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Chatham cuts county positions

Posted on January 13, 2011 by Taylor Sisk

By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer

The Chatham County Board of Commissioners voted last week to eliminate four staff positions, discontinue the county’s funding of Chapel Hill Transit’s Pittsboro Express bus service and delay a consultant’s update of the county’s land-use plan.

According to figures released by County Manager Charlie Horne’s office, the budget cuts will save the county approximately $2 million over the next four years and some $275,000 this fiscal year.

The 3-2 vote fell upon party lines, with the newly elected Republican majority voting in favor of the cuts and the two Democratic incumbents casting the dissenting votes.

The commissioners voted to eliminate the positions of director of the Office of Human Relations, held by Esther Coleman, and director of the Department of Sustainable Communities, held by Cynthia Van Der Wiele, and two vacant positions: a health educator addressing obesity and a resource conservation manager.

At a tense and overfilled Jan. 3 commissioners’ meeting, Chatham residents reminded the three new commissioners – Chair Brian Bock, Walter Petty and Pamela Stewart – that they had run on platforms of fiscal conservatism, while others spoke against eliminating the positions held by Van Der Wiele and, most particularly, Coleman.

A petition has subsequently been circulated through the community urging the commissioners to reconsider their decision to eliminate the human relations position.

Among the director’s responsibilities were to assist in the investigation of discrimination claims and promote the employment of qualified individuals regardless of race, gender, religion, disability, age, sexual orientation or economic background.

Primary responsibilities of the director of the Department of Sustainable Communities were to develop and implement a comprehensive community sustainability plan and to coordinate transportation initiatives, green building and affordable housing.

Figures released by the county show that the human relations position was budgeted for $84,578 in salary and benefits and the sustainable communities for $122,757 in salary and benefits.

Bock said that “most of the commissioners feel that the current economic situation compels us to take a closer look at positions that are discretionary and not critical to providing key services.”

Horne said on Tuesday he anticipates that the county’s volunteer human relations commission will strive to fulfill the former director’s responsibilities as much as possible.

As for the responsibilities of the former sustainable communities director, he said, “We can absorb these duties in ways that will make the impacts minimal.”

Horne doesn’t expect any of the four eliminated positions to be reinstated soon.

“I see a recovery where we might be able to add more staff being four or five years off,” he said.

Pittsboro Mayor Randy Voller expressed his disappointment with the haste in which the new commissioners made the cuts. “They ran on a platform of being fiscally conservative, and they started implanting these things instantly, without prior discussion,” he said.

Voller has been a champion of the Pittsboro Express route, which connects Pittsboro and Chapel Hill and is subsidized by a federal grant.

“Transit investments are very important,” he said. “You’re planting something for the future.” Limited public-transportation options, he said, narrow employment opportunities. “That in itself is detrimental to our local population.”

Voller added that he hoped to work with the county commissioners to “find accommodation for transportation options,” exploring, for example, grant opportunities.

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