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Miscellany

Carolina North meetings next week

The university will host another round of community meetings about Carolina North on Tuesday, May 29.

The meetings will begin at 3:30 p.m. in Room 2603 of the School of Governmen.

Presentations will be repeated at 5:30 p.m. in the same location. Parking is available in the N.C. 54 visitor’s lot and the Rams Head deck.

University representatives will present two revised conceptual drawings with possible approaches to issues including open space, pedestrian and vehicular circulation, utilities, and land use on the UNC-owned property.

For more information visit carolinanorth.unc.edu.

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Miscellany

News briefs: 5/17/07

Pease joins OWASA board

Chapel Hill Planning Board member Gene Pease joined the OWASA Board of Directors last week.

Pease, who is president and CEO of Durham-based Capital Analytics, was appointed by the Chapel Hill Town Council. Pease is president of the Chapel Hill Library Foundation and has served as chair of the Chapel Hill Citizens Budget Committee and vice-chair of the Horace Williams Citizens Committee.

He has a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Southern California as well as a Bachelor of Fine Arts in architecture from the University of Cincinnati.

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Miscellany

Graduation Information

Chapel Hill High School graduation will be held June 9 at 2 p.m. at the Dean Smith Center on the UNC campus. Graduating seniors must arrive by 1 p.m. the day of graduation and must attend rehearsal on June 8 at 8:30 a.m. at the Smith Center.

East Chapel Hill High School graduation will be held June 9 at 9 a.m. at the Smith Center. Graduating seniors must arrive by 8:15 a.m. the day of graduation and must attend rehearsal on June 8 at 11:45 a.m. at the Smith Center.

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Miscellany

McDougle students donate animals to needy families

By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer

Two sheep, four goats, one cow and two llamas, recently purchased by McDougle Elementary School, will soon find homes with needy families around the world.

With more than $1,500 raised by McDougle Elementary students during the month of April, the animals will be donated to families through the Heifer International Foundation.

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Miscellany

School briefs: 5/17/07

Board of Education member receives award from NAACP

Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education member Elizabeth Carter received the NAACP Community Service Award at the Chapel Hill-Carrboro branch’s annual banquet on Saturday.

Carter was honored at the banquet at the Carrboro Century Center for her service as an advocate for children during her 14 years on the school board. A long-time area resident, Carter is one of the few school board members who was a student in Chapel Hill-Carrboro schools.

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Miscellany

For the Record

Editor’s note:
Following are remarks by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright from Sunday’s university commencement at Kenan Stadium, which was attended by some 28,000 people. The University Registrar has estimated 5,481 expected graduates: 3,039 bachelor’s, 1,314 master’s, 397 doctoral and 731 professional degrees and certificates. Among those receiving honorary degrees were Albright, two-time Nobel Prize winner H. Jack Geiger, Tony Award winner William Ivey Long, former U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Wilson Riley and Dean Smith, basketball coach and mentor.

From Albright’s speech:

“Today is a day of joy and for anticipating the future with optimism, yet in our high spirits we cannot help but be conscious of shadows. Closest to home is the knowledge that tragedy is inseparable from life. This past March, you lost an irreplaceable member of your class. We all feel the absence of Jason Ray. More broadly, around our country and around our world, we mourn the loss of innocent lives to hurricanes, tsunamis, disease and — as the horror at Virginia Tech reminds us — the demons that sometimes infect the human mind.”

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Miscellany

Carrboro Faces Budgetary Challenges

By Dan Coleman

One of the most important aspects of the job of the aldermen is the annual review of the proposed budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The budget document is 260 pages (find it on the message board page at www.townofcarrboro.org), providing line-item detail for every department.

As The Citizen reported on May 3, the proposed budget has a tax increase of 2.86 cents, $57 for a $200,000 home. It is important for citizens concerned about tax rates to understand the factors that contribute to the budget, the constraints affecting the board and the current limitations on expanded spending.

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Miscellany

Exile on Jones Street

By Kirk Ross

Number crunching
Word out of the State Ethics Commission offices this week that unlike Ivory Snow, 99 and 44/100ths won’t do.

“I’m accepting 100 percent, it’s just a matter of when that happens,” Kathleen Edwards, assistant director and compliance chief for the commission said this week when asked how many of the state’s roughly 4,300 officials she expects to comply with new disclosure rules.

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Miscellany

Letters to the Editor – May 17

Yield to pedestrians

My wife and I live in the historic mill district of Carrboro. One of the charms of Carrboro, and the reason it’s such a nice place to live, is because of its pedestrian-friendly downtown. Motorists in downtown understand this and give right-of-way to pedestrians as they cross the street. This courtesy if often not extended, however, to the crosswalk on N. Greensboro Street at Southern States. I know that this crosswalk is often used by residents in my neighborhood as they head downtown, yet cars rarely stop to allow people to cross the street. Indeed, sometimes they don’t even slow down. I think the town should install a yellow pedestrian traffic cone at this crosswalk, much like the ones on Weaver Street and Greensboro at the Century Center, to remind motorists that pedestrians have the right-of-way when crossing the street.

Douglas Buchacek
Carrboro

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Miscellany

What is a land-transfer tax and why does Orange County need it?

By Moses Carey, Jr.

A topic of much discussion in the current 2007 General Assembly session and here in Orange County has been a possible land-transfer tax for all 100 North Carolina counties. But what is a land-transfer tax?

A land-transfer tax is a tax that would be paid when a property owner sells a home, commercial property or vacant land to another party. Six counties in North Carolina — Camden, Chowan, Currituck, Dare, Pasquotank and Perquimans — already have a land-transfer tax and have experienced no negative effects from it.

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Miscellany

School budget crunch is serious

By Neil Pedersen

The 2007-08 operating budget is the fifteenth budget that I have prepared, and promises to be the most challenging of all. There are no surprises or expenditures that we did not anticipate. Our fund balance is healthy. The proposed increase in our budget is not out of line with budgets in the past. What is different this year is that the county commissioners have given direction to their new county manager, Laura Blackmon, to prepare a budget that will not require a tax increase to support the operating budgets of the county and two school systems. They are taking this position after increasing the county property taxes significantly the past two years and in response to citizens who attended public hearings last year asking for tax relief. They also understand that property taxes will need to be increased by approximately 3.5 cents next year just to service the growing debt incurred from capital projects for the county and schools. Furthermore, this scenario will likely play out again next year when debt service peaks; therefore, this financial crunch cannot be viewed as a one-time event that will go away.