At the end of the last Chapel Hill Town Council meeting, it was announced that Planning Director Colleen Willger would be leaving her position soon for a new job. We are sad to see Colleen go, in part because she brought a can-do spirit to the town’s planning department. In less than two years, she […]
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Posted inCHALT
Booker Creek Part 2: When the Levee Breaks, Mama, You Got to Move
This piece was written by Martin Johnson and Stephen Whitlow. In a previous post, we discussed the Booker Creek Working Group, which the Town of Chapel Hill formed in response to neighbors’ opposition to stormwater management basins that would mitigate flooding in the Booker Creek watershed. Town Council rescinded its approval of the storage basins […]
Posted inChapel Hill Town Council
Make a new plan, Stan? And other takeaways from the 9/28 Chapel Hill Town Council meeting.
Last Wednesday’s Chapel Hill Town Council meeting featured a real humdinger of a presentation from Rod Stevens and Jen Keesmaat. First, some background: Stevens and Keesmaat are both planners; Stevens, of Bainbridge Island, Washington, wrote the 2021 Housing Report that said we need more housing, and Keesmaat, formerly Toronto’s chief planner, is currently leading our […]
Posted inChapel Hill Town Council
Five things we want to see Town Councils tackle this term
It’s the start of the Town Council cycle for Chapel Hill and Carrboro, which means we’re once again planning to keep you informed about issues involving civic life in both of our towns. We also have opinions about what the Town Councils should tackle this term. Here are five ideas we plan to track: Connecting […]
Posted inBike and Walk
Five questions to ask before supporting a new transportation plan
My recent piece on the proposed Commuter Rail Project received some pushback, including from TBBer Melody Kramer. Most of the criticism made two points: 1). Highway spending is just as wasteful, and we never hear criticism of highways, and 2.) If we don’t support this project now, we’ll regret it in the future. While I’m sympathetic […]
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 […]