By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer
CARRBORO — The Chapel Hill Town Council continued a discussion Monday night on how to proceed with a request from the town planning board on how to develop guidelines for shelters.
But the talk and the direction of the council were shaped by news that last week the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service and UNC had begun submitting the formal paperwork for a long-anticipated permit request to move the IFC Community House. The request for a special use permit (SUP) – filed in conjunction with UNC because the university owns the land proposed for the project – starts the town’s formal review process to move the Community House to a location near the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Homestead Road.
At Monday’s meeting at Town Hall, several residents from neighborhoods near the proposed site continued to press their case that too many social service operations are being packed into the area.
They encouraged the council to direct the planning board to set up new rules for shelters that would apply to the IFC’s facility.
They also questioned the way in which the site was chosen, saying that a back-door deal between the university and the town cut the public out of the process.
“An SUP is not a substitute for a public site search,†said Mark Peters. He asked the council to launch a public site search for a new location for the Community House.
John Walker, who lives close to the project, said he is concerned that new rules for shelters would be made to fit the IFC proposal.
“The town is wiggling and jiggling to make this plan work,†he said.
Several council members took exception to that characterization. Council member Donna Bell said the new facility is “not the town’s shelter.†The IFC picked its site like any other developer, she said.
Council member Jim Ward said he was confident the SUP process would provide adequate review of the plans and answer many of the questions being raised by residents.
Council members Matt Czajkowski and Laurin Easthom did not share that confidence, expressing dismay that the council was not more aggressively pursuing shelter standards ahead of the review of the IFC request.
Czajkowski said the town appears to be willing to give up planning and “let the SUP process roll.â€
Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt said he had confidence in the SUP process and groundwork to be conducted over the summer to create guidelines and look at how other towns approached rules for shelters to give the council good ideas for reviewing shelter plans.
“I think if we do that, we’re not ‘just letting the SUP process roll,’†Kleinschmidt said.
In other action, the council approved an inclusionary housing ordinance that would require nearly all new developments to include a stock of affordable housing.
The ordinance has been a long-term goal of the town. Council members and affordable-housing advocates said the next steps for the town would be the creation of an advisory board to help administer and review the new program.
The board also gave final approval to the Church of the Advocates plans for a campus off Merin Road.