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Miscellany

Budget proposal to be released next week

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

The annual town budget rolls out next week, and look for at least one disappointing number — a drop in sales tax revenue from the 1 percent local-option sales tax.

Carrboro Town Manager Steve Stewart said he’s putting the final touches on a new budget he plans to put before the Board of Aldermen for review next Tuesday.

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Miscellany

County starts work on Rogers Road task force

By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer

The Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday decided to appoint a task force that will develop and recommend improvements to the historic Rogers Road community.

The board in March voted to develop a solid waste transfer station at the site of the Eubanks Road landfill in the Rogers Road neighborhood. As part of the development plan, the board approved an effort to address concerns regarding the community and make enhancements to the neighborhood.

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Miscellany

Number of state’s uninsured rises

UNC News Services

The percentage of North Carolinians under the age of 65 who lacked health insurance for a year has risen from 15.3 percent in 2000 to 17.2 percent in 2005. The proportion of uninsured residents ranged from a low of 13.4 percent in Wake County to a high of 27.5 percent in Tyrrell County.

Lack of health insurance is a particularly acute problem in Eastern North Carolina; nine of the 10 counties with the highest proportion of uninsured lie east of Interstate 95.

“County Estimates of the Number of Uninsured in North Carolina: A 2005 Update,” was released today (April 23, 2007) by the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the North Carolina Institute of Medicine. The report draws its estimates from two years of Current Population Survey data and includes rates for children under age 18 and adults 18 to 64.

“North Carolina has experienced a large decline in the percent of residents receiving health insurance from their employers.

Although this trend is occurring across the nation, North Carolina’s decline has been large compared to other states’,” said Mark Holmes, a Sheps Center senior research fellow and vice president of the North Carolina Institute of Medicine Holmes co-authored the study with Tom Ricketts, professor of health policy and administration in UNC’s School of Public Health and deputy director of Sheps.

The counties with the lowest rate of residents lacking health insurance coverage include Wake County, with 13.4 percent, followed by Orange County with 15 percent uninsured. Counties with a high proportion of their non-elderly residents lacking health insurance included Tyrrell, with 27.5 percent; Hyde, with 26.1 percent; and Greene, with 24.1 percent.

The uninsured are 25 percent more likely to die a premature death, Holmes said.

For the first time, the report also includes estimates for all 170 North Carolina legislative districts to better equip members of the general assembly to understand the problem of the uninsured in their district.

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Miscellany

News briefs: 4/26/07

Tethering committee member resigns citing article

The animal welfare and health expert on the Orange County Tethering Committee resigned on Monday, citing a “series of death threats … from unknown persons.”

The tethering committee was created by the county board of commissioners to work with the Animal Services Advisory Board to determine if changes should be made to the tethering laws under the county’s animal ordinances.

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Miscellany

Subscriptions questions

We’re thinking through how best to handle subscriptions. The free in-town idea has worked pretty well, but we also have had to turn down a lot of people from outside Carrboro. We believe that home delivery is an important service for a community newspaper.

Running the numbers through the Sustain-O-Matic has us with a price point around .50 per copy for a year’s delivery. Charter subscribers would be grandfathered in for some reasonable period.

The main question right now is territory. I’m afraid that if we just open up  greater Carrboro and Chapel Hill, we’ll be sending a motorized vehicle hither and yon with not a lot in between. So, we’re trying to figure out what neighborhoods to offer delivery in and are seeking suggestions and feedback on delivery in general.

So far, in addition to some of the southern neighborhoods — Heritage Hills, Yorktown, SoVille, Dogwood Acres — we’ve heard interest from Elkins Hills/Barclay Road.

Ideas and suggestions welcome here or by email to

delivery at carrborocitizen dot com

Thanks,

Kirk Ross, editor

Categories
Miscellany

Farm tour this weekend


Stanley Hughes, of Hurdle Mills, still farms the land his grandfather bought in 1912. His Pine Knot Farm, near the Orange and Person county line, is one of 30 operations on this year’s Piedmont Farm Tour. Photo by Kirk Ross.

Spring annual marks Earth Day celebration

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

Stanley Hughes isn’t the kind of fellow you meet every day in downtown Carrboro — just Saturday. That’s when Hughes is in his spot at the Carrboro Farmers’ Market, moving dozens of head of broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower and stacks of collards and kale.

Most of the time you’ll find Hughes hard at work on one of the many fertile plots of land he farms around Hurdle Mills. Some of the land he owns was passed down through his family, who moved to Hurdle Mills in 1912. Some of the land he leases from cousins or neighbors.

Categories
Miscellany

Way down yonder in the pawpaw patch


Paw-paw blossoms have had a rough time this year. Photo by Ken Moore.

By Ken Moore

Wow, we now know that because of that recent record-breaking late cold snap, peaches, strawberries and blueberries are going to be really pricey this harvest season. Wait till you see the prices on pawpaws! Well, you probably won’t see any pawpaws (Asimina triloba). You may even be wondering: “What’s a pawpaw?”

Categories
Miscellany

Wind wallops area

The corner of Poplar Avenue and Elm Street in Carrboro saw some of the worst of Monday’s wind storm. Photo by Kirk Ross

Power outages, traffic jams and plenty of debris as gusts topped 50 m.p.h.

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

Monday was clear, but anything but calm as gusts of more than 50 miles per hour knocked down dozens of trees and knocked out power to nearly 10,000 residents of Orange County.

Unofficial wind speed analysis from the National Weather Service in Raleigh showed that a 53 m.p.h. gust was recorded at an Orange County monitoring station in Duke Forest at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday and a 46 m.p.h. recorded at Horace Williams Airport nine minutes later. The winds hit after soaking rains over the weekend loosened soils around trees.

By Wedneday morning Duke Energy reported that more than 1,000 Orange County residents were still without power, most of them in Hillsborough and Chapel Hill. The company estimated all of its Orange County customers would be back on line by Thursday at 5 p.m.

Categories
Miscellany

County to seek smaller increase

By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer

As the county gears up for budget season, officials say they hope to limit the tax-rate increase this year.

State law requires the county manager to submit a budget to the Board of County Commissioners by May 15 and the board to approve a budget by June 30. The board will work through budget issues at this year’s first regular budget work session on Thursday.

At a retreat in January, the board discussed limiting the tax-rate increase to equal the amount of debt-service payment increases.

Categories
Miscellany

Carrboro resident’s case to be heard


Sima Fallahi and her daughter Leila at home in Carrboro. Photo by Jackie Helvey Courtesy of Carrboro.com

By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer

Carrboro resident Sima Fallahi and her daughter, Leila, were due good news. They got some this past Monday when Fallahi was informed by her attorneys that an immigration judge had granted a motion to reopen her deportation case. A preliminary hearing will take place in Atlanta on June 7, at which time the judge will provide a deadline for Fallahi’s attorneys to present documentation in support of her political asylum case and will set a date for a full hearing.

Categories
Miscellany

Price says showdown looming over war funding

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

Fourth District U.S. Rep. David Price said he thinks the country is headed for a constitutional crisis as Congress and President Bush square off over funding for the Iraq war.

Price, a Chapel Hill Democrat, said he expects the president to veto a narrowly passed emergency-funding bill that includes a timeline for ending U.S. military involvement in the four-year-old conflict.