The UNC Board of Governors will take up a proposal next week to ask the legislature to approve an alternative to a tuition plan adopted as part of the state’s 2010-11 budget. The General Assembly capped tuition increases at the lesser of $200 or 8 percent for each campus. The board meets next Thursday and…
Year: 2009
Letter from the editor
Two thousand ten, thankfully, is just on the horizon. It’s a year that for me will mark a quarter-century since I traveled east across the mountains with nary a nickel to my name (it was $137 as I recall) to make a new life in this place I now with great fondness call home. If…
Local retailers offer mixed report
By Beth Mechum, Staff Writer Local merchants worry about how lingering concerns over the economy, including continued high unemployment, will play out in this holiday shopping season. After a down year last year, the merchants were upbeat about a rebound. So far, a surge of shoppers hasn’t materialized and results are likely to be mixed….
Advanced ‘first-graders’
By Valarie Schwartz, columnist Last week brought a visit with five women who have spent long lives knowing each other. Their relationship started in 1929 as they entered first grade at Chapel Hill Elementary School (where University Square is today), where they continued their schooling until graduation in 1940 (there were only 11 grades at…
Letter: Thanks for local coverage
Thank you for your coverage of the local economy efforts under way in Carrboro (“Making Local Work for You,†12/17/09). Margot Lester’s vision of “concentric circles emanating from the Paris of the Piedmont†brought to mind author Michael Shuman’s “purchasing ladder.†(Shuman has served as an economic development consultant to the town and his book,…
Local light
By Robert Dickson I’m not sure when I became addicted to light. Maybe it was during the three years in the ’60s I spent imprisoned in an all-boys school in Massachusetts. Or maybe it was that year in the ‘70s that Vicky and I spent in Chicago. The temperature on the sign near the Sweetheart…
A Southern tree for all seasons
By Ken Moore, columnist “A beautiful and popular shade tree throughout the [Cape Fear] Valley and the south. It has become a sort of cognomen for the culture, the beauty and the old-timeyness of the region.†This observation from Paul Green’s Plant Book makes me reflect on Christmastime visits to my aunt’s farm near Norlina…
Bell appointed to Chapel Hill council
BY KIRK ROSS, Staff Writer CHAPEL HILL — Northside resident Donna Bell was appointed to the Chapel Hill Town Council Monday night, ending months of speculation and debate over how best to fill a vacancy created by Bill Strom’s abrupt resignation in August. Bell, a member of the town’s planning board, was chosen on a…
Advocates, legislators urge DHHS to slow down
BY TAYLOR SISK, Staff Writer “It’s just very scary right now,†said Sen. Ellie Kinnaird, Orange County’s representative in the state Senate, of the latest developments in the state’s mental health care morass. “We’re all disturbed over what we think is happening. We don’t think this is the answer to much of anything.â€
Crafting new green traditions
BY BETH MECHUM, Staff Writer If there’s ever a time for tradition, a bat mitzvah is it. There are just certain things, whether you are reform or conservative, kosher or non-kosher, a regular synagogue attendee or a High Holidays-appearance type of Jew, that all kids turning 13 must do in order to become bar or…
Arts cooperative opening on Franklin Street
BY RICH FOWLER, Staff Writer CHAPEL HILL — Town, university, and business leaders gathered on Monday afternoon to welcome FRANK to Chapel Hill. This new gallery for the Franklin Street Arts Collective is set to officially open in the old Rite-Aid building on the 100 block of East Franklin Street in late January or early…
Making local work for you
BY MARGOT C. LESTER There’s been a lot of hullabaloo about buying local this holiday season. And I say, right on! But I’m not an ideologue who’s trying to guilt you into changing your shopping patterns. My desire to support locally owned producers, purveyors and providers is rooted in my roots. I grew up in…
Slow Down
This is that time of year when school suddenly ends, the university goes into sleep mode and most places of employment, save those in retail and food, start moving in slow motion, as vacations, errands and the occasional bout with the flu reduce the number of hands on deck.
Make your voice heard on transit
BY JAMES CARNAHAN While world leaders in Copenhagen are striving for a global response to climate change and the emissions that trigger it, residents of Carrboro and Chapel Hill have an opportunity to manage our own future emissions. The draft Long Range Transit Plan (LRTP) is currently available for public comment, and we would be…
Keep the reform train rolling
BY CHRIS FITZSIMON Government reform is in the air and in the headlines in Raleigh. Gov. Beverly Perdue’s new executive orders to toughen ethics rules for her appointees earned her headlines as a reformer, a label not entirely undeserved given her emphasis on a more open administration than her predecessor, Mike Easley.