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Town Council agrees to try working with UNC on neighborhood committees

Posted on March 29, 2007March 30, 2007 by Staff

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

CHAPEL HILL—The Chapel Hill Town Council agreed to participate in an effort by the university to set up two pilot neighborhood committees, a move similar to a system looked at during a recent town-gown trip to Madison, Wis.

In response to a request from Chancellor James Moeser, the council agreed at its meeting Monday night to ask the town’s planning board for help in finding volunteers to participate in committees reviewing two university projects.

Moeser suggested a pilot program focused on the two projects in a letter sent to the council on Feb. 28.

The chancellor wants to set up a neighborhood committee to review the Law School expansion on Ridge Road and another committee to include residents from the Elkin Hills neighborhood to review plans for the school’s Innovation Center, which is planned for the south side of Estes Drive Extension near the Horace Williams Airport.

The idea was not met with immediate enthusiasm at the meeting. But Mayor Kevin Foy said he thought it was worth trying the neighborhood committee system, which is used in Madison to get neighbors of a potential project involved early on in the process. Foy said he thought the council should have “some kind of conduit” to the committees.

Council member Bill Strom said he did not think the council, which would likely review the projects at some point, should have an official representative on the committee. Buying in to the committee idea, he said, might imply that the council endorses the project.

Council member Cam Hill agreed, saying he did not think the council’s involvement in the neighborhood committees would be a good idea. He also objected to Moeser’s comment last year during the Madison trip, in which the chancellor said he liked the committees because they might prevent “freelance dissenters” from stopping or slowing a project.

“Freelance dissent is what Chapel Hill is all about,” Hill said. “Why would we want to blunt that?

The council voted 6 to 2 in favor of asking the planning board to consider sending a representative to the neighborhood committee meetings for the two projects. The council would receive reports on the meetings through its regular updates from the planning board.

In other action Monday night, the council:

  • Reviewed plans for a proposed development moratorium for properties on the north side of Chapel Hill. The council set May 7 as the date for a public hearing and asked town manager Roger Stancil to prepare options including a moratorium or, short of that, down zoning parcels to give the council more time to draft new development strategies for the area (see Moratorium story, page 1);
  • Agreed to dissolve the town’s Million Solar Roofs committee and reconstitute it as one of the town’s permanent citizen advisory boards. The new group will be called the Town of Chapel Hill Sustainability Committee;
  • Agreed to make parking free throughout May at the Wallace Parking Deck on Rosemary Street.

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