Neighbors Burlington, Graham and Mebane have hired a law firm to fight the "Jordan Lake Rules" that the NC Division of Water Quality presented to the Environmental Management Commission. At issue is the unacceptable levels of nitrogen and phosphorous put into the Haw River, and thus Lake Jordan from upstream waste water and storm water runoff. Not very neighborly of them to want to keep dumping excess nutrients downstream, but as with all things the fight is really over the money that it would cost to retrofit existing infrastructure.

http://tinyurl.com/4hse63

http://tinyurl.com/4eyabw

With the fate of the transfer tax not even decided, CH town manager Roger Stancil is already calling for an 11% tax rate hike for Chapel Hill. He warns that property tax rate increases of 3 to 10 cents (per $100 valuation) will not be uncommon in local jurisdictions. (And my guess is that this is a trend that will continue for the forseeable future. )

http://tinyurl.com/45cqlc

Here are some hastily scribbled notes from last night's forum to meet the new cast of county commissioner candidates hosted by the Dem Women of OC.

From the DWOC handouts :

OC is going to a 7 member CC Plan; D1 = 3 members, D2 = 2 members + 2 "At Large" members. District 1 is the 71,389 people in the Chapel Hill-Carrboro School District. District 2 is the 44,142 of us that make up the rest of the rest of the county. In 2008 4 commissioners will be elected. D1 gets 2 seats, D2 gets one seat and one "At-Large" seat. 3 Commishes are not up for re-election until 2010: Alice Gordon, Barry Jacobs and Mike Nelson.

From notes:

Valerie Foushee D1 - (D-CH) uncontested "safe seat" - spoke on community mental health needs and diversity in housing, said state offered current county commissioners only 2 choices in raising taxes: land transfer tax or sales tax, which she sees as more regressive