When I moved to Carrboro from Washington DC in 2015, someone sent me the “unofficial town music video” which showed a variety of people hula-hooping, dancing, and rocking out on the Weaver Street lawn. I immediately fell in love. It’s not hard to love Carrboro. We’re known as one of the most progressive communities in […]
Posted in828 MLK, Chapel Hill Town Council
The real story about coal ash
tl; dr – There is a lot of misinformation circulating about the future of 828 MLK Jr. Blvd. This post details what’s happened so far, what the town has decided, and details why the counterarguments circulating right now about the redevelopment don’t stand up to scrutiny. The history of coal ash at 828 In the […]
Posted inChapel Hill Town Council, Zoning
Zoning reform should be a priority in Chapel Hill
Zoning reform matters for housing affordability, racial equity, environmental sustainability, and economic growth. The Chapel Hill Town Council should be moving faster on reform, not discussing ways to slow it down. Last week, the Chapel Hill Town Council held a work session where they discussed, among other things, the town’s plans to rewrite its land use […]
Posted inCHALT
Mapping out CHALT-connected websites
Over the past several years, many websites have popped up in Carrboro and Chapel Hill related to local development and transportation projects. Using the network analysis methods described in this CJR piece, I discovered that some of them share IP addresses and various analytics identifiers. As noted in the CJR piece: “It is highly unusual […]
Posted inCarrboro, Carrboro Town Council
The 203 Project and What It Means to Prioritize the Climate
Last night, the Carrboro Town Council voted to approve financing for the 203 Project, aka the new library in Carrboro. The vote was 5-1, with the lone dissenting vote coming from Sammy Slade. In a letter to the Daily Tar Heel, Slade outlined his reasons for voting against the project. The opening paragraphs of his […]
Posted inCHALT, Journalism
The Local Reporter, CHALT and the need for disclosure and transparency
Update: April 7 The Local Reporter, a non-profit news organization, launched in September 2019, touting itself as a way to plug Chapel Hill and Carrboro’s news deserts after several papers here closed over the past decade. An interview with its first editor – there have been three, and the paper’s currently looking for a fourth […]