Mayoral Debate

I'll have to be late because of a Planning Board meeting, but I hope to be able to attend.  From a letter to the editor in today's Daily Tar Heel:

TO THE EDITOR:
In 2008, UNC was one of the most politically active college campuses
in the country as students turned out to vote in state and national
elections.
This year, we have local elections, including the election of Chapel
Hill’s next mayor, and these elections are no less important.
Local elections are the ones that decide how Franklin Street is
developed, how bus service works, where landfills are placed and even
how our Halloween celebrations are handled. These are issues that
impact our daily lives as students at UNC and residents of Chapel Hill.
Tonight, the College Republicans and Young Democrats will host a
mayoral debate at 7 p.m. in Murphey 116 featuring candidates Augustus
Cho, Matt Czajkowski, Mark Kleinschmidt and Kevin Wolff.
Candidates will answer questions on a range of topics, and there
will also be an opportunity for audience members to ask their own
questions.
All students who live in Chapel Hill — including those in residence
halls — are eligible to vote if they have resided in Chapel Hill for 30
days. Early voting begins October 15, and Election Day is November 3.
Every resident of Chapel Hill has a stake in these elections. We
encourage students to come out tonight to learn more about the
candidates running for mayor and the issues facing the town of Chapel
Hill.
Justin RosenthalCo-PresidentYoung Democrats
John EickChairmanCollege Republicans

How is this a "debate?"

I like Augustus Cho's suggestion to close off Franklin Street from Henderson to Columbia St. to vehicular traffic.http://dailytarheel.com/content/mayoral-candidates-target-students

There aren't any cross streets between Henderson and Columbia so traffic could circle around to Rosemary. But I agree--getting DOT to even consider something so 'radical' would take decades, even if it would make that section of Franklin Street infinitely safer for pedestrians.

Just returned from NYC where they have closed Broadway from 47th to 34th (I think those are the right numbers) and put table and chairs out.  They created ped and bike paths and painted them green.People said it couldn't, wouldn't and shouldn't be done.  Don't know how long they plan to keep it, but when you are on foot, it's a great decision!

In '92 or '93 Wallace Kuralt presented to a planning school student group his already years-old idea for Franklin St from Henderson to Columbia: Make it one lane each way, have diagonal parking, and increase the width of the the sidewalk. If I recall correctly he said the idea was first proposed in the 80's sometime but did not get traction. He also said there was a suggestion for a boutique condo/hotel at the current location of the Wallace parking deck that did not win favor either. I always thought that was a good infill idea.

I can't believe nobody on here went to this debate.  People here always seem to go to everything.  I went to it.  Here are some comments, with more to come so that one post isn't overly long.--I don't lke to criticize the people that ran the debate since running it is a good thing, but they had some system where they had a mysterious hand signal system to tell the speakers how much time they had left.  And also, the debate was in a large classroom with all the candidates facing forwards (12 o'clock) while the moderators were at 3 o'clock, or perhaps 2:45.  So in order to tell when their time was running out, a candidate would have had to make a nearly 90 degree turn to the right and then hope it happened to be time for a hand signal and then interpret the hand signal.  The moderators instead should have just had someone sitting right in front of the speakers with cards that said 60, 30, or whatever, to hold up and signify how many seconds they had left. --There were probably over 100 people there.  It was a fairly big classroom and it was mostly full. --From what I knew up until the debate, which wasn't too much other than that Matt Cz tended to run counter to the establishment in control of things in CH, I was leaning towards voting for Matt Cz and after seeing the debate I'm leaning more so towards that. --Augustus Cho seems like a very nice man (he and Matt Cz patted each other on the back about 20 times), but the chances of a Republican that is openly conventially religous winning the mayoral election of CH is approximately nil. --There was no discussion at all about taxes,  which probably was a result of the discussion being aimed at students. --I was literally...literally...biting my tongue hard, very hard, in order to inflict pain upon myself a couple times to prevent myself from laughing while Kevin Wolff was speaking.  It wasn't at all his policies per se that were causing it (although his statement of "If I don't eliminate homelessness in CH in two years, I'll quit" was over the top) but rather his extremely serious style of speaking and also his dramatic pauses.  That may sound silly but if anyone else was there I think there's a good chance they'll agree with me.--If Matt Cz put on about 70 pounds and wore a red sweater and had all gray hair instead of partially gray hair and if he talked like a raving lunatic instead of a normal human being, he'd be like former college basketball coach and permanent raving lunatic Bobby Knight.  He has a facial resemblance to Bobby Knight.  Or at leas the does when he has a normal face instead of a smiling face.  Today I saw a smiling picture of him in the DTH and he didn't resemble Bobby Knight.  --Most of the people in attendance last night are going to vote for Mark K.  He's younger than the other candidates, he looks even younger than he is, and he is good looking.  And he's more idealistic than the other candidates too.  With regard to college students, that adds up to more votes.