 2006

In recent years there has been no proposed development in Chapel Hill that I have more mixed feelings about than the Residences at Grove Park, which would replace the current Town House Apartments on Hillsborough Street with a number of relatively up-scale condos.

On one hand this kind of development fits in perfectly with the direction Chapel Hill's downtown needs to go in. We want more people living near the city's core. This certainly accomplishes that goal.

Beyond that, the Town House Apartments are not particularly nice. This would be a step forward in terms of aesthetics.

On the other hand, this poses a major problem in the sense that it will remove a large amount of student housing near campus. Already the local housing supply is having trouble keeping up with the university's expansion and causing students to choose places to live further and further away from Chapel Hill.

Over the last several years the Verge, which is in Durham County, has become one of the most popular student apartment complexes. This has a lot to do with shuttles being provided to get students to and from campus. More recently, larger numbers of students have started seeking out places to live in Chatham County and out toward Hillsborough due to a shortage of desirable places to rent in the Chapel Hill/Carrboro area.

This is not an ideal situation. If all of these folks were riding the bus to campus every day it would be one thing, but most of them are driving and by extension causing air pollution and exacerbating the parking problems with which UNC and Chapel Hill are already plagued.

Some folks would say the solution to the problem is for UNC to provide more living space on campus, but that's really not realistic. I lived on campus the whole time I was a student and loved it, but by their junior and senior years most folks want to live where they can behave pretty much however they want. No amount of new housing that the university builds is going to change the mentality of 21-year-old college students.

This problem obviously is much bigger than what ends up happening to Town House Apartments. For instance, the Chapel Hill Town Council recently passed a duplex ban for the Pine Knolls neighborhood that complemented one earlier passed for Northside. Although I was one of just two Planning Board members to vote against the most recent ban, I can see where the neighborhood leaders who pushed it are coming from.

No doubt many students living off campus do behave terribly. At the same time the vast majority are perfectly good neighbors — but that doesn't change the fact that the rotten eggs in the bunch have led to new measures being enacted that may have the further effect of eroding the affordable housing supply near campus.

At the end of the day this larger issue will not have much bearing on how I vote when this proposal comes to the Planning Board. But I do think it's time for some town and university leaders to get together and go through some meaningful long-term planning process of where students are going to live in the coming years. Continuing to take measures that decrease the supply of places where young people can live near campus will have negative unintended consequences down the road.

On another note considering the Residences at Grove Park, I thought Monday night's public hearing about it before the Town Council was a model example of Chapel Hill's approval system for development working right.

Many neighbors of the site had concerns about traffic and aesthetic impacts the proposed changes would have. They stated those valid concerns articulately and respectfully without any hint of rancor.

Likewise, Ram Development has shown good faith throughout the process so far. The company took plans for the site twice to the Community Design Commission for feedback already, and was also praised by neighbors for being responsive to their concerns.

Chapel Hill's development process is often criticized for being slow and unwieldy. But when developers, public officials and those citizens who are impacted work together in good faith as they are doing on this project, we end up with finished products that are much better than they would have been if not for all the work that went into them.

The proposal for the Residences for Grove Park, whether approved or not, is a good starting point for a community dialogue about where students are going to be affordably housed. Is it going to be near campus, promoting walkability? Or will it be miles away from campus, promoting the kind of car dependency that we claim we abhor in Chapel Hill? Time will tell.

New Carrboro leaders: So far, so good

2006-09-24T19:32:00.000-07:00

Carrboro saw some pretty major changes in its political leadership in the aftermath of last fall's election.

For the first time in 10 years its mayor is not Mike Nelson, as he chose not to run for re-election and was replaced by two-year Alderman Mark Chilton. Another veteran of the Board of Aldermen, Diana McDuffee, also retired after a decade of distinguished service to the town. Longtime Carrboro activist and popular teacher Randee Haven-O'Donnell was elected to take her place.

Most prominently, Chilton's ascension during the middle of the four-year term he was elected to in 2003 led to the need to fill his vacated seat. There was no clear procedure for doing so and after nearly three months of controversy, long-time local activist Dan Coleman was appointed by a divided board.

We're now nine months into Chilton's first term, and the full Board of Aldermen has now been seated for more than seven months. So how are the new guys doing?

Pretty well, in my opinion. None of them have shown any reticence about taking on large amounts of responsibility from the outset in their new positions. For instance, the trio all serve on UNC's Leadership Advisory Committee dealing with Carolina North. Coleman and Chilton, in particular, bring years of experience with this issue to the table. Their presence has made the voices of Carrboro's representatives a key contributor to the dialogue, something which can only benefit the town's residents further down the line.

Another issue the trio has been actively involved with, as has fifth-term Alderman Jacquie Gist, is the ongoing controversy over the use of the lawn at Weaver Street Market. They have come in for criticism in some circles for overstepping their boundaries as aldermen. I think it would be an outrage if they didn't speak out about an issue in town that they are passionate about. They share the outrage of many of their constituents, and one of the benefits of being an elected official is an opportunity to speak out about the issues that concern you.

It's not like the Carrboro officials are just lobbing hand grenades at the mall's management either. While making their positions clear, Chilton and Coleman, in particular, have worked in a conciliatory fashion with Nathan Milian, Ruffin Slater and other people deeply involved in the situation. The chances of an ultimate solution that pleases the largest number of people possible have been greatly increased by the steady leadership Carrboro's public officials have exhibited.

There have been many other successes so far this year. For instance, a new online system to help residents easily get information they need from the government has been implemented. The town has also successfully completed a rezoning around the cement plant that will allow for mixed-use development, including affordable housing.

Mayor Chilton had large shoes to fill -- although the opposition to Mike Nelson was sometimes loud, he always won re-election with a significant percentage of the vote, a sign of overall popularity with the electorate.

It should hardly come as a surprise to most followers of local politics, however, that Chilton has had such a strong start to his tenure as mayor. During his time as an elected official both in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, he has always been a strong and effective leader with an ability to get things done. That he has been able to do so without ever betraying his progressive values is a tribute to him.

Similarly, it is unlikely that anyone is surprised at the contributions Alderman Haven-O'Donnell has made to the board. She had a long history of effectiveness in various volunteer roles both in Carrboro town government and in the broader community before her election, and most people who know her would agree she is one of the kindest people you could ever meet.

Dan Coleman, prior to his appointment, was a bigger question mark. Over the years Coleman -- with whom I served on the Sierra Club Political Committee -- has developed a reputation as being a pretty intense person when it comes to politics and there was some wonder about how he would fit in as a member of a seven-person board.

There are a lot fewer people expressing doubts now than there were eight months ago. He has shown himself to be a strong team player. His encyclopedic knowledge of recent local history gives him a special perspective in every aspect of his role as an alderman. That intelligence and intuition is also an asset to the board in that he has a special sense of what sorts of policies have worked and failed in the past and how that intersects with current policymaking.

There are certainly people unhappy with Carrboro town government, as there will be with any governmental body. But all in all, the new faces in Carrboro's leadership are doing a stand-up job thus far.

Tom Jensen is a local political activist and a recent graduate of UNC. Readers can contact him at tjensen@email.unc.edu or c/o The Chapel Hill Herald, 106 Mallette St., Chapel Hill, NC 27516. Caption:

How to bring more prominent liberals to UNC

2006-09-12T10:04:00.000-07:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on September 9th, 2006:

If you have a strong stomach and some free time on Tuesday night you can head over to Memorial Hall at 6:30 p.m. to hear John Ashcroft speak. Of course, you might have a previously planned date to wash your hair.

Ashcroft is just the latest in a succession of right-wing extremists to speak on the UNC campus. Other recent appearances have come from well-known conservatives like Ann Coulter, Alan Keyes and Patrick McHenry. There have also been the lesser-known folks like Rush Limbaugh's brother and a speaker billing himself as the "conservative Jesse Jackson."

There is a consortium of conservative groups on the UNC campus that sponsors these events. The College Republicans are often involved, and this week's event is being sponsored by the UNC chapter of the Federalist Society and the Committee for a Better Carolina.

The Federalist Society is a national group for conservative law students. The CBC seeks to increase the conservative voice on campus and came to prominence originally with its protests of the 2002 and 2003 UNC summer reading books -- "Approaching the Quran" and "Nickel and Dimed," respectively.

Bringing all of these speakers to campus is not cheap. The honorarium alone for the Ashcroft speech is $25,000 and the groups bringing him must also pay all of his travel expenses and the fee to rent Memorial Hall.

A lot of the money comes from student fee money. Ten thousand dollars of the cost for this particular speech is covered by student activity fees. The rest of the money has to be raised independently. Hold that thought.

During the past four years, there has been no comparable roster of speakers from the left side of the spectrum. You haven't seen Michael Moore or George Lakoff or any prominent out-of-state Democratic elected officials speaking on campus. There have been a few good liberals -- Paul Begala and Paul Krugman come to mind -- but nothing to match the onslaught of high honorarium Republicans.

There are far more Democratic activists on campus than there are Republicans, so why this dichotomy? It is certainly not because of a lack of interest. Individual progressive organizations as well as various coalitions of them have attempted to bring scores of different famous speakers to campus, usually without success.

As is often the case in life, it's all about the money.

Liberal groups can get student fee money just as the conservative ones do. But raising that extra $10,000 to $25,000 to cover the rest of the costs of bringing a speaker usually has proven to be too high of a hill to climb.

Conservative organizations really value their youth. It is funding from groups like Young America's Foundation, the Pope Center and the Federalist Society that make it possible for all of these right-wing speakers to have their voices heard. There are no comparable organizations on the left, or at least none that have shown much interest in helping to bring expensive liberal speakers to the UNC campus.

Some in the community deserve a hand.

The Orange County Democratic Party, particularly Barry Katz and Nancy Park, has built a tremendous relationship with the UNC Young Democrats that continues to this day. They have been financially supportive and morally supportive as well. But of course they don't have the resources these state and national Republican groups do.

While there have not been a lot of liberal speakers of national prominence on campus, there have still been plenty of events pushing a progressive perspective. U.S. Rep. David Price, state Sen. Ellie Kinnaird and state Rep. Verla Insko in particular make a tremendous number of appearances on the UNC campus and should be acknowledged for their contributions.

Former senator and now Chapel Hillian John Edwards has also been generous with his time in meeting with students, as was Erskine Bowles during his two campaigns for the Senate.

But it would still be nice if the headliners came to town more often. In the absence of large, liberal organizations, it's going to take the generosity of individual donors to bring them to UNC.

I do lots of research for political campaigns, and many of the ZIP codes in Orange and Chatham counties are donor central for progressive causes. So if there's a major personality you would like to see in town, get in touch with an appropriate student organization and work with them to raise the private funds needed in conjunction with student fees to make it happen.

When famous speakers come to campus it should be a great asset not just for students but for the broader community as well.

It frustrates me that year after year the folks whose appearances create the most buzz are the John Ashcrofts and Ann Coulters of the world. If local residents and student leaders collaborate more, there may be a solution to the inequities liberal groups currently face in raising private funds.

Come out to Kenan to support Heels

2006-09-07T10:38:00.000-07:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on September 2nd, 2006:

One of the things I've found most surprising during my four years in Chapel Hill is the empty seats in Kenan Stadium. It may be because I went to high school across the street from a 100,000-plus capacity stadium in Ann Arbor, Mich., that has not seen an empty seat in more than 30 years. Still, there is big-time football going on in town six or seven Saturdays every year, and it would be nice to see more support for the team from the community.

The season kicks off today against Rutgers at 3:30, and so does the opportunity for local residents to start attending games in greater numbers.

The good news is that there are already a couple games this year that the stadium has filled up for. Virginia Tech and North Carolina State tickets are sold out, at least in part because of large numbers of opposition fans buying up seats.

The other two ACC home games are against Wake Forest and Georgia Tech. The game against the Demon Deacons seems like it should get a pretty good crowd from in-state fans, and the matchup with the Yellow Jackets produces a memorable outcome every year.

It seems then that the games most likely to have trouble getting people in seats will be the nonconference ones against Rutgers today, Furman in two weeks, and South Florida next month.

A Herald-Sun report indicated that UNC has had the hardest schedule of any program in the country aggregated over the past five years.

Part of that is by design -- when the Athletic Department scheduled games against teams like Texas, Notre Dame and Wisconsin, an uphill battle had to be anticipated.

It has also been partially because of happenstance, though. Many of the teams the Tar Heels have scheduled ended up being far better than anticipated. Who could have known that Louisville, which destroyed us the past two years, would develop into one of the country's strongest programs? Or that when a trip was scheduled to Utah two years ago they would turn out to be a top-five team?

This year's slate continues that trend. When Rutgers, South Florida and Furman were scheduled, it had to look like three easy wins for the Heels. Now it looks like three games that should provide closely matched action.

Rutgers has been one of the worst programs in a BCS conference over the past decade. But Coach Greg Schiano seems to finally have them on the right track. Taking advantage of the exodus of some of the Big East's strongest teams to the ACC last year, the Scarlet Knights put together a surprising season punctuated with a bowl trip. They are expected to have a similarly strong team this year and should be pretty evenly matched with UNC today.

Furman is not even a Division I-A team, but after getting thrashed by the Paladins at Kenan in 1999, the Tar Heels know they will have to take this game seriously.

Furman continues to be a I-AA powerhouse. They lost in the national semifinals last year to eventual champion Appalachian State, who will hopefully embarrass N.C. State today. This is another game that should provide some pretty strong competition for UNC.

South Florida flirted with a bid in a BCS bowl for much of last season before falling off at the end of the year and facing off against the Wolfpack at the Meineke Car Care Bowl in Charlotte.

They should have another solid if not spectacular showing this season and most projections have them pretty evenly matched with the Tar Heels -- not bad for a team that's been playing in Division I-A for less than 10 years.

It was cool when Texas came to town four falls ago. I enjoyed seeing Louisville play two years ago. There wasn't too much trouble selling tickets for those games. But UNC was done by the end of the first half in each of them.

The teams on this year's slate might not be as fancy as those, but they also provide the chance for fans to see UNC win against quality teams. It's more exciting to see competitive games against middle-class teams than to see blowouts at the hands of top-level programs -- all the better to turn out for these games.

It looks like this might be the best Tar Heel football team since the first one of John Bunting's tenure. There has been significant improvement over the past two seasons, and things are finally coming together for the team. With another tough schedule, though, they will need all the fan support they can get. I hope I'll see you today and throughout the fall at Kenan Stadium!

Tom Jensen is a local political activist and a recent graduate of UNC. Readers can contact him at tjensen@email.unc.edu or c/o The Chapel Hill Herald, 106 Mallette St., Chapel Hill, NC 27516.

Lessons learned in South Carolina

2006-09-07T10:37:00.000-07:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on August 26th, 2006:

Since I am a most loving grandson, I took off with a friend last weekend to spend a few days with my grandmother in Greenville, S.C. I went mostly expecting to enjoy her outstanding cooking and play with my young cousins, but the trip also got me to thinking about some of the major political issues locally in Orange County.

Until 2000, my grandparents lived in a rural part of Greenville County about 10 miles away from the city. I always enjoyed going out there and getting away from the urban existence. Other than a gas station and a golf driving range, there was pretty much no commercial development within three miles of their house.

The atmosphere out there could probably best be compared to the area north of Hillsborough or west of Carrboro as you head out on 54 toward Alamance County.

When we drove out to their old farm last weekend we were greeted by several strip malls, a Super BiLo, a car dealership and about half a dozen subdivisions. The county is booming and sooner or later there is going to be no open space left. It only took six years to turn the quiet countryside into Sprawlville, USA.

There are a lot of folks who live in Orange County who don't like the rural buffer.

But seeing how the solitude has been destroyed by rapid, large-scale development in a county that doesn't seem to do much planning, I'm glad we have it.

We need healthy economic growth here, and I would like to see some significant growth in the commercial tax base so we can reduce some of the burden of property taxes.

But we also need to preserve open space and keep our county beautiful. I'm even more sure of that after seeing what has happened in Greenville County.

In the rural part of the county I saw where I do not want Orange County to go.

But in downtown Greenville, I saw a model for where downtown Chapel Hill needs to go.

Greenville's downtown has seen an incredible revitalization in recent years, largely due to the creation of attractive housing that has driven people to move back into the center city.

It used to be remarkably dull, but with the influx of downtown residents a vibrant culture has developed that appeals to people of all ages.

One reason downtown is so attractive to folks there is that they can meet many of their basic needs without ever having to walk more than three or four blocks. My friend had forgotten to bring any socks on the trip, and without giving it a second of thought my grandmother was able to tell him where he could get a normal inexpensive pair of socks on Main Street.

There might be a place in downtown Chapel Hill where you can do that, but one does not immediately leap to my mind.

There is also a downtown full-service grocery store.

This seemed to me a preview of what downtown Chapel Hill could look like if we stay the course with the redevelopment of Lots 2 and 5. Certainly, things have not gone as well with the financing of these projects as we would have liked, and they have gone much slower than we might have hoped for.

If I choose to stay in Chapel Hill for the long haul though, I want to be able to live downtown and not have to own a car. That means being able to fill all my normal shopping needs within walking distance.

I don't see that happening if the downtown plans are scrapped. Too much work has been put into them by too many different people to stop now.

Beyond that, I saw last weekend what a vibrant downtown in a mid-sized city like Chapel Hill can look like, and I want to see something like that happen here.

A large contingent of local leaders is heading to Madison, Wis., next month to look at what we can bring home from another college town.

It might be time well spent for a group to head down Interstate 85 at some point and see how Greenville has created such a family-friendly downtown while also retaining aspects that make it appealing to young people.

We're headed in the right direction here with the opening of the Kidzu Children's Museum, but there are still a lot of things we can do to make downtown more appealing to non-students.

I got all the usual love and hospitality from my grandmother on my trip to South Carolina last weekend, but I also picked up a lot of new perspective about how what we're doing is and is not working here in Orange County.

It's very healthy for local leaders to take the trips like the one to Madison next month and also to look at what places closer to home are doing. The ideas we bring home can do nothing but improve our community.

Tom Jensen is a local political activist and a recent graduate of UNC. Readers can contact him at tjensen@email.unc.edu or c/o The Chapel Hill Herald, 106 Mallette St., Chapel Hill, NC 27516.

St. Thomas More forgotten in fray

2006-08-21T18:23:00.000-07:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on August 19th, 2006:

This month two historic buildings are being torn down in Chapel Hill. One, West House on the UNC campus, has been the subject of loads of activism and media attention over the last few years. The other, the original St. Thomas More Church on Gimghoul Road, is being torn down with little attention from anyone other than the parties involved.

It's a shame that either of the buildings is meeting its demise. I've walked by each of them pretty much daily for the past four years and they each enhance their surroundings.

It is interesting, though, what the difference in the public outcry over the destruction of each building says about our community. Most of the people I've talked to who are familiar with both of these buildings agree that the church is more striking and attractive than West House.

Yet it is West House which has attracted the large coalition of talented locals to advocate for its survival, including Sen. Ellie Kinnaird and three members of the Chapel Hill Town Council. They first encouraged the preservation of the building in its current spot, and as the prospects of that dimmed, explored the possibility of relocating it.

On the other hand there has been virtually no outcry about the demise of the church, which anchors the Gimghoul neighborhood. It will be replaced with a residence for Vilcom owner Jim Heavner, who currently lives elsewhere in the neighborhood.

There is an obvious surface level reason for the disparity in activism. West House is in a prominent place on campus, so there are a lot more people who see it and could have developed an affection for it on a daily basis.

The main reason no one is speaking out about the church, though, is probably that the neighbors want it gone. The Gimghoul neighborhood association has complained for years about the church and its parking lot, and the prospect of a single home on the property is appealing to them.

I can understand the concern that a business would buy the church and become disruptive to the neighborhood, and I'm glad that's not happening. I'm less sympathetic to some of their behavior toward the church over the past few years.

St. Thomas More has long rented out the spots in its parking lot, both helping to raise money for its activities and providing a much needed parking source for students and staff close to campus. Several years ago the neighborhood association sued over this.

The church offered to compromise by chaining off the Gimghoul Road entrance to the parking lot other than on Sunday mornings, so that there would not be any additional traffic in the neighborhood. The homeowners association was not interested in making a deal, though.

The neighborhood leaders are supportive of the demolition of the church, at least in part because now they won't have to worry about parking there. I think it's unfortunate they were so eager to see a historic building torn down just to avoid a minimal amount of traffic.

The Gimghoul neighborhood is one of Chapel Hill's three historic districts, which gives it a lot of protections other parts of town don't have. It's an area well deserving of those extra steps to maintain its character, but one does wonder what the point is when its most striking structure is torn down without a protest.

The Historic District Commission, rather than the Town Council, had jurisdiction over this matter. The body's rules say that it should not authorize a tear-down without seeing the plans for what the new building will look like, but in this case that requirement was waived. All but one member of the HDC, which has several residents of the Gimghoul neighborhood in its membership, voted to allow this exception.

I don't mean to be so hard on the Gimghoul neighborhood leaders. In fact, if I could live in any area of Chapel Hill, it would be my choice. Their neighborhood has retained its unique character and beauty because of some of their actions over the years. Beyond that it has been put at great risk because of the UNC chiller plant, which the neighborhood was right to fight. It's quite possible that the urge to remove the church and its parking problem is an overreaction to getting burned by UNC three years ago.

I support neighborhoods in Chapel Hill that want to preserve their historical character -- but part of that means actually preserving the buildings that give it historical character. There were no easy solutions to saving the St. Thomas More church, but it's too bad that no one even tried.

Tom Jensen is a local political activist and a recent graduate of UNC. Readers can contact him at tjensen@email.unc.edu or c/o The Chapel Hill Herald, 106 Mallette St., Chapel Hill, NC 27516.

Borrowing from David Price's playbook

2006-08-20T22:19:00.000-07:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on August 12th, 2006

Joe Lieberman did a lot of things wrong leading to his defeat in the Democratic primary for the Senate in Connecticut on Tuesday. He did not launch a meaningful get-out-the-vote effort. He left $2 million in the bank -- money that if spent probably would have put him over the top. And of course, he made the tactical error of announcing a month before the election that he would run as an independent if he lost the primary, a move that alienated primary voters and probably was the biggest reason for his defeat.

But another error he made is a little more subtle and a little more local. He should have picked up the phone and called our congressman, David Price, for a little advice on how to deal with a challenge from the left.

Price, too, faced an energetic and articulate challenge in his May primary. He fended it off easily, winning more than 85 percent of the vote. There's an obvious big difference between Lieberman conqueror Ned Lamont and Kent Kanoy, who came up way short against Price: money. Lamont raised a lot of it, while Kanoy refused to take donations. But there are also a lot less obvious but meaningful things Price does that would have made it impossible for even a well-funded challenger to get much traction against him.

For one thing, Price maintains a high level of visibility locally, doing things that ingratiate him to the Democratic base. While Joe Lieberman at times in the last month seemed to be running his campaign on "Meet the Press" instead of on the ground in Connecticut, Price was headlining fundraisers for numerous local candidates for office. Just in the past few weeks he helped House challengers Ed Ridpath and Greer Beaty, both of whom reside in the western Wake County portion of Price's 4th Congressional District.

Folks almost invariably feel a closer connection to more local candidates for office like the state legislature. When Price takes the time to help them out, he earns the gratitude of all their supporters as well as the candidates themselves. Because he continues to show a deep interest in what's going on in every corner of his district even after 20 years in Washington, he has deservedly built up a reservoir of goodwill that makes him virtually unbeatable.

Price also handles criticism and tough questions a lot better than Lieberman did. Although he has been chided for not agreeing to a series of debates during his recent primary challenge, he has not hesitated to speak to large groups of people not entirely happy with his actions. For instance, he appeared at a well-attended forum sponsored by the Orange County Democratic Party last October about the war. Audience members were given color-coded cards they could hold up to express their positive or negative feelings about what Price said. A lot of folks expressed unhappiness about some of his remarks, but he remained articulate, patient and respectful.

Lieberman, on the other hand, seemed to develop an intense dislike of Democrats who challenged his views over the course of the primary season. He came across as not open to other people's perspectives, and, instead of reaching out to disaffected liberals, essentially declared war on them by announcing his plans to seek the seat as an Independent. It was tantamount to saying that he didn't need their support anyway.

It's safe to say that a lot of people who do not agree with Price on every issue voted for him nonetheless. A majority of Connecticut Democrats turned against Lieberman. It has a lot to do with temperament.

Of course, beyond the differences in their personalities, Price's voting record better represents the views of his constituents than Lieberman. Even if some folks feel he has been overly cautious about plans for withdrawal, he did vote against the war. He also has a long record of progressive accomplishments on issues like college affordability, war crimes prosecution and forcing candidates to take greater accountability for their negative campaigning.

Lieberman had some good achievements, but he let his dour demeanor and his close relationship with President Bush overshadow them. Price has almost universally stayed true to his liberal-leaning ideology and never minces his words about his dislike of the direction in which the president has taken our country. Folks know that when they hear Price speak, they are likely to hear a stinging indictment of the Republican administration, something that compares favorably to Lieberman's preaching about the need for all citizens to unite behind the president in a time of war.

I voted enthusiastically for David Price in May, and if I lived in Connecticut I would have voted for Ned Lamont on Tuesday. If Lieberman had wanted to remain in good graces with his Democratic base, he should have taken a few ideas from the Price playbook, as should any incumbent facing a similar challenge in the future. Price is a model for appealing to constituents who don't agree with him on everything.

Tom Jensen is a local political activist and a recent graduate of UNC. Readers can contact him at tjensen@email.unc.edu or c/o The Chapel Hill Herald, 106 Mallette St., Chapel Hill, NC 27516.

Rifles don't always shoot straight

2006-08-20T22:17:00.000-07:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on August 5th, 2006

In most communities of Chapel Hill's size, an armed robbery downtown would be big news. But as shootings and gunpoint attacks on Franklin and Rosemary streets have become an almost monthly and sometimes more often occurrence, media coverage of these incidents has been largely relegated to the police beat.

That worries me. When individual acts of violence become so routine they don't seem like a big deal is when people are going to start going downtown at night a lot less often. We are in the process of a much-needed effort to revitalize our central business district by greatly increasing the number of people who live in it.

The continuation of this trend of violence poses a great threat to the fulfillment of that vision.

Last week's slaying outside the Avalon nightclub has proved to be an exception to the seeming indifference of the broader community to violence downtown. Homicides, thankfully, are still rare enough in Chapel Hill that they get a lot of attention when they occur.

However, I'm worried the reaction to this incident is shortsighted. Many folks have expressed the view that this crime was related to the culture that has been built up around Avalon. They think that shutting the club down will solve the problem, and it appears their wish will be fulfilled.

Putting Avalon out of business is a good start -- it's clear the management there has lost control of what goes on at their establishment.

But it's unlikely the violence will disappear with the club's closing. It will just move somewhere else.

The upswing in violence downtown may be rooted elsewhere than Chapel Hill -- there is rampant speculation that this most recent shooting was gang-related, and other incidents have also been traced to gang activity. Many of the victims have come from Durham, so it is possible that what we are seeing here stems from conflicts started elsewhere, although there are other possibilities.

Some folks will feel comfortable in saying that since most of these incidents have not involved people who actually live in Chapel Hill, we don't have much to worry about as long as we mind our own business.

But as my mom reminded me, rifles don't always shoot straight. And even if the chances of any of us individually getting shot or robbed are pretty small, we still need to take back downtown as a place where people can feel safe living and going to at night.

Durham Mayor Bill Bell has done a great job of reducing violence and gang activity in his community. Simultaneously, though, there has been an increase in that kind of crime in Chapel Hill, making it seem like some of that activity has just been relocated rather than stopped.

Bell could not have foreseen the regional impact his crime-fighting efforts have had, so I don't fault him. Overall there's been a significant decrease in Durham crime, even if some of it has apparently moved down the road. But Chapel Hill, rather than taking actions that will simply relocate the problem, should take regional leadership in working to solve it.

Gangs in our area should not be viewed as a Durham problem or a Chapel Hill problem or a Raleigh problem.

It's time for the elected and law enforcement leaders throughout the Triangle to get together for a serious dialogue about what's happening, and come up with a joint action plan for solving it. Previous efforts have been shortsighted, and we've seen the effects here in Chapel Hill.

There are folks already doing good work to make downtown safer. Liz Parham and Andrea Rohrbacher, in their roles respectively as executive director and chairperson of the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership, have worked with the Town Council to get five new police officers for downtown. The officers should be on the beat by February and will doubtless help make a dent in some of the problems we've been seeing.

But to really solve the problem, we need to get to the root of it. That can't just be done by throwing money at it. It's going to take a lot of careful thought and cooperation from various interests throughout the Triangle, but with the brain power and civic mindedness our region benefits from, I'm confident it can be done.

I have a vision that five or 10 years from now all the condominiums downtown will be filled, there won't be an empty storefront, and all the grumbling of recent years about the demise of Franklin and Rosemary streets will be a distant memory. But it won't happen until the return of the days in Chapel Hill where any crime involving a weapon is a stunning and rare occurrence.

Tom Jensen is a local political activist and a recent graduate of UNC Chapel Hill. Readers can contact him at tjensen@email.unc.edu or c/o The Chapel Hill Herald, 106 Mallette St., Chapel Hill NC 27516.

Work to clean up North Carolina politics

2006-08-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on July 29th, 2006

Folks are taught from an early age that if they have a problem with something that a governmental body is doing, they should contact their representative. It's safe to say a lot of progressives in Orange and northern Chatham counties have had a lot of problems with the actions, or lack thereof, taken by the North Carolina General Assembly during this year's session.

The most glaring disappointment is the lack of meaningful ethics/lobbying reform.

It's clear many legislators want to get as much out of their status as they possibly can and are not committed to making the real changes that could help North Carolina residents better trust their elected officials.

But this is by far not the only failed opportunity to make the state better during this session.

A full slate of good environmental bills have been killed by the moneyed interests around the General Assembly, ranging from strong standards to create cleaner cars to the common-sense issue of electronics recycling, for which the Orange County Commissioners have provided a great model.

Another session will pass without a death penalty moratorium. The bigwigs in the Ram's Club at UNC are still saving money by giving star athletes from outside North Carolina in-state tuition, and the list goes on and on.

The blame can't be placed on the Democratic or Republican parties alone -- they're both complicit in the culture that has been created in Raleigh, and it means local residents of all affiliations should be concerned and should feel compelled to take action to change it.

We could all contact our own legislators to express our displeasure about these issues, as we're taught to do in school. But it's not their fault. In state Sens. Ellie Kinnaird and Bob Atwater, and Reps. Verla Insko and Joe Hackney, we have as progressive and proactive a delegation in Raleigh as we possibly could.

Voters in Orange and Chatham have consistently elected the good guys, and the result is that it is our elected officials on the front lines fighting to change the way the system works to put the balance of power back in the hands of the common man.

For that we should commend them, and we should also commend ourselves for putting the right kind of people in power.

But obviously the four of them are not enough to enact an agenda that improves the daily lives of North Carolinians.

That doesn't mean local residents have an excuse to just sit on their hands and talk about how it's not our fault.

It means we need to take our involvement to another level and engage our friends, family and neighbors across the state in the political process. We need to show them the important things that aren't happening in the General Assembly, and we need to get them contacting their representatives, who more than often will need a little more prodding than the people in our delegation.

It's no secret that folks in our area are among the most involved and knowledgeable in the state. It's also no secret that usually the most important thing to politicians is getting reelected.

When representatives from places like Bertie and Scotland and Gaston counties start hearing as much from their constituents about the need for substantive ethics reform and other components of a progressive agenda as our representatives do here in Orange and Chatham, then we will start seeing some change.

It means putting more time in. It means e-mailing friends in other counties, calling them and telling them what's happening. It means looking up their home legislators' names and giving them their contact info so it's as easy as possible for them to make their voices heard.

But if we can help to create a stronger voice from the grassroots across the states that makes legislators realize they need to shape up or move out, it will be time well spent.

Of course, for some folks in the General Assembly no amount of lobbying is going to change the way they are, and they just need to be defeated for re-election.

Local residents can spend their time this fall volunteering in other districts to elect the sorts of candidates that are committed to a more transparent and constituent-responsive government.

Within less than an hour's driving distance there are several highly competitive House races where there are opportunities to replace legislators who have been roadblocks to change.

It's been another disappointing session, but instead of complaining about it, it's time for us as individual citizens to take a wider interest in the actions of our politicians across the state instead of focusing solely on what's happening in our own backyards.

If we start working now, maybe this time next year we'll have a better feeling about our Legislature.

Tom Jensen is a local political activist

and a recent graduate of UNC.

Readers can contact him at

tjensen@email.unc.edu or

c/o The Chapel Hill Herald,

106 Mallette Street, Chapel Hill NC 27516.

Coming up next for Bill Faison ...

2006-08-20T22:15:00.000-07:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on July 22nd, 2006

As this year's state legislative session winds down, one of the most interesting trends for the Orange County delegation is the silence of Bill Faison, representative from N.C. House District 50 that includes part of Orange as well as all of Caswell County.

During his inaugural session last year, he made all sorts of noise. He attracted attention statewide as one of only two Democrats to vote against the state budget, while gaining notice locally for his effort to force a referendum on district representation for the Orange County Commissioners through the N.C. General Assembly. This drew him the enmity of many other local elected officials, who thought his efforts were an attempt to wrest power away from them.

This year has been a completely different story.

Amazingly, his name has not even appeared in the pages of this newspaper since early March.

The thing that makes his lowered profile during this session even more perplexing is that while his attention-making actions have been minimized, his ambition to move on to a position of greater power has exploded. He has expressed interest in serving as speaker of the House if current speaker Jim Black steps down, and in running for governor.

These are pretty high hopes for a first-term legislator, so what are Faison's chances of achieving either position? Not good, but not impossible.

One reason for Faison's less rebellious behavior during this session could be his ambitions to be speaker of the House. Voting against the budget did not endear him to very many of his colleagues last summer, and he may be hoping that toning down his act will help that vote to be forgotten if he enters the speaker election in January.

Another thing that can help past indiscretions to be forgotten, as always in politics, is money. Faison's best hope for being elected speaker through the support of the Democratic caucus is probably liberally dispensing his significant personal fortune to legislative candidates throughout the state in an effort to earn their loyalty.

It might sound like a far-fetched way of getting ahead, but there's a precedent for it in Faison's short-lived political career. During his hard-fought primary campaign in 2004 against Orange Commissioner Barry Jacobs, he garnered a lot of support by pouring large amounts of money into a wide variety of community groups in northern Orange and Caswell counties.

The more likely scenario, though, goes back to the independent streak Faison showed during the 2005 legislative session. His voting with the Republican caucus on the budget shows some ability for him to form alliances across party lines.

If the 2006 election ends up with a Democratic majority of say, 63-57 in the House, Faison would only need to bring four Democrats with him to cut a deal with the Republicans that would make him speaker. It's not unprecedented -- Joe Mavretic put together a bipartisan coalition to earn the top spot for one term in 1989.

The chances of any of this happening are slim. Most likely either Jim Black will continue in the position or be replaced by a longtime Democratic legislator who has built years of relationships with his or her colleagues. But it's not impossible and Faison will doubtless attract some attention.

The even wilder of Faison's ambitions is a possible gubernatorial run in 2008. His prospects may have been helped by Attorney General Roy Cooper's announcement last week that he will not be running -- two well-known opponents are always easier to deal with than three.

Believe it or not, there's already polling out on that future race.

Faison earned 6 percent of the support in one recently conducted by Raleigh's Public Policy Polling, compared to 36 percent for Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue and 23 percent for State Treasurer Richard Moore. More than one-third of the electorate remains undecided, not terribly surprising 21 months out from the election.

Faison has an uphill battle trying to run against two foes with strong statewide political organizations. The good news for him, compared to most candidates with such a gap in name recognition, is that fundraising shouldn't be an issue thanks to the fortune he's amassed as a medical malpractice attorney.

But it seems inconceivable that merely pouring tons of advertising money into the race in 2008 will be enough.

He needs to start doing something soon to become more prominent across the state.

Considering how stacked the odds are against him to become either governor or speaker of the House, it would seem that the best chance Faison has for political advancement in 2008 is if Ellie Kinnaird of Carrboro retires and he runs for her N.C. Senate seat. It's a position he's familiar with though, as few people would have predicted he would knock off popular commissioner Jacobs in 2004.

His adept dispensation of money helped him to that seat, and he's not likely to be deterred from trying to repeat that success in the next two years.

Love Bill Faison or hate him, it's hard to ignore him.

Tom Jensen is a local political activist and a recent graduate of UNC. Readers can contact him at tjensen@email.unc.edu or c/o The Chapel Hill Herald, 106 Mallette Street, Chapel Hill NC, 27516.

Take a walk to get to know our town

2006-08-20T22:14:00.000-07:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on July 15th, 2006

I'm hopelessly unathletic so I don't go running or to fitness clubs to do rigorous physical activities or anything like that. But I also don't want to turn into a blimp so the compromise is that I walk almost everywhere I go. It's good exercise but also not overly straining.

I try to walk two hours a day, but when I started living on north campus as a sophomore while attending UNC I started veering away from that goal. With all of my classes, dining and other daily activities within a ten-minute walk, I was barely getting any exercise in the course of my everyday life.

My pants weren't fitting very well anymore by about late September of that year, so I started walking just for the sake of walking.

I traipsed through many of the neighborhoods of Chapel Hill, which accomplished three things.

First, I saw far more of the town than most students ever do. We have a definite tendency not to think about anything that isn't on a major drag, and my walking helped keep me from falling into that trap.

Second, it helped shape my political views about the town.

I saw firsthand how beautiful Chapel Hill's neighborhoods were, but I also saw that some of them were at risk of losing their character if the growth around them wasn't managed carefully.

This was during the middle of the 2003 Town Council election where those sorts of issues were in the forefront, and it led me to work for the election of Bill Strom and Sally Greene.

Three years later it seems inevitable that I would have become heavily involved in local politics, but I don't know that it ever would have happened if not for my sojourns to the interior of Chapel Hill.

Third, walking just for the sake of walking, with no particular destination or agenda gave me some rare but much needed time to get away from the hustle and bustle of my daily academic and extracurricular life and just think about things, or if necessary, think about nothing.

I still very much value these walks and the beauty of Chapel Hill. I tend to begin by taking the Bolin Creek Trail from Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to Community Center Park. I particularly enjoy this stretch of the route shortly after a heavy rain when Bolin Creek becomes the Bolin River.

A major river through downtown is the main thing I think the larger communities of the Triangle are lacking. I'm jealous of Hillsborough and the Eno.

That said, the heavy rains also bring heavy buildups of trash in the creek near Franklin Street, and that's a problem for which I hope a good solution is found sooner than later.

Crossing into Community Center Park you can smell from a distance the scents of its beautiful rose garden.

This is truly one of Chapel Hill's hidden jewels. I recently took a friend there who despite being an alumnus and the son of a longtime faculty member never knew it existed. If you've never been there, you should go check it out.

After that I hook up with the Battle Branch Trail through Battle Park, the place I walked in most regularly when I was living on campus. Half of the park is owned by the town and half by the university.

UNC recently did some sprucing up of its portion, and it looks beautiful. The Town Council has done its part too, warding off efforts by some folks in the community to pave its part of the trail. This is the most pure nature area in central Chapel Hill that I'm aware of. It probably doesn't look much different than it did during the time when its namesake, UNC President Kemp Plummer Battle, fell in love with it a century ago. It has taken strong collaboration between the dominant entities in town to keep it that way, one that can hopefully be replicated on the Horace Williams tract in the future.

After that I head up the trail into the Gimghoul neighborhood, where I would buy a home if I won the Powerball. Otherwise I don't think I'll ever be wealthy enough to live there! For now, though, I enjoy walking through it.

The beautiful and well-known garden of sisters Bernice Wade and Barbara Stiles is everything it's cracked up to be, but it also overshadows the fact that many of their neighbors also have exceptionally well-kept front yards that would brighten the neighborhood on their own.

If I'm walking near dusk I also enjoy the frequent sighting of two deer, most often near Gimghoul Castle.

These are the two most fearless of their species I've ever seen so I wouldn't encourage getting too close. I almost got plowed over by one of them a couple years ago.

The route just described takes about an hour. For that hour of your time you see some of the beautiful hidden secrets of Chapel Hill and can truly escape the stresses of every day life. And hey, it can also keep the weight away!

Tom Jensen is a local political activist and a recent graduate from UNC. Readers can contact him at tjensen@email.unc.edu or c/o The Chapel Hill Herald, 106 Mallette St., Chapel Hill, NC 27516.

A return to council in new era

2006-08-20T22:13:00.000-07:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on July 8th, 2006

Bill Thorpe returned to the Chapel Hill Town Council last December after an 18-year break. He had previously served from 1977-1981 and 1983-1987, or as I like to jokingly remind him, before I was born. The council adjourned for its summer break last week, and I got Councilman Thorpe to take some time out of his busy schedule to tell me how things have changed since he last served. The biggest difference he sees is a great increase in both internal and external communication flow.

In 1977, there wasn't much to the town staff beyond the manager, attorney and clerk. He says the large expansion of the town's professional staff over the years has made it much easier to be a good elected official because the information council members need is more readily available.

He also noted that he's greatly enjoyed having the opportunity to work with Town Manager Cal Horton, whose knowledge of the way a council/manager form of government should run has made the operations of the town much more efficient.

He's also glad that e-mail has increased citizen participation, particularly pointing to how he received more than 100 messages from residents of Coker Hills, regarding the possible creation of a neighborhood conservation district for their neighborhood.

He said the main way constituents communicated during his previous tenure was by phone calls, and that it was nearly impossible to get as wide a variety of perspectives on issues before the council then as is possible now.

He said one of the pleasant surprises of his current tenure on the council has been how well its members work together.

He was particularly pleased with how harmonious the recent process for choosing Horton's successor was, saying that the mutual respect members of the council have for each other allows them to better serve the residents of Chapel Hill.

During some of his previous terms, he says, members had a tendency to do a lot more posturing at the meetings to try to get their names in the paper.

He appreciates what he perceives as the more businesslike approach of his current colleagues, and also points out that citizens participating in the governing process have their time spent more effectively when elected officials listen more than talk.

One problem that hasn't changed much from Thorpe's previous terms is that of UNC students getting involved in town governance.

The mechanics of town government aren't very glamorous, and with busy academic, extracurricular and social lives, few of them choose to spend much time getting involved in the town. The byproduct is that few future leaders of Chapel Hill are being produced.

Town leaders have wrung their hands over this problem for years, but Councilman Thorpe appears to have found a solution. The unfortunate reality is that most students aren't going to get involved just out of a sense of civic duty. They need an incentive, and thanks to Thorpe's leadership, a paid internship program has been approved that will be put in place this fall.

Ten undergraduates a semester will be given the opportunity to receive credit and a small stipend in exchange for working 12 to 15 hours a week in some facet of town government.

The small price Chapel Hill is paying to put the program into place ($20,000 in the new fiscal year) will be more than repaid if it helps to increase the number of UNC grads who choose to settle here and serve the community.

Thorpe promised during his campaign to work toward the creation of this internship program, and I'm not the least bit surprised he has followed through.

I first met Bill in September when he called, never having met me before and said simply, "Young man, why aren't you working on my campaign yet?"

I was and continue to be impressed by his aggressive, yet respectful leadership style. He knows how to get things done and he responds to constituents.

But he is just one member of a team, and it was heartening to hear that of the five teams of council members he has served with, he finds this one to be among the most functional. Chapel Hill voters have carefully chosen their elected officials in the past few elections, and the result has been an effective Town Council that the community can be proud of.

A tale of two towns' head hunters

2006-08-20T22:12:00.000-07:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on July 1st, 2006

I grew up in Ann Arbor, Mich., a community in many ways similar to Chapel Hill.I continue to be very involved in both places, although in Ann Arbor, my greater interest is in the governance of the school district, while here I am most interested in the town.

This dual residency often gives me an opportunity to compare how each place does things. About half of the time, I see things in Chapel Hill that I think should be replicated in Ann Arbor, and just as often I see things in Ann Arbor that I think should be replicated in Chapel Hill.

Never was that more true than in the past two months as Chapel Hill embarked upon its new manager selection process while Ann Arbor picked a new school superintendent.

The most important thing in picking a new chief executive has to be getting a large field of qualified candidates.

When governing bodies need to do this they frequently hire consultants. Chapel Hill hired two experienced human resource experts who are also very involved in the local community, Anita Badrock and Tim Dempsey.

This decision drew criticism from some town activists who thought that hiring a firm that specializes in these kinds of positions would have been a better choice. Ann Arbor, on the other hand, hired the Michigan Association of School Boards to conduct its search, a group that among other things specializes in conducting superintendent searches.

Based on the number of applications for each position, the hiring of Badrock and Dempsey was clearly the right choice. Chapel Hill received 120 applications, while Ann Arbor received only 26.

The reasons for this are pretty clear. Not only are Badrock and Dempsey talented professionals, but they also have a personal interest in ensuring that Chapel Hill has strong governance.

They made this their priority for three months, and the results speak for themselves.

With a much larger pool to choose from, Chapel Hill was able to hire a manager with years of experience as the manager in a sizable city. Although I'm confident the new superintendent in Ann Arbor is going to do a great job, he has never held the top position before, and the district where he was the assistant superintendent is smaller than Ann Arbor.

The choice to hire qualified local residents to oversee the manager search process was a good decision by the town council, and one other communities could learn from.

When it came to engaging citizens in the selection of a new leader, Chapel Hill could learn some lessons from Ann Arbor, though.

For instance, while trying to develop a profile for the new manager, Chapel Hill invited about 30 citizen activists to a Saturday morning meeting to give their feedback at Town Hall.

Ann Arbor, on the other hand, had several well-publicized meetings at a variety of different times that the entire community was invited to for the purpose of stating what it wanted in a superintendent. This was a better way of encouraging people to get involved.

Once finalists were chosen, Chapel Hill invited the community at-large to ask the candidates questions at Town Hall.

However, there was no formal channel for residents to give their feedback on the candidates.

In Ann Arbor, the school district solicited applications for citizens to serve on a committee that interviewed the superintendent candidates and then gave formal, written feedback to the bard of education on what it felt to be each of the finalists' strengths and weaknesses.

This gave community members a more formalized stake in the process and is something local governments should think about doing the next time they hire new chief executives.

That said, I think the process as a whole for selecting a new manager in Chapel Hill was very well done. Some have questioned the fast time line, but I think it's great that the new manager now has two months to learn the lay of the land before moving into the position. He will be much better prepared now to hit the ground running than if he had not been hired until later in the summer.

Even though it only took a few months, the subcommittee of the town council that chose the finalists thoroughly vetted the candidates, going through a multilayered interview process.

It took an extensive amount of thoughtful work to choose the three finalists and Kevin Foy, Bill Strom, Bill Thorpe and Ed Harrison should be thanked for their willingness to put in all that extra time on top of their already large duties as members of the council.

And most important, Roger Stancil will be an outstanding manager. Not only does he have a lot of experience, but he is also a courageous leader. He has shown a willingness to make the right move even if it isn't the most popular one, and that's a trait I greatly respect.

Thanks to the work of the consultants and the town council, Chapel Hill has a bright future even as it loses Cal Horton's steady leadership.

Time to get aboard TTA 'train'

2006-08-20T22:11:00.000-07:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on June 24th, 2006

For the most part I love living without a car in Chapel Hill. From my apartment near Foster's Market it's a 10-minute walk to Town Hall, a 15-minute walk to campus and about a 30-minute walk on the Bolin Creek Trail to University Mall. These are all distances short enough to travel on foot under any circumstances and it's good not to even have the motorized option to tempt me. Unfortunately, though, my life is not confined to Chapel Hill. My best friend lives in Raleigh, I love going to Durham Bulls games, and as a recent UNC grad I could end up working pretty much anywhere in the Triangle. TTA is great at getting me to the airport but beyond that it could do a much better job of serving Orange County.

Before talking about the changes that still need to be made though, credit should be given to TTA and the Orange County representatives on its board, Bill Strom and Alice Gordon, for some recent improvements. In the last year they have helped create two express routes of great benefit to residents of our county, one connecting Chapel Hill to Hillsborough and another connecting Chapel Hill to Raleigh.

The latter route has quickly become the most traveled in the TTA system. This shows that regional bus riders like the express route concept. This makes sense -- in my experience it cuts an hour off taking a standard TTA bus to Raleigh, which requires making a transfer at RTP.

The problem is that express service between Chapel Hill and Raleigh is pretty limited. Only three buses run each way during the morning and afternoon rush hours. The last bus for Raleigh leaves Chapel Hill at 8 a.m., pretty much leaving people who don't need to get to work until later in the day braving I-40 in their own cars. Similarly, in the afternoon the last bus leaving Chapel Hill to take Raleigh residents back home goes at 6:40, leaving folks who need to work late or want to dine or attend a lecture in town out of luck.

I think there's a pretty simple solution to this problem. Considering the high volume of ridership on express routes between Chapel Hill and Raleigh compared to normal routes, service between the two cities ought to be expanded to all day on the hour from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. This would encourage folks who just need to go to a midday meeting in Raleigh or who work outside the standard 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule to use public transportation.

TTA could also do a better job of serving people attending major events. I frequently took the 4:30 express bus to Raleigh to meet a friend to go to Carolina Hurricanes games, but after the game there was no choice but to make him drive me all the way back to Chapel Hill because buses have stopped running for the night by then.

Thousands of folks from Durham and Orange counties attended each Hurricanes game. Some sort of shuttle service between the western Triangle and the RBC Center, if marketed effectively, could provide a valuable service to Hurricanes fans while increasing TTA's ridership. I know a lot of students without cars who would have loved to go to hockey games but just had no way of getting there.

TTA also should think about starting a shuttle service between Chapel Hill and Durham. There aren't a lot of stops between the two cities on the current routes, but on average it takes just under an hour to get from campus to downtown Durham on TTA. However, if folks can drive their own cars the same distance in half the time, they have little incentive to use public transportation. Tons of people travel between Chapel Hill and Durham for work every day, and a user-friendly bus service could become a popular option for them.

As TTA attempts to garner federal support for its regional rail plan, it could use an outpouring of citizen support for the services it provides. Regional rail is a good idea, but as it stands, most of the advocacy behind it is coming from prominent government and civic leaders rather than normal people.

If I were Senator Burr or Senator Dole, I would be more inclined to give a helping hand if I saw a groundswell of support for the TTA from everyday citizens who benefit from its current activities and were confident their lives would be further enhanced by giving it the chance to implement regional rail. Creating more user-friendly services and expanding popular ones like the express routes could greatly increase current ridership and help build a loyal group of users whose support would be useful as TTA attempts to take its services to an entirely new level.

Cheer on UNC in College World Series

2006-08-20T22:10:00.000-07:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on June 17th, 2006

Their coach returned to his alma mater a few years ago, replacing someone who had a reputation for not treating his players terribly well. The coach has a long record of coaching very successful teams that underachieve in the postseason. The team is led by four underclassmen picked in the draft and likely to leave for greener pastures after this postseason, making it imperative that they win the national championship now because it might be a while before they have this good a team again. It sounds an awful lot like the 2004-2005 national championship Carolina basketball team, but the description also fits this year's UNC baseball team -- and if the Diamond Heels play well over the next week they too could finish number one.

It's easy to stop thinking about Carolina sports once the basketball season is over and the students are gone. But if you don't check out the baseball team in the College World Series you're missing out. An obvious reason is that it's probably the best team in the history of the program. But the reason I would count this as my favorite UNC sports team ever in any sport is the way they selflessly work together with a singular focus on winning.

Coach Mike Fox takes a lot of flak from fans for his ever-changing starting lineups.

The Tar Heels have had about as many permutations of the starters this year as they have had games played, and that's one of the reasons I like the team most. Every game there are good players who don't make it into the starting lineup. Folks constantly get moved around in the batting order. These are the kinds of things that prima donna athletes complain about all the time, but it seems like these players take it all in stride and do whatever they can to help the team win regardless of their role in a given game.

Take sophomore outfielder Matt Spencer. He started almost every game for the first couple of months of the season but lately has been coming off the bench, frequently to pinch run.

He did a great job taking second base on a wild pitch in the ninth inning of last Saturday's win over Alabama.

Spencer would be starting every day for just about any other team in the country, but he is doing a great job as a role player here.

This is also a team blessed with players who have shown an ability to persevere and grow.

Take freshman outfielder Mike Cavasinni, for example. At the start of the season he was a dreadful hitter, to the point that he finally lost his spot in the starting lineup. But he kept on working hard, got back into the lineup, and now has become a fearsome leadoff hitter.

Sophomore catcher Benji Johnson is another example of someone who has really grown as a player. As a freshman his at-bats were sometimes painful to watch, and when he hit a home run in the first game of this season I was shocked.

As the season's progressed he's become the team's biggest bopper, hitting some of the longest home runs I've ever seen.

The Tar Heels have three second basemen, Bryan Steed, Garrett Gore and Kyle Shelton, who play almost interchangeably. They all deserve to get more at bats, but they all play their best when they get in the game.

Sophomore outfielder Seth Williams, a big home run hitter as a freshman, has struggled with injuries this year but has adjusted his game to be a dangerous clutch hitter.

Chad Flack got most of the limelight after last Saturday's big win, and justifiably so. But the win would not have been possible if not for the contributions of four other Tar Heels. Third baseman Reid Fronk reached base in both innings, in the eighth inning on a well-timed hit by pitch. Fronk has taken one for the team more than 20 times this year, making him a leading run scorer.

Relievers Matt Danford and Jonathan Hovis each got the team out of dicey situations in the game relatively unscathed. Hovis, the only senior on the team, has played a quiet but integral role on the team for four years. Redshirt pitcher Luke Putkonen pitched a flawless eighth inning, setting the stage for Flack's heroics.

And of course there are the stars who you've probably heard about already. Pitchers Andrew Miller and Daniel Bard will be multimillionaires as soon as the season ends. Robert Woodard, who is not as highly acclaimed as his fellow starters, doesn't know how to do anything but win. Josh Horton was an All-American, Tim Federowicz a freshman All-American and Andrew Carignan a lights-out closer. Jay Cox's little brother is the cutest child in the world, providing a lot of entertainment for Boshamer Stadium patrons. Cox is OK himself, as the team's overall best hitter.

This is a special team, and the remaining opportunities to check them out are limited.

All of the College World Series games are on ESPN or ESPN2. They played Friday, and results are in the Sports section today. They will play again Sunday. Take some time out of your life to watch, hopefully, UNC's next national champion team.

Seeking answers on Carolina North

2006-08-20T22:08:00.000-07:00

As published in the Chapel Hill Herald on June 10th, 2006

There has been a lot of controversy about Carolina North and the town-gown dynamic.The UNC Board of Trustees recently passed a resolution telling its staff to have a plan for Carolina North ready by October 2007. The reason for the hurry at this point in time is unclear, considering how long it has delayed substantive planning. It has already been more than 12 years since the first committee to discuss the development of the Horace Williams property was convened, and considering the scope of questions that must be answered, 16 months does not seem like much.

But it is the BOT's prerogative to put together any timeline it wants for planning on its end, so hopefully its staff will put together a plan that is both logical and feasible. The big questions they need to answer through this process are why this research campus will be successful, why it needs to be at this location and why it will be a good thing both for the university and the surrounding communities.

For instance, UNC seems to be making an assumption in its Carolina North plans that a lot of business and industry will want to relocate there. However, the similar Centennial Campus at N.C. State has performed well below expectations.

Can UNC convincingly show us in 16 months that its project will be more successful than its peer in Raleigh? I sure hope they have tenants lined up before they seek permission to start building.

One thing UNC seems interested in placing at Carolina North is institutions related to health and medical research.

This could be a good idea, but the unfortunate reality is that the grant money from the National Institutes of Health that much of that research would rely on is presently getting cut rather than increased because of federal budget deficits and the president's misplaced priorities. Should UNC move so quickly while necessary funding sources are so unstable?

UNC should also show why Chapel Hill, rather than somewhere else in the system, is the best place to put this sort of satellite campus. There is little doubt that if these plans are successful it will provide at least some level of economic development for the area.

But the Triangle is booming while other parts of the state languish due to outsourcing and other economic woes. Would it not be better for the overall interests of the state to put something like Carolina North in the eastern part of the state or the Piedmont?

UNC leaders frequently talk about their responsibility to the rest of the state in the context of chiding local officials for asking too many questions about their plans, so I'm sure this is an issue they will consider seriously. I don't know the answer, but I expect UNC will provide it for us in the next 16 months. (And an adequate response would not simply be that they own the Horace Williams tract.)

Whatever sorts of plans UNC ends up proposing over the next 16 months, it needs to show some tangible proof that they will be successful. At a bare minimum, UNC should be able to show that there are research campuses similar to the one it is proposing that are located in communities that have similar characteristics to Chapel Hill.

I want to see that something like Carolina North has been a win-win proposition for both the university and the city elsewhere in the country before I can be convinced that it will be here.

The things I've discussed so far are just the big picture questions to establish why it's a good idea to build Carolina North in Chapel Hill. If UNC can effectively show that need, it then should come up with a site plan that maintains the current quality of life Chapel Hill residents enjoy -- particularly in terms of protecting the neighborhoods near the Horace Williams property and minimizing the environmental impact of the development.

Chapel Hill and Carrboro's leaders have argued in the Leadership Advisory Council meetings that there needs to be a transit plan for Carolina North.

They're right to do so -- and building a new Interstate 40 interchange is not the sort of creative planning this community deserves from UNC when it comes to this development.

Much controversy was caused recently when several members of the Board of Trustees made comments of a negative tone toward the Chapel Hill representatives on UNC's Carolina North committee. But considering the possible magnitude of this project and how many of its basic characteristics remain unclear, Bill Strom, Cam Hill, George Cianciolo and Julie McClintock should be commended for their approach.

As a young Chapel Hillian, I am particularly aware of the way this project could enhance or destroy the local quality of life.

Asking pointed questions is not obstructing UNC's growth plans -- it is ensuring that this will still be a great place to live in 40 years. What more could we ask of from our elected officials?

Young Black Leadership Needed in Chapel Hill

2006-08-20T21:52:00.000-07:00

As printed in the Chapel Hill Herald on May 23rd, 2006

At the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP's annual Freedom Fund banquet last Saturday, one of the folks winning an award had to be rushed to the emergency room. It was a beautiful ceremony, a testament to the great leadership folks in the NAACP have provided over the years. But this incident also reminded me that much of the black leadership in southern Orange County is aging out, and there aren't enough people waiting to assume the mantle of leadership.

I was disturbed by the small number of attendees between the ages of 20 and 40 at the dinner, but I was not surprised. The number of black voters in local municipal elections has been dwindling in recent years, down to fewer than 300 in last fall's Chapel Hill election even though it was imperative that Bill Thorpe win to ensure continued minority representation on the Town Council. The last two successful black candidates were both in their 60s, and so were a significant percentage of the African Americans voting for them.

The lack of civic engagement by minorities in Chapel Hill is something the whole town should be concerned with. The primary reason for this problem is that many young black people who grew up in this community can no longer afford to live in it due to the escalating cost of living.

In some cases these folks may still be working in Chapel Hill, but are among the many who must commute here every day due to the lack of affordable housing. During the time I've lived in Orange County virtually every candidate for elected office has talked a lot about the need for more of it, but I've seen little progress. Our elected leaders and UNC need to do more to reverse this trend of declining leadership among young black people by making it possible for more of them to live here.

The town of Chapel Hill could also be doing more to encourage civic engagement among young black people. It was nice that the Continuing Concerns committee was created out of the Airport Road renaming discussions to deal with ongoing issues of race relations and the place of African Americans within our community.

Unfortunately, this group has largely been allowed to languish. The Town Council should reinvigorate this committee and give it a clear charge of preparing a list of recommendations for how the town can get more black people involved in town governance.

The good news is that some progress is being made. For instance, last week the council agreed to budget Councilman Thorpe's proposal for a student internship program with the town.

This is going to provide a great opportunity for young people of all colors to play a role in town governance and will hopefully result in more people deciding to settle permanently in Chapel Hill and get involved. This initiative is progress, but there is much more to be made.

Chapel Hill's black community has strong leadership, provided mostly by veterans of the Civil Rights movement. It was nice to see two of those leaders, Braxton Foushee and Eugene Farrar, each of whom have contributed to our area in many ways, honored with awards at the dinner last weekend. Fred Battle presented one of the awards in his role as president of the local chapter, and he too has provided strong and steady leadership for many years.

But these folks aren't getting any younger and there needs to be a new generation of leadership to replace them. It's going to take a commitment from the whole community, white, black and everything in between.

If we can make a strong effort to create affordable housing and take other steps to encourage participation in local government by younger people of color, we will preserve our strong black community for decades to come. I hope this is something all Chapel Hillians value.