Redistricting Plan 9D

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board was scheduled to settle on a redistricting plan Thursday that would move roughly more than 1,000 elementary students
The plan (above), 9D, has been recommended to the board by school officials. Click the map for a larger image.

UPDATE:

After more than three hours of public comment and discussion, the school board on Thursday voted to revise plan 9D and remove all other plans from consideration. Board members Mike Kelley, Lisa Stuckey and Jean Hamilton will work with Steve Scroggs, superintendent for support services, to tweak plan 9D and address some of the issues raised by the public at the meeting.

The board will consider the revised plan 9D at their regular meeting on May 3.

By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer

Nearly 500 Chapel Hill-Carrboro elementary school students, mostly from the northwestern corner of the school district, will move to a new elementary school when it opens in the fall of 2008.

On Thursday, the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education is expected to approve one of four redistricting plans to move students to the new school. Under the plan recommended by school officials, 1,095 students would be moved to different elementary schools, including 481 to the new school, which has yet to be named but has been dubbed Elementary No. 10 by school officials. The new school will be located at the corner of Dromoland Road and Eubanks Road.

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Orange County Secret Clown Dick Gordon refuses to take another loss to heart–playing the game is about building community. Photo by Isaac Sandlin

By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer

Whether Dick Gordon is a different guy when outfitted in hockey gear seems to be a matter of debate. According to at least one associate, in everyday life he never shies away from contact and is ever a competitive guy. That’s certainly reflected on the ice. By his own assessment, though, he is different: “Yeah, I’m even slower and less coordinated than I imagine.”

Granted, Gordon isn’t quite as graceful on the ice as he is on the air. And his aggressiveness in the hockey rink might seem at odds with the nice-guy image that’s enticed so many of his guests to lay before him their often very personal stories.

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This year’s plan for annual town festival: Don’t change a thing

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

If you need help remembering what day Carrboro Day is, take a glance at the calendar and check out the first Sunday in May. That’s the day, this year and every year.

“That date is chiseled in stone. Then we don’t have to change the yard signs,” Catherine DeVine, co-chair of this year’s festivities said in a recent interview.

The event, sponsored by the town’s Recreation & Parks Department, is Sunday, May 6 from 12:30 to 7 p.m. at the Town Commons. The rain location is the Century Center.

The only change to expect this year, DeVine said, is the music lineup, and that’s the intent.
“We wanted to change nothing,” DeVine said. “Carrboro Day is charmed, I believe.”

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By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

Members of the Carrboro Board of Aldermen offered a courteous but thorough grilling of OWASA officials Tuesday night at Town Hall over the utility’s plan to raise service access fees this year.

OWASA is planning a comprehensive rate restructuring including a jump in some accessibility fees by more than 40 percent. The fees are a one-time payment customers make to connect to the system.

The rate structure has yet to be decided, but OWASA finance director Kevin Ray said this week that plans call for an average 11 percent hike in accessibility fees for water, and a 40 percent average hike in sewer access fees is expected.

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By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer

When it opens in less than three weeks, the new Robert and Pearl Seymour Senior Center will have more than just more space.

The Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday approved staff positions for the new Seymour Center for seniors in Chapel Hill, enabling the center to provide expanded evening and weekend services when it opens May 1.

The 25,000-square-foot center, which is located on Homestead Road, will serve seniors 55 to 105. It replaces the Chapel Hill Senior Center on South Elliott Road and the Northside Senior Center on Caldwell Street.

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Source: ECS Carolinas / Citizen Graphic by Michelle Langston

By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer

The Town of Chapel Hill has released the results of an environmental assessment on downtown Parking Lot 5, along with an initial estimated cost of cleanup for the site of $232,000.

A Phase II Environmental Site Assessment and Limited Soil Delineation study was conducted last month by ECS Carolinas LLP. According to ECS’s cover letter to the 100-page assessment, “Based on approximate measurements of the property boundary and sample locations, ECS has estimated that approximately 8,600 cubic yards (~13,000 tons assuming 1.5 tons per cubic yard) of petroleum-impacted soil may be present at the site. This is a preliminary estimate only; the actual quantity of potentially impacted soils may vary based on conditions observed during soil excavation.”

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By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton has sent a letter to Reps. Joe Hackney, Verla Insko and Sen. Ellie Kinnaird asking that they oppose a bill introduced by Rep. William Faison to undo an annexation of the Highlands neighborhood.

Residents of the neighborhood, annexed along with several other neighborhoods in 2005, had petitioned Faison to help undo the annexation.

Chilton said even though he personally voted against the annexation, he did not think the state should be “second-guessing” the town’s decision.

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By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer

When Carrboro Animal Control officer Robert Nekoranec responded to a call about a “fox that looked confused” on Friday, he wasn’t expecting to find a coyote.

“I got on it right away,” he said. Nekoranec arrived at a home on Woods Walk Court, near the intersection of Hillsborough Road and North Greensboro Street. He spotted the coyote about 50 feet away.

Nekoranec said the animal he saw was “smaller than a wolf, bigger than a fox” and “it looked like [a coyote].” Although the animal was not aggressive, he said it was “running back and forth” in the backyard of the property, trying to figure out how to get back to the woods.

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By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

Be prepared. That’s the message James Harris, Carrboro’s economic director, said is the key to not only a successful new business, but a successful application to the town’s revolving loan program.

In a report to the Board of Aldermen at their meeting Tuesday night, Harris said the 21-year record of the program has a number of success stories, all with good preparation in common.
“The more prepared they are up front, the more they are apt to succeed,” he said.
Harris said the program should have a substantial fund balance of $412,585 by the end of the fiscal year in June.

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CROP walk on Sunday

The Inter-Faith Council for Social Service will sponsor the organization’s annual CROP (Community Reaching Out to People) Walk on April 15 to raise money to fight hunger locally and throughout the world.

Registration for the four-mile walk begins at 1:30 p.m. and the walk will start at 2:30 p.m. at the Carrboro Town Commons. The walk, organized by the IFC and the Church World Service, will travel through the streets of Carrboro and Chapel Hill and the UNC campus. The walk raises money through sponsorships of participants.

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School board to quickly start search for new superintendent

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

HILLSBOROUGH–Orange County Schools Superintendent Shirley Carraway announced Monday that she will retire after four years on the job.

Carraway, who was hired in 2003 after a lengthy and difficult search by the Orange County Schools Board of Education, made her plans known at a hearing on the district’s budget at Cedar Ridge High School.

In an interview Tuesday, school board chair Dennis Whitling said he and other board members had heard of Carraway’s plans earlier and that the board was already studying how best to move forward with a search for a new superintendent.

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First School proposed

An addition to Seawell Elementary School that would house a proposed First School program could become the first of Carolina North.

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education will look at plans for the addition during a work session at their Thursday meeting. The addition would provide space for 214 students, including a First School facility for 100 pre-kindergarten students. The university owns the land where the addition would be located and would share 25 percent of the project costs, which are estimated at $30 million.

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Editor’s Note: Following is Senate Joint Resolution 1557—an apology for slavery passed by the North Carolina Senate on April 5, 2007 by a vote of 46-0.

SENATE JOINT RESOLUTION 1557
Second Edition Engrossed 4/5/07
April 5, 2007

A JOINT RESOLUTION expressing the PROFOUND REGRET of the North Carolina general assembly for the history of wrongs inflicted upon black citizens by means of slavery, exploitation, and legalized racial segregation and calling on all citizens to take part in acts of racial reconciliation.

Whereas, Article 1, Section 1, of the Constitution of North Carolina, in concert with the American Declaration of Independence, proclaims, “We hold it to be self-evident that all persons are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor, and the pursuit of happiness”; and

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By Kirk Ross

Going, going, gone

Some years ago, after reading a compendium of the state’s properties and noting various idle buildings, lands and other holdings, I was among those in favor of the idea of a commission of sorts to move some of these goods–burdens, often–in an orderly and mutually beneficial manner to both the private and public sector. Blinded as I was by the good common sense of unloading some of these properties, I neglected to consider two things. First, that politics–or, rather, its unseemly cousin, the good old boys ‘n’ girls network–might take over; and, second, that one agency’s trash was another’s treasure leading to all sorts of squabbling.

What happened, to paraphrase Clemens on Golf, was a good idea spoiled. And so less than three years after creating it, the legislature swiftly put an end to the State Property Commission. One big reason for the hurry was that there was evidence that the commission might actually start doing something.

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From the 1963 Chapel Hill High School yearbook, the Hillife, Gouger’s sense of humor comes through in labels he applied to this photo of fellow “Banshees Three” singer, Davey McConnell, left, and himself, at right. (Photo by Jock Lauterer, CHHS Ô63).

By Jock Lauterer

When my childhood chum Johnny Gouger laughed, it was no delicate matter.

No, not Gouger. When something struck him as funny–which was more often than not–he would cut loose with a trilling soprano cackle, a rooster’s crow of joy, a peal of merriment that went on much too long and much too loud for most public settings.

I am sure that his distinctive yelping laughter was well known in Elmo’s in Carrboro, where he dearly loved his huevos rancheros.

At his funeral last week in the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery–the last place on earth you would expect to find a good laugh–many of us celebrating the life of John Sifford Gouger found ourselves chuckling at the memory of this latter-day Mark Twain.

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