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2005 Forum on the air Thursday

WCHL will hold its third annual Forum tomorrow, putting folks from around the community on the radio for a marathon of local issue discussion. Last year's forum was pretty interesting, especially the hand-to-hand combat between UNC administrators and local elected officials.

While I have to repeat my now-annual complaint about not publishing the forum schedule on the website in advance, I will give WCHL kudos for putting the entire 2004 forum audio archive online after the broadcast.

Here is this year's schedule as it was relayed to me in the mail:

8:00 Town-Gown Relations10:00 Suburban Growth11:00 Civil Rights & Equality noon Carrboro 1:00 Downtown Chapel Hill 2:00 Violence & Crime 3:00 Affordable Housing 4:00 Education 5:00 Young Adults

Dreams on display

Chapel Hill's Community Art Project this year invited us to to share our dreams. The result is a very broad range of objects, from children's drawings to mature poems, on display all over town. You can view the community's dreams in this online gallery (hosted by Andrew Ross), or on Thursday April 29 when the "dream tour" will be held in all venues hosting parts of the exhibit. DREAM runs until May 27.

Council treads carefully on keg law

Chapel Hill Herald, Saturday April 16, 2005

The Town Council adopted the prudent course in its response to the keg registration bill. The feeling was that, with or without Chapel Hill's encouragement, this bill was gaining traction elsewhere in the state. Thus, the town and its legislative delegation can best safeguard the privacy of consumers by adding strong language to that effect to Joe Hackney's and Verla Insko's House Bill 855.

A unanimous council was concerned about the need for keg purchasers to obtain a permit from the ABC board, the provision for criminal background checks, potential unintended consequences of requiring identification of where the keg would be consumed and the unnecessary intrusion into individual privacy from maintaining keg permits as public records.

Still, it was an odd process for Chapel Hill. Support for keg registration was proposed for a council legislative request by Jim Ward back in February. For most proposals, the town gets a report back from staff and receives citizen comment before taking action. Ward's timing pre-empted such input.

Open letter to UNC students

The Daily Tarheel ran a pretty good article on Wednesday about student involvement (or lack thereof) in town issues. In 1991, I got appointed to the Chapel Hill Transportation Board and I helped get a fellow undergrad, Mark Chilton, get elected to the Town Council. Ever since, I have been advocating for a greater student voice in local politics. There can be no doubt that students are impacted by town policies (transit, sidewalks, housing, downtown businesses, University development, just to start.).

But many people forget how very much students have to offer the rest of the town. Students created what would later become the municipal bus system in in the 1970's. Students have brought many important social causes to the community's attention, from apartheid and sweatshops far way, to housekeepers and cafeteria workers and the civil rights movement here at home.

Live from Chapel Hill... it's Wednesday afternoon!

The Al Franken Show on Air America will be broadcast live from Chapel Hill from noon to 3pm today! You can go and see it for free in the Auditorium of the UNC Student Union, or listen in on WCHL 1360 AM or online.

I have it on good authority that some of our local elected officals will be making appearances on the show. Check it out!

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