When we last visited The Local Reporter – our “relentlessly local” non-profit newspaper with very close ties to an organization with a PAC – they were saying farewell to their fourth editor in three years. He served just under three months in the role. It’s been a little over a month since that shakeup, and […]
Chapel Hill
Posted inChapel Hill Town Council
Factchecking Adam Searing’s newsletter ‘Controversial town topics’
It’s Town Council season again, which means our fact-checking fingers are limbering up for a workout. In a preview of things to come, Chapel Hill Town Council member Adam Searing sent out a Saturday night newsletter entitled “Controversial town topics on tap.” We’ve previously written about Searing’s claims that Chapel Hill was last in our […]
Posted inCHALT
On that Daily Tar Heel piece about affordable housing in Chapel Hill…
Our friends at The Daily Tar Heel published a curious little piece about Chapel Hill’s housing debate. The article says Town “is working to secure additional housing” (Yay!) but “some community organizations have cautioned that this new path brings its own social costs.” Hmm… The “some community organizations” is apparently one: CHALT. If you are […]
Posted inGreenway
Chapel Hill’s Greenways: What’s next and what could be
This week, Jennifer Keesmaat and her team come back to Chapel Hill for another discussion about complete communities. At the previous meeting in August, she discussed her solution to Chapel Hill’s problems—greenways!—and suggested that she was interested in crowdsourcing where Chapel Hill might expand its greenway network. Of course, this is Chapel Hill, which means […]
Posted inHousing
Ugly and Unacceptable: An Evening with the Chapel Hill Community Design Commission
If there were a soap opera about Chapel Hill, it would be called As the World Burns and the lead villain would be the Community Design Commission (CDC). Soap opera villains tend to be rich and powerful and will take any steps to protect their oil wealth or media empire. The CDC may not have […]
Posted inChapel Hill
Chapel Hill’s inclusionary zoning policies don’t work
This is part of our harder truths series. Inclusionary zoning ordinances are among the most controversial approaches in modern urban planning. Briefly, these ordinances intend to expand the supply of affordable housing stock by requiring developers to include it as part of new development or redevelopment projects. (We are defining “Affordable” here using the guidance […]