Happy 2023! We have a lot to look forward to this year, including:

This year is also an election year, so we expect a lot of discussion about all of the above issues and more.

Your local blogbloggers also have some ambitions of our own. For 2023, we want to continue to report on what’s happening at town council meetings, advisory board meetings, and other civic gatherings around town.

Here are a few more things we resolve to do in the coming year:

Grow the BlogBlog universe

Since we started TBB in March, we’ve published more than 200 pieces, drawing more than 100,000 views on our humble old-school RSS-reader-enabled blog. We’ve sparked more than our fair share of long comment threads on NextDoor, Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit, and have helped educate and inform people on critical issues in our community. We’ve also had a lot of fun blogblogging.

In 2023, we want to reach and delight more people. There are almost 100,000 people in southern Orange County, and our region boasts more than two million people. We want TBB to be a resource for everyone, whether they’ve been here fifty years or five months. 

Understand how we got here

The more we dive into the history of Chapel HIll and Carrboro the more we realize that many of the challenges we currently face are the direct result of decisions made decades ago. Changing many of these decisions, from rescinding the ban on duplexes and triplexes in our neighborhoods to extending the Bolin Creek Greenway into Carrboro, requires understanding why they were made in the first place.

We’ll soon launch an ongoing series on the history of anti-development groups in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, who have helped make our communities exclusive, car-dependent, and less fun over the past 40 years. (Spoiler: Some of these people are still alive. And still active in local politics.)

One more resolution: To stay out of (most) trouble with the law, and to get interviews with at least 10 former elected officials in Orange County.

Learn how to address our biggest challenges

Local governments address big challenges, including housing, transportation, and economic development, but the solutions aren’t obvious. While there’s a lot of politics involved, we have the fortune of living in a place where most people are open to changing their mind if it’s clear that there’s a better way to do something.

We want TBB to be a place where you can learn more about how we get to a place where everyone can make choices about their housing, where you don’t need to own a car to have a good life, and where you can find joy and unexpected delights just walking down the street.

In the last municipal election cycle, we helped increase turnout by over 20 percent. We're all volunteers who care deeply about Chapel Hill and Carrboro, and we're working to make Chapel Hill and Carrboro more vibrant, accessible, fun, and sustainable.  Please consider a small donation to help us keep our digital lights on, host events, and hire students to do data deep-dives.

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