Ruby Sinreich's blog

Matt C has all the answers, everyone else should shut up

In this ten-minute rant, Chapel Hill Town Council Member Matt Czajkowski first lectures the entire room (which includes affordable housing experts and experienced elected officials) about basic economics, goes on to blame the town for home prices rising, and then just straight out yells at everyone for several minutes. Beware, this content is anxiety-triggering for me, possibly for others too.

Indy endorsements are out!

And I can't say I disagree with them much. (But I do have some quibbles. More about that when we post our annual Endorsements Thread soon.) Here's an overview of their picks (which you already know if you follow us on Twitter): 

  • Chapel Hill Town Council: Sally Greene, Ed Harrison, Maria Palmer, George Cianciolo
  • CHCCS School Board: James Barett, Michelle Brownstein, Andrew Davidson
  • Carrboro Board of Alderpeople: Randee Haven-O'Donnell, Jacquie Gist, Sammy Slade
  • Hillsborough Town Board: Kathleen Ferguson, Jennifer Weaver 

To learn more about all these folks see our spreadsheet of candidates at orangepolitics.org/elections-2013/candidates 

I love that the Indy now posts the full text of the candidate questionnares. Those things take a LOT of work to complete.  

Ten years!

Last year we asked readers to donate to help up upgrade the site from an ancient Drupal 5 installation to the more-current Drupal 6. Last fall and spring, you donated $800 to this cause. It took longer to get started than we had hoped, but our own Jason Baker has been working hard on the upgrade since this summer.

Tonight at OP's 10th birthday party you can see the fruits of our labor as Jason will be demonstrating a beta version of the new site, which is actually on Drupal 7! (I know this means very little to most of you, but it's really excellent news for those of us who administer the site.) We are planning to launch the new site shortly after the election.

Inching toward connectivity

Merritt Crossing, updated 2013

Yesterday I attended an informational meeting about the proposed Tanyard Branch greenway and bridge that the Town of Chapel Hill is planning to build from the end of McMasters Street (near Northside Elementary) to the other side of Bolin Creek, ending at Jay Street, which is a dirt road that connects to Village Drive. (Tanyard Branch is the name of the stream that comes in from Carrboro and feeds into Bolin Creek at Umstead Park.)

This is a project that I personally stand to benefit from greatly. My comment from a year ago on being districted in the Northside Elementary walkzone explains that this will change our daily walk to school from 1.2 miles up a steep hill to .5 miles through the woods. This small greenway will also eventually connect to Phase III of Chapel Hill Bolin Creek Greenway, which will bring the path from MLK to Umstead Park. UNC is also creating a "Campus-to-Campus Connector" from Carolina North which will run paralell to the railroad tracks and just feet from Village Drive. This Tanyard Branch connection will someday make it much easier for people to get to central Chapel Hill from downtown, which is great.

Election by appointment

Come back with me to the summer of 2009. Filing just ended for the Chapel Hill Town Council and Mayoral races when powerhouse Council Member Bill Strom suddenly announced he was resigning and moving to New York. Strom was called "Machiavellian" and much worse.

First it was just the typical Strom haters that accused him of attempting to manipulate the process by waiting until just after the filing period, so that his replacement could be chosen by his friends on the Town Council. Strom himself claimed the timing was purely accidental. However, in the following weeks information trickled out showing that Strom’s actions were every bit as intentional as they looked to the skeptics.

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