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Just got an info item that will be on the Chapel Hill Town Council's agenda tonight. Apparently the "Innovations Center" is on next week's agenda (1/23/08), but of course the Council needs to know about the plans for Carolina North to understand the context for this first building. So UNC proposes to toss off a presentation about the Carolina North Master Plan at the same meeting and then go on with presenting the concept plan of the Innovations Center.
I would think the Town would need a moment to actually comprehend the plan before trying to understand something that is supposed to fit into it. But of course that would assume that UNC actually wants
elected officials, staff, or citizens of Chapel Hill (and Carrboro) to analyze, understand, or respond to anything they're doing.
It sounds like UNC's plan is just to do a quick presentation, and listen to public comment at this meeting - with one week's notice - and then just go along their merry way building the first phase Carolina North without any substantial input from the community.
The AP is reporting that the suit betwwen former soccer player Melissa Jennings and her former coach, Anson Dorrance, was settled for $385,000. The UNC Trustees approved the settlement last week. Reactions?
School starting times have long been a peeve of mine, even though I don't have kids. When parents work typical office hours, getting kids up and ready for classes that start before 8 am and end around 3 pm has got to be a frustrating ordeal. Of course not all parents work at white collar jobs, but 9-to-5 is probably more common than the agrarian schedule that our school day used to be planned around. Not to mention the impact of dawn classes on the students!
This is more of my perspective of how the current election by district setup will play out. Two at-large seats:Historically Chapel Hill and Carrboro residents have controlled 60% of the votes at a minimum, meaning at least one of the two at-large seats will be filled by a district 1 supported candidate. Most terms District 1 will control both seats and rarely if Hillsborough and Rural OC can agree on a candidate they'll have one at-large seat.Three District 1 seats:Obviously Carrboro and Chapel Hill supported seats.Two District 2 seats:I see both will be controlled by Hillsborough residence unless the rural areas from southeastern and northern parts of the county will agree on a candidate and that's not going to proactively happen before our next opportunity at having representation.
On January 8, 2008, Scientific American published this article:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=grass-makes-better-ethanol-than-corn
which describes the outcome of a study done on switchgrass culture by the Department of Energy. The results of the study were encouraging, demonstrating that switchgrass is capable of delivering as much as 540% of the energy required to grow, harvest and refine it into ethanol. This compares with about 25% for corn.
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