Ruby Sinreich's blog

It's another bittersweet end of summer. The students are back, and the first-years are wandering around as lost as ever. I love the heat, but I'm ready for it to start feeling like fall any day now.

Looks like this year's Daily Tarheel Tar Heel editor is a local!

In his new job as editor of the Daily Tar Heel, Joe Schwartz says he wants to keep the paper focused on not just UNC, but all of Orange County.

Schwartz graduated from Chapel Hill High School.

- WCHL 1360: New DTH editor familar [sic] with Chapel Hill, 8/28/06

Looks like Joe knows at least one thing blogs are good for: speaking in your own words instead of just being filtered by the media. ;-)

Dan Siler: Being from Chapel Hill gives you a unique perspective to share with your staff, how do you use it?

I talked about how I know the area. Great. I didn't ever leave Chapel Hill. If I weren't able to use that for the newspaper, or say having connections to South Building as an SBP, it might make me seem kind of scared of the outside world.

After the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership spent considerable time and money last spring developing their retro logo and slogan, their board has decided it will not pony up for a local artist to assess the condition of downtown's murals.

If someone's going to put money into assessing the condition of the murals painted on various walls around town, it likely won't be the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership.

The partnership's board declined Wednesday to earmark $800 for artist Michael Brown to spend about three days studying the state of the murals and writing up a report on their condition. The board had expressed some doubts this spring about paying for an assessment and deferred action, and partnership director Liz Parham brought the matter back to the board's agenda Wednesday.
- heraldsun.com: Downtown group declines to pay for assessing murals, 8/24/06

Just in case any of our neighbors in Chatham County had any shreds of a doubt about whether Bunkey Morgan is the head of a power-hungry cabal with no concern for ethics or democracy, not to mention smart growth...

Late Monday night following a public hearing, the Chatham Commissioners voted 3-2 to redraw election districts. The change means Patrick Barnes shares a district with newly elected commissioner George Lucier and will not be allowed to run for re-election when his term expires in 2008. He instead will have to wait until 2010 to file to run office again.
...
The county now is divided into five districts. Commissioners must live in the district they represent, but all voters elect all commissioners.

At a meeting last month, commission Chairman Bunkey Morgan proposed redistricting and district representation, saying he was prompted by county Republicans to suggest the change.

During Monday night's public hearing, supporters and opponents argued their cases before the commissioners.