Chapel Hill 2020 is Worth Doing Right

This weekend, a group of people who have been involved since the very beginning of the Chapel Hill 2020 process (including the editors of OP) drafted a letter to town leaders asking them to take more time. You can see it at http://bit.ly/ch2020-letter. Currently the entire timeline from kick-off to plan approval is less than 8 months. Last week when UNC planning Professor David Godschalk gave a talk about comprehensive planning, he referenced the plan done in Fort Collins, CO which took 18 months to complete. That is the fastest of any of the other examples I've heard. The City of Austin is currently reviewing a draft plan after spending almost a year and a half on their visioning process alone.

We started on Monday to send the letter out to other people we know have been a part of Chapel Hill 2020. Yesterday, WCHL did a story about our request without managing to talk to ANY of the people who helped draft the letter. So I figured it was time to explain our viewpoint. We believe that completing a comprehensive plan in 8 months (finishing in May 2012) is unrealistic. The Town has cited the 2013 budgeting process as the driver of this timing, but the budget will already be at the final stages by May and difficult to change. We also have concerns about specific elements of the Chapel Hill 2020 process itself, and the lack of age, racial, and economic diversity of participants. Giving ourselves more time is an essential first step toward addressing these other issues.

It's hard to figure out how to get decisions changed in the 2020 process, but it seems important to do so as soon as possible since it's moving so fast. We plan to deliver the letter and list of signatories to the 2020 co-chairs, the town manager, and the town council before the Council retreat at the beginning of February. I learned yesterday that the 2020 co-chairs will be discussing the timeline at their meeting next Thursday Tuesday, so it's a very appropriate time to let them know how we feel about this and also to press for some discussion of how to improve the process. Tomorrow's unconference will also be a great time to discuss this further. 

If you have participated in Chapel Hill 2020, whether online, at town meetings or at other community meetings and you agree, please consider reading and signing the letter at http://bit.ly/ch2020-letter.

We, the undersigned participants in Chapel Hill 2020, are excited about the potential of this process to envision and enable a healthy future for our community. We believe that a high level of public participation will make a better plan, and we have invested our personal time and ideas in meetings and reaching out to our friends and neighbors about the plan.

We wish to express our concerns about the speed of this process. Other communities have commonly taken 18 months to multiple years to complete plans that are less ambitious than ours. We understand that there is a need to get valuable input for the priority-based budgeting process, but this cannot supersede the need for the plan to be thoughtful, inclusive, and complete. 

We ask you to take action as soon as possible to extend the official timeline to end no sooner than February 2013, to commit to dedicating an upcoming Chapel Hill 2020 meeting to a discussion of process and outcomes, and to follow this meeting with changes as may be needed to address some of the big rocks in our way.

We thank you for your time and service to the community, and appreciate your listening to our concerns.