Hi all!
Well, there are only a few hours left in 2025 and while we look back at some of the things we wrote about, we also we begin to look forward to 2026.
Things coming up before we blink:
Local and primary elections
Local: County Commissioners, Sheriff, Register of Deeds and County Board of Education. Early voting begins on February 12
State wide: Perhaps the most important statewide race will be for the NC Supreme Court Associate Justice seat. We wrote extensively about Allisons Riggs’ battle to finally get sworn in to the race she fairly won. We expect the race for Anita Earls to keep her seat to be heavily watched and no doubt, there will be tomfoolery.
Land Use – Land use everywhere!
Carrboro, Chapel Hill AND Orange County are expecting to complete new land use planning ordinances. These processes have moved, been delayed, and re-initiated in all three jurisdictions. We look forward to progress in both towns and the County.
We also hope to be writing a little more about what is going on in Durham soon. We will let you know more when things are firmed up.
Our top articles of 2025 (this is only a fraction of all we wrote)
Griffin List – Allison Riggs squeaked by in her race against Jefferson Griffin. But he apparently found it hard to accept defeat, so initiated a scheme to have 60,000 votes thrown out. We created a tool to help voters find out if they were on the list ( Surprise, a lot of people we knew and long-time voters found themselves on the list!) Finally, sanity prevailed andshe was sworn in May 7, MONTHS and months after the election.
Related: We also helped voters learn how to update their voter file here
We wrote about how The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality’s Division of Air Quality’s (DAQ) will hold a public hearing to consider UNC’s request to modify its air quality permit to allow it to also burn engineered pellets in its boilers at the co-gen plant. We helped get it moved from Hillsborough ot Chapel Hill .
Several blog bloggers were present and we live blogged the hearing
We wrote about the UpRoar Arts festival and raised money for some artists who had their vehicle towed away while installing their art.
We wrote about PORCH, and created a summer fund raiser (just like we did in 2024) and raised nearly $10,000 for PORCH
We wrote about the Chapel Hill Carrboro City Schools Planning to Replace 3 Existing Schools
We noticed Surplus Sids was closing, and learned about why. We also suggested the family create a gofundme to help Barry Keith (aka Sid) to help him retire
Tropical Storm Chantal wreaked havoc and destruction in our area. Many people lost their homes. Triangle Mutual Aid stepped up and helped. We wrote about it here.
Chantal did a number on several Chapel Hill greenways. At first, it appeared they would be closed for over a year in some cases. The town evaluated what was needed, and the Parks and Rec. department got them all working in impressive time Related, we wrote about the re opening of the closed sections on our beloved Bolin Creek Trail
GoTriangle made a step forward to impressive service frequency this summer with the 400/405 bus. We wrote about this and why it was important
Related to the 2026 Land Use planning all three jurisdictions will hopefully complete, we wrote about why it is important The town of Chapel Hill made what we hope is an isolated misstep on adopting to early ideas on future land use planning in November
For the local town elections, we decided to hold an offbeat election forum at Steel String (including a gong!) Nearly all the candidates attended and everyone had a great time
As the year drew to a close, we held our annual holiday party. This time, at Lapin Bleue. Wad free pizza and a great time. Keep an eye out later in the spring for our next party, our birthday party!
Just like with the Griffin List. We like to make tools to help the public. We are still working on this, but we made this nifty archive of town council meetings. We have used it ourselves to do research on a couple of our pieces. Check it out.
Onwards! To 2026