Eric Montross at his Father’s Day Camp last weekend. Now in its 13th year, the camp raises money for special projects for the N.C. Children’s Hospital. Photo by Brian Strickland

Catching up with Eric Montross

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

When you think of Eric Montross, the words “high-performance liquid chromatographer” probably aren’t the first to pop into your head. “Really tall,” maybe, or “National Championship.”

Last Friday and Saturday you may have noticed several dozen people around town in Carolina Blue jerseys with “Montross” and a double-zero emblazoned on the back. They’re the 13th graduating class of Montross’ annual Father’s Day Basketball Camp — a fundraiser for the N.C. Childrens’ Hospital. Like their predecessors, the 140 or so campers spent two days on the hardwood at the Smith Center working on their moves with Montross and a few of his buddies. And like each class of campers before them, they helped raise thousands for the Children’s Hospital.

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At a legislative hearing on the impact of closing Horace Williams airport, UNC officials confirmed that they would support plans to re-open a search for an alternative site to Horace Williams and Raleigh Durham International.

In his presentation last week at a joint hearing of key House and Senate appropriations subcommittees, Kevin Fitzgerald, UNC’s top lobbyist, told legislators that the school would support another look to see if an alternative exists to Horace Williams. More »

By Ken Moore

Our roadsides are so filled with flowering wild plants that it frustrates me to focus on just one or two for description in The Citizen.

Right now, I have to celebrate the Trumpet-creeper. Some folks call it Trumpet Vine or Cow-itch Vine. There are likely other names associated with this common native weedy vine, of which the bright orange tubular flowers are guaranteed to attract nearby hummingbirds. Keep an eye out to find occasional peach- and yellow-colored variations. The flowers seem to hang singly or in clusters in the air at the tips of long stems reaching down from varying heights, be it low fence posts or abandoned barn chimneys. More »

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

About two dozen employees and owners of Weaver Street Market showed up at a board of directors meeting Tuesday night to debate a plan to move the cooperative’s food preparation operations to Hillsborough.

Laurel Goldstein presented a petition signed by roughly 100 employees asking that the board call a halt to the plan, saying it would threaten both the quality of the food and the work environment. More »

By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer

Orange County commissioners criticized the state’s mental health system reform on Tuesday after hearing funding requests from local mental health programs that have lost state funds through the changes.

In a budget work session, the Board of County Commissioners considered funding requests from county mental health programs Club Nova and KidSCope.

Club Nova has requested $75,000 from the county to assist with funding operations and new requirements from the state. Club Nova provides housing, assistance and psychological services to people with mental illnesses.

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By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

Following that — a sharp exchange over annexation

With little fanfare or discussion Tuesday night, the Carrboro Board of Aldermen unanimously approved a $19.6  million budget that would raise the town’s tax rate by roughly 3 cents to 65.37 cents per $100 valuation.

Last-minute touches to the plan, reviewed Tuesday night at Town Hall, included a decision to pilot a fee reduction for events at the Town Commons, a sticking point in the last round of budget talks. Alderman Randee Haven-O’Donnell suggested making the commons’ reservations free on a first-come-first-serve basis for events that are open to the public and where money does not change hands. To qualify, the events would also have to not require town staff to be present and not need electricity or access to the bathrooms at Town Hall.

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The Chapel Hill-Carrboro school board on Friday appointed Jacqueline Boyd Ellis as principal of Chapel Hill High School.

Most recently, Ellis served as director of middle school programs for Wake County Public Schools She was principal of Culbreth Middle School from July 2003-January 2007, where she was selected as the 2005-06 Chapel Hill-Carrboro Principal of the Year. She was also assistant principal at Riverside High School in Durham and a principal fellow intern at East Chapel Hill High School. Prior to her administrative work, she was a mathematics and language arts teacher in the Pitt County and Guilford County schools.

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OWASA approves rate increase
The OWASA Board of Directors last week approved water and sewer rate increases and rate structure changes.

Monthly water charges will increase about 6.25 percent, while monthly sewer charges will increase about 13.75 percent. The percentage increase will depend on a customer’s pattern and volume of water use. More »

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from a petition from a group of employees at Weaver Street Market who are concerned about the impact of moving production from Carrboro to a new facility in Hillsborough. The petition was presented to the cooperative’s board of directors at a meeting in the Carrboro Elementary School auditorium Tuesday night (June 19).

“Our work is artisan work and it is work that we attempt to do with pride and creativity every day, recognizing that making food for others is an intimate and honorable profession. We care greatly about what we do and we care about this co-op.  More »

By Kirk Ross
Columnist

From the people who brought you massive purges of voter rolls in Florida, Ohio and elsewhere, some helpful suggestions about North Carolina’s electoral system. Seems the feds think we have too many voters on the rolls and we ought to get to whacking some folks off.

That helpful federal advice comes from the Department of Justice’s Voting Rights Division, which last time we checked was having a little trouble explaining why some of its executives decided to violate long-running DOJ policy and intervene ahead of the vote in places with close elections. More »

By Mike Nelson 

Mental health reform in North Carolina has come off the tracks and it’s time to take a good hard look at what went wrong and take corrective action. May was Mental Health Month in North Carolina, which is a good time to admit that the State of North Carolina’s experimental reform of our mental health system, which essentially privatized mental health services, has been an embarrassing failure. It’s time to reform the reform.
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By Kirk Ross
Editor

The heat is bearing down already and those afternoon showers that truly deserve the name “cloudbursts” are beginning to roll ‘round to slick up the streets and coat the pavement with a low-hanging layer of steam.

The creeks are lazy, as they usually are here, and University Lake and Cane Creek are dropping slowly (for now at least), while rowboats, canoes and sculling crews ply their waters.

And even for the most vigorous of gardeners, the raw power of photosynthesis is quickly outstripping human control.

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By Dan Coleman

No, the headline is not a typo. I did not spend the first weekend of June cavorting with Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour in a tropical paradise. I was attending the fifth-annual conference of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, held in Berkeley, California.

BALLE is the umbrella group for the more than 50 communities whose businesses have formed networks committed to the idea of a local living economy. The participants view their businesses and the networks that connect them to be the economic embodiment of sustainability and understand the linkage that must be found between ecology and economy. More »

By Jock Lauterer

Let’s get this straight: Newspapers are not vanishing. At least not my kind of newspapers.

Yes, many major metros are in a circulation free-fall. But not my guys. The small, local or what we call “community newspapers” – papers with circulations below 50k, many of them found off the interstates on the so-called “blue highways” of this nation – are doing very well, thank you.

In fact, these “relentlessly local” papers are so quietly successful that big-city papers have finally noticed and are copying them! Example: pick up today’s N&O and count the number of local stories on the front page. More »

Photo by Mike Benson

The nuptials of Dave Robertson and Stephanie Townsend were center stage at Local 506 Saturday night, June 16.

Mr. Robertson’s best man was Ed Crawford. Ms. Townsend’s bridesmaid was Coleen Dorr. The bride was given away by her son, Zack Townsend. The ceremony was officiated by Rev. Jamie McPhail of Alamance County. More »