Who’s in charge of Carrboro anyway? No, it’s not a silly question. It’s brought to mind by the recent soap opera of Carrboro suing a farm owner for building a small barn apartment and forcing a major subdivision as a cure. Kudos go to a planning board member (see Ms. Cook’s letter, April 9) for “re-railing†a resolution of the dispute (and preventing future such disputes) simply by changing the wording of a zoning district (a “text amendmentâ€). The question remains, why did Carrboro make such an “accessory apartment molehill†into a mountain of litigation?
Why did the board of aldermen (BOA) refuse to consider amending its ordinances when town staff (along with the farm owner) prepared a first text amendment in 2008 to legitimize the apartment? Text amendments have been used routinely by the BOA to let a daycare center into a stream buffer and to allow illegally operating food service trucks to operate legally. Why not here?
Why did Carrboro urge the use of the local Dispute Settlement Center to settle the case of the woman who charged Alderman Coleman with attacking her in 2007, but when it considered barn apartment litigation, no alderman uttered a word about the Center?
Who benefits from town litigation? There’s the rub. Unlike Chapel Hill, Carrboro doesn’t have a staff attorney with fixed compensation. It hires a Chapel Hill boutique land-use law firm, the same one for over 20 years. (Carrboro doesn’t line-item account in its budget for staff time spent assisting litigation.)
How many millions of tax dollars has that firm received over time? Carrboro doesn’t have a single, enumerated budget line item identifying all legal costs. Remember, the firm consulted serially on the staff text amendment, on rejecting the text amendment, on starting litigation benefitting the firm, on negotiating a conditional use permit litigation settlement and, finally, on advising during the CUP process. Oh, they’ll advise also on a second text amendment too!
How much does Carrboro have to spend on legal matters to justify hiring a staff attorney? Apparently, we’ll never know.
Finally, why does town governance (board, town manager, town clerk and governance support) cost $479,675 annually (or $24.77 per person) in Carrboro, but only $361,480 (or $6.57 per person) in Chapel Hill? Why did each alderman and the mayor approve these “boutique government†governance costs? Who benefits from them?
Who’s in charge of Carrboro anyway? No, it’s really not a silly question.
Brian Voyce
Carrboro