UNC

First endorsements!

Well that was fast. According to the Daily Tarheel, Students for a Progressive Chapel Hill have released their town council endorsements. Challengers Jason Baker, Laurin Easthom, Will Raymond and incumbent Mark Kleinschmidt all got the nod. They are also supporting incumbent Mayor Kevin Foy (why bother?).

"We expect candidates to have a record of service to Chapel Hill, a record of progressive leadership ... and a record of reaching out to students," the organization said in a statement.

The meaning of "progressive" includes standing up for the underprivileged and supporting civil liberties, said Tom Jensen, chair of the group.

The decision was based on questionnaires and position papers submitted by the candidates. Only mayoral candidate Kevin Wolff did not respond, acknowledging that he had not lived in town long enough to meet the criteria.

Jensen said that about 30 members of the group were ready to volunteer in the campaigns.

DTH encourages Student Participation

I was very pleased this morning to read an editorial encouraging student participation and voting in municipal elections. But I was astonished at the misunderstanding of the keg registration issue. Did the editors actually read the proposal we sent to our legislative delegation? Did they listen to the discussion? Did they read the DTH or any newspaper coverage of the issue?

Welcome back

Classes at UNC start tomorrow, and the town is buzzing with renewed energy. Today students are discussing their summer reading, Blood Done Sign my Name.

Local blogger Fred Stutzman recently did a simple analysis of UNC students' self-identified political leanings, and found the campus is definitely liberal, but not as much as many conservatives claim.

Interesting, but the real question on my mind is: will any of these students be voting this year?

A Concept Plan for Carolina North

Guest Post by James Carnahan

A Concept Plan for Carolina North, the June 29 presentation by the Village project, will be re-broadcast Monday, August 1, 7 to 9pm on local cable channel 18 in Carrboro & Chapel Hill. This concept plan represents a year-long, unfunded effort by the local non-profit walkable community advocacy group to offer an alternative view of how UNC's Horace Williams property might be developed.

Not meant to be definitive, the presentation is primarily intended to answer the question, "what would Carolina North look like if citizen input were incorporated?" and to encourage the University to utilize a facilitated collaborative process to further develop its plans for the new campus. Key differences are a multi-modal transportation approach making possible greatly reduced parking and dependence on the automobile, 4 times the housing proposed in the Ayers/Saint/Gross plan, and a half-mile long reservoir for holding rainfall harvested from rooftops, that doubles as a outdoor recreation space.

James Carnahan is the Chair of The Village Project.

All Workers Deserve Decent Pay

Last Friday more than 250 UNC workers rallied to protest proposed cuts in this years pay raises. According to the Herald,

The rally, one of three coordinated by the State Employees Association of North Carolina, was held in response to recent legislative deliberations that would lower a proposed raise for state employees from $1,086 to $625...

"Everybody's upset," Tommy Griffin, chairman of UNC's Employee Forum, said Friday afternoon. "Everyone had pretty much come to terms with the $1,086."

Yesterday, the N&O reported that House Speaker Jim Black, Rep. Richard Morgan, and Senate Leader Marc Basnight "weeks after the 2004 session, and without disclosing their action" secretly restarted a program to provide an additional 2-3 percent in raises to legislative employees. This action was only discovered when the N&O reporter went over detailed individual pay records, a painstaking task.

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