An idea worth exploring
We have no illusions that funding schools will be anything but a perpetual struggle between the passion of parents and educators and fiscal realism.

The annual debate changes from year to year, but the fundamental reality that we can’t afford all we’d like doesn’t, and most of the time there aren’t a lot of ideas being floated about how to change the dynamic. More »

Unsprawling Carrboro

Sprawl is becoming recognized as a major problem for regions and we need to tame it here locally.

Sprawl generally takes the form of low-density single-family home developments and their attendant strip malls. Sprawl increases commuting and car use, it increases parking requirements, and it often alienates those lured to the suburban life it offers. Sprawl is a destroyer of communities. More »

Employees voices needed

Kirk Ross’ recent article about Weaver Street Market’s Food House plans was a timely and clear articulation of Ruffin [Slater]’s vision for Weaver Street Market. I’m concerned however, as a bread baker whose job is moving to Hillsborough, that an article admitting his plans have raised concerns among workers fails to give any voice to those very workers.

Could this article be followed up with a companion piece based on interviews with workers who disagree with the move? If this sounds like a good idea, I’d like to suggest three long-term and loyal employees you might want to speak with—one from each of the three food production departments slated to leave downtown Carrboro: More »

Leadership vacuum

Re: the June 7 article “Mental health care reductions take effect,” I think the fundamental problem with the reform effort is a lack of leadership from anyone with the right combination of clout and concern.

Outgoing Health and Human Services Secretary Carmen Hooker Odom and Governor Easley both own a large share of the responsibilities for the system’s failings.

The recent rate cut for Community Support Services is a glaring example of the myopic, hasty, and callous decision-making process that has become the hallmark of mental health reform.  The Secretary was correct that having unqualified people providing this important service is a problem.

However, those who designed and approved the system are at fault for failing to anticipate that they had developed a service model that not only allowed for this situation to take place, but actually encouraged it.

When you introduce market forces to the system and allow agencies to bill at the same rate for services provided by high school educated workers and those provided by master’s level professionals, it should not take Milton Friedman to anticipate the result.

Rather than correcting the problem by tying rates to credentials, the Secretary implemented a “solution” (reduced reimbursement rates) that insures that the problem of poor service quality persists.  Let’s hope the next Secretary (and Governor) take a more thoughtful approach when manipulating a system that provides a lifeline to hundreds of thousands of vulnerable North Carolinians.

Mark Sullivan, MSW
Executive Director, Mental Health Association in Orange Count

Fox-owned?

I was at the Monday forum. I heard about sixty parents and teachers pleading, often eloquently, to make full funding of our schools our community’s top priority. And you give three paragraphs to the one gentleman who put his own concerns above our childrens’? Tell me, is The Carrboro Citizen a subsidiary of Fox News, with its known tendency to distort stories to the point of absurdity?

Tom Barta, Carrboro

Just got a fax saying that a group of Weaver Street Market employees will call for a moratorium against the coop’s proposal to move its food prep operations to Hillsborough.

According to the fax, more than 100 employees have signed a petition calling for the moratorium. It will be presented to the coop’s board of directors at a meeting tonight at Carrboro Elementary School at 6:30 p.m.

The meeting is open to the public.

I’ll post the full text ASAP.

UPDATE — Full text follows:

More »

The Board of County Commissioners meets for a budget work session on Monday at 7:30 p.m. at the John M. Link Government Services Center on South Cameron Street in Hillsborough. Here’s the agenda:

1. Opening Comments

2. Fiscal Year 2007-08 County Capital Budget

3. Health Department Programs

• Public Health Reserve Corps Program

• Families in Focus Program

• Primary Care Program

• Recreation and Parks Programs - After School Care Program and Summer Camp Program

4. Non-Profit Agencies including requests for additional funding from KidsCope and Club Nova

5. Fire Districts

6. Other Non-Departmental

7. Further Discussion of Potential Budget Modifications

Max Paul, 87, died on June 13 at the Chapel Hill Rehabilitation Center.

He was born January 10, 1920, on the Lower East Side of New York City to immigrant parents. After graduating from high school, Max worked odd jobs during the Depression until enlisting in the U. S. Merchant Marine, serving in the Mediterranean during World War II.

Active in socialist-Zionist youth movements, he spent several years on Kibbutz Hazor in Palestine in the late 1940s and marched in Israel’s Independence Day parade. Returning to America, he enrolled at the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina.

He earned his undergraduate degree at the University of North Carolina where he was active in theater, labor, and social-justice movements. After a career in sales, he retired to Chapel Hill and resided at the Covenant House, Carrboro. Max found a second home at Weaver Street Market where his outgoing, engaging personality earned him a wide circle of friends. Among the many friends who will miss Max are George and Rosemary Hoag, who took responsibility for him in his later years.

Funeral arrangements were made by Howerton-Bryan. Graveside services were led by Rabbi Morton Green at the Chapel Hill Kehillah Cemetery at Markham Memorial Gardens on June 14. Max’s friends are planning a commemoration of his life to be held at a date to be announced.

Powerful testimony today from AHEC doctors and pilots about concerns over the move to RDU.

Dr. Bill Henry, chair of UNC’s pediatric cardiology division, set out the case against the move calling the university’s stance that it’s either Horace Williams or RDU “a false choice.”

Henry, noting that appearing at the legislature in opposition of the move to RDU was not a “career enhancing” move, said that while the university says it has thoroughly looked at the issue, there are many who disagree with the conclusion that RDU is the right place for Medical Air. He encouraged legislators to ask the hard questions.

“Ask the people participating (in AHEC) and you’ll get a very different view,” he said.

University officials, led by Carolina North Executive Director Jack Evans and chief lobbyist Kevin Fitzgerald, reiterated the school’s position on the move and its support of AHEC. Pressed by Rep. Rick Glazier of Fayetteville, Evans seemed to leave the door open to opening the search for an another alternative.

……developing

Editor’s note: This story will be updated around 1 p.m. today with remarks from today’s hearing.

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

University administrators, Area Health Education Centers officials and a host of physicians from UNC Hospitals will appear before a joint House and Senate committee today (Thursday) to review plans to close Horace Williams Airport and its impact on the university’s Medical Air program.

The North Carolina House and Senate appropriations subcommittees on Education and Health and Human Services called the hearing at the behest of House Speaker Joe Hackney, after some doctors recently reiterated their objection to plans to move flight operations for AHEC to Raleigh Durham International Airport, according to AHEC director Dr. Thomas Bacon.

Bacon said in an interview Wednesday afternoon that Hackney asked Orange County Rep. Verla Insko to convene the meeting after receiving objections from Dr. Bill Henry, chair of the Department of Pediatrics, Division of Pediatric Cardiology.

Bacon said Henry has been critical of the move.
“They’re the biggest users of the planes,” Bacon said. “The main concerns are over travel time and time taking off and landing.”

Bacon said that Henry and other doctors estimate the RDU base of operations could add one hour a day to their travel time to and from the airport, more than the time originally estimated by a consultant AHEC worked with to find the best spot for the move.

Bacon said AHEC and the university remain committed to the move though, and have been working on plans for a new facility at RDU.

“We have no plans to go elsewhere,” Bacon said. “We’re totally focused on RDU.”

The hearings were part of a deal struck last session after some legislators resisted the closing of the airport, mostly out of concern about how the move to RDU would affect AHEC. A vigorous lobbying effort by the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, which advocates on behalf of private pilots, also caught the ear of legislators.

The UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees passed a resolution in May of 2005 saying they would not close the airport and move AHEC’s Medical Air operations until they were ready to start the Carolina North project.
An analysis using Federal Aviation Authority standards done in the early stages of the planning for Carolina North said that the airport would conflict with the design and use for the buildings envisioned. Since then, university officials have indicated that the flat, already-paved airport grounds would be a prime spot for the early stages of Carolina North.

In March, the Board of Trustees approved a plan for construction of a new hangar and office space for Medical Air at RDU near an existing Department of Transportation facility. The project is expected to cost roughly $3.5 million.

In addition to Drs. Henry and Bacon, also scheduled to testify at the hearing are Kevin Fitzgerald, executive associate dean for finance and administration, UNC-School of Medicine; Carolina North executive director Jack Evans, pediatrics professor Dr. James Loehr, Dr. Marianne Muhlebach, Dr. Ali Calikoglu, Duke oncologist Dr. Linda Sutton, Medical Air Operations director Jim Hotelling, Medical Air chief pilot Alan Fearing and WCHL owner Jim Heavner, a pilot and plane owner who has been critical of the university’s move to close the airport.

By Ken Moore
Columnist

“The other day I saw an ad in the local paper - ‘Catalpa worms for sale, twenty-five cents a dozen.’”
No, that’s not from last week’s Citizen. It’s from Paul Green’s Plant Book. I’m wondering if he was referring to a long-ago issue of the paper from our neighboring town. The reference to Catalpa worms (the larva of the Catalpa Sphinx Moth) makes me remember my childhood summers spent on my aunt’s small tobacco farm just south of Macon, NC. I was fascinated how her front-yard Catalpa tree leafed out again after total defoliation by Catalpa worms. Some of the local men frequently gathered cans of those worms for fish bait. I remember also how “grossed-out” I was whenever I stepped on one with my bare foot and green ooze covered one or more toes. Apparently that green ooze is considered mighty tasty to catfish. Experienced fishermen can make that worm really tasty by turning it inside out before threading it on the hook. And to have a year-round supply, there’s a description on the Big Fish website (www.bigfishtackle.com) that says Catalpa worms can be packed in a glass jar of cornmeal or sawdust, frozen and later thawed to their original wiggling vigor. Now there’s a little summertime experiment for the curious among you.
Since the early 1700s, we have been cultivating both the Southern Catalpa (Catalpa bignonioides) and Northern Catalpa (Catalpa speciosa), which are very similar in appearance. An impressive, widely spreading specimen is showing off right now in the front yard of an old home on Martin Luther King Boulevard, near Timberlyne. A few weeks earlier, you may have noticed the tall slender specimens in full flower in the Coker Arboretum and at the base of the Kenan Chemistry tower on South Road. That stately Catalpa, reaching almost to the top of the chemistry tower, is well worth a visit. We are indebted to local poet and botany librarian Jeffrey Beam and university forester Tom Bythell for looking out for that tree during the recent years of construction.
For the beautiful flowering Catalpa, with it’s curious long, thin bean-pod-like fruits, we have a rich assortment of common names: Fish Bait Tree, Cigar Tree, Indian Cigar, Indian Bean Tree, and I used to call my aunt’s tree a Monkey Cigar Tree, a name I can’t find referenced anywhere. There are accounts that native Americans did smoke those bean pods. Paul Green recorded, from his chats with old timers of the Cape Fear River valley, that, “Smoke inhaled from the parched and powdered Catalpa leaves, like Jimson leaves, was a good asthma treatment.” Please note: Don’t try these remedies without direct supervision of your physician! But do plant a Catalpa tree of your own, for fishing, for shade and for the beauty of it!

By Kirk Ross
Staff Writer

Early this week, just off the gravel road that leads from what one might call downtown Haywood, Jim Massey was chatting with Miz Thang, an artist from Hawkinsville, Georgia who’s been touring the countryside “drivin’ and lookin’.”

Naturally, a stop at Massey’s Holly Hill Daylily and Crinum Farm was on the list. Massey, a retired botany professor and the longtime director of the University of North Carolina Herbarium, has built an impressive array of daylilies over the years and, in the three or so cultivated acres that they dominate, has more than 1,700 varieties — each marked and cataloged and, usually, with a story attached. He also keeps watch over more than three dozen varieties of crinums and an assortment of Verbenas, Red Hot Pokers and other perennials.

The farm also is home to a splendid collection of rare and unusual poultry — Domaniques, Ameraucana, Silver Seabright and others — either free-ranging or scratching about in their pens.
But for Miz Thang and hundreds of other folk and outsider artists, the exuberant botanist from Texas is known more for his passion for their works and, more recently, as curator of the Historic Haywood Folk Art Museum, which opened for the first time last year for the early-June to late-July daylily season and is now open to visitors to the farm each weekend through July 22.

This weekend, the farm will host a Potluck in the Pasture fundraiser for ChathamArts. More »

After 32 years on the Carrboro beat, Officer Bob hits the road

By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer

While Officer Bob Murdaugh says he’s the only person of his acquaintance who’s ever been bounced from the Boot Hill Saloon during Daytona Beach’s annual Bike Week, certainly it must have happened to many hundreds of other individuals. Regardless, the image of Officer Bob being bounced, in Daytona Beach or otherwise, is entirely discordant with the image of Officer Bob that’s been forged in the minds of so manyCarrboro residents in the course of his some 32 years of service, and is no way to begin to tell his story.

Very recently retired from the Carrboro Police Department (May 31 was his official final sign-off), Murdaugh is looking tanned and rested as he enjoys a late-morning breakfast on the patio at Breadmen’s. He’s been spending a lot of time aboard his trusty BMW, and, already well out of regs, is eight days into a burgeoning white beard.

He’s here to talk, in his words, “facts, fables and philosophy,” and in the course of an extended conversation, each is well represented.

Back to the bouncing later.

The making of an officer
“Somehow,” Bob Murdaugh recollects, “I was made a member of the safety patrol at Hope Valley Elementary School. So I was in uniform and in law enforcement early on.

“But I never really aspired to be a police officer. It just sort of worked out that way.”
Murdaugh graduated from Durham’s Jordan High School in 1970 and headed off to become a “two-time Duke University freshman.”

“There was a period of time when I was between semesters at Duke University, and I was in dire need of a job. A friend from high school asked me if I wanted his stepfather to find me a job. He was in the administration at Duke University. And I said, `Sure; I’ll take anything.’ More »

ies on Monday.
The dog had been submitted to the State Laboratory of Public Health for testing after it was shot and killed last Thursday after biting or scratching a person and fighting with another dog.
The dog, which was in the area of Highway 49 and Wade Loop Road north of Cedar Grove, had contact with the owner’s eight other dogs as well as three other dogs in the area. None of the owner’s dogs had been vaccinated for rabies. More »

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Board of Education last week appointed two new principals and one new assistant principal.

The board hired Philip Holmes as principal of Ephesus Elementary School. Holmes replaces Susan Wells, who was recently named principal of Culbreth Middle School. Holmes served as principal of Burton Geo-World Magnet School in the Durham Public Schools for the past year and as assistant principal of Ephesus from 2004-06. He has a bachelor’s degree in history education from Hobart College and a master’s degree in school administration from UNC.

Estes Hills Elementary School assistant principal Cheryl Carnahan was hired as the principal of Estes Hills Elementary. She replaces Dale Mingle, who will serve as principal of Pittsboro Elementary School in the Chatham County Schools. Carnahan has also worked in professional development and as a resource teacher and speech-language pathologist in the Howard County Public Schools in Maryland. She has a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in speech pathology and audiology from Towson University.

The board also hired Beverly Knupp Rudolph as assistant principal of East Chapel Hill High School. Rudolph served as an administrative intern at East Chapel Hill High during the past year. In addition, she has worked as a language-arts teacher in schools across the state. Rudolph has a bachelor’s degree in English from UNC-Asheville and a master’s degree in school administration from UNC.