By Beth Mechum
Staff Writer

The Carrboro Board of Aldermen has decided to leave John Herrera’s vacant aldermen seat open until the November election. The decision was made Tuesday night at Town Hall during the board’s first meeting since its summer break.

The board is required by law to appoint a new member, but there is no specific time limit provided. As a compromise, Mayor Mark Chilton proposed the board immediately seat the highest non-incumbent vote-getter in November’s Aldermen election. More »

By Jeffrey Starkweather

Monday morning, my wife, a UNC employee, skipped her usual indoor bicycling exercise. Instead, she walked 23 minutes to the Chatham County Courthouse in downtown Pittsboro to catch a free bus ride to work. Rather than driving her car as usual along U.S. 15-501, she got on a 7:08 a.m. Chapel Hill Transit bus that dropped her off 45 minutes later at the UNC Student Union. More »

By Kathleen and Carl Hoffmann

In order to address budget cuts and shrink costs, the Orange County Board of Commissioners and staff plan to reduce services at solid waste convenience centers. At four of the five convenience centers, they will cut hours and operations from six days to four days a week. Unfortunately, the fifth convenience center, Bradshaw Quarry in southwest Orange County, will close on September 20.

More than 100 people showed up for the Aug. 18 commissioners meeting with impassioned pleas to keep the Bradshaw Quarry Center open. Rather than closing, we asked for cuts similar to those at the other county convenience centers. We even proposed reducing our center services to just the essential trash and recycling in order to keep the center open two or three days a week, including a Saturday or Sunday. More »

By Valarie Schwartz
Columnist

Survival sometimes makes death look easy.

Catherine DeVine, the Carrboro writer, organizer and frequent WCHL commentator, didn’t say as much, but after learning what she has survived since cancer rocked her world in 2007, the thought arises.

She and her husband, Berkeley Grimball, owner of Grimball Jewelers in Chapel Hill, moved to Carrboro from Durham in 1997, and DeVine immediately immersed herself in the mill town’s activities. More »

By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer

Just weeks after being told their neighborhood wouldn’t qualify for a federal improvement grant, the Rogers-Eubanks community has learned from a new UNC study the extent of its well and septic tank failures. The study indicates that almost half of homes surveyed that have wells had levels of fecal bacteria above federal Safe Drinking Water Act limits and two-thirds of homes with septic tanks show signs of failure.

Preliminary findings from the study conducted this summer through a partnership of UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health and the Rogers-Eubanks Neighborhood Association (RENA) indicate failing wells and septic tanks throughout the community. Those findings were presented to the Orange County Board of Commissioners at its Aug. 18 meeting. More »

By Rich Fowler
Staff Writer

Hillsborough’s town elections may not have the twists and turns found in Carrboro and Chapel Hill, but the issues the town is facing are no less serious.

Growth, and all of the problems it can bring, is the major issue facing Hillsborough. With a new hospital coming in a few years, and other prospects for growth on the horizon, the town will have to be careful about managing that growth without damaging its quality of life.

Three candidates are vying for two town commissioner seats, and whoever wins will have a lot of work to do. And even though the mayor is running unopposed, that doesn’t mean he’s going to have less work to do. More »

The UNC Department of Public Safety will conduct a driving-while-impaired checkpoint on campus Aug. 27 starting at 10 p.m. and ending at 4 a.m.

A checkpoint route on Country Club Road will be clearly marked and posted on the night of the initiative, conducted in partnership with the N.C. Governor’s High Safety Research Center.

Chapel Hill artist Michael Brown is currently restoring a third mural as part of the Painted Walls Project in downtown Chapel Hill. The Blue Mural (also known as The Starry Night Mural) is located on East Rosemary Street and was the first mural Brown painted downtown, in 1989.

Brown will spend nearly two weeks restoring this mural and then will work on the Hands Mural, on West Franklin Street, that was recently destroyed by graffiti.

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP and the Town of Chapel Hill will sponsor two upcoming “Celebrate Our Peace and Justice Legacy” events, both in front of the post office at 179 E. Franklin St.

This Friday at 5 p.m., a rally will be held to observe the anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington.

Then on Sunday, Sept. 20 at 3:00 p.m., there will be a dedication of a tribute marker at Peace and Justice Plaza.

For more information or to become a co-sponsor, call Suepinda Keith of the NAACP History Committee at 338-2065 or Catherine Lazorko, Town of Chapel Hill information officer, at 969-5055.

United Church of Chapel Hill will host a conversation with representative David Price on Aug. 30 at 10 a.m.to discuss the nation’s healthcare options at 1321 Martin Luther King Jr Blvd. For more info, 942-3540 unitedchurch.org

Hillsborough’s Historic Speedway Group will present their annual fund raiser: Celebration of the Automobile and Racer’s Reunion this weekend starting with the Friday night cruise with a sock hop and music by Phil-N-the-Blanks.

Saturday is the Celebration of the Automobile and Racer’s Reunion. Vintage cars that raced at the Historic Occoneechee track will be on display attended by the drivers, crews, mechanics and family members who supported NASCAR in its infancy. Food vendors, memorabilia vendors and hundreds of show cars & race cars will also be part of the celebration. The event is free and open to the public.

For more information, visit historicspeedwaygroup.org/

After deliberating for seven hours on Friday, an Orange County jury found Alvaro Castillo guilty of murder. He was sentenced to life without parole.

Castillo, who had a history of mental illness and was obsessed with the Columbine school shootings, shot and killed his father on Aug. 30, 2006. He then drove to Orange High School, where he began firing at students, wounding two. After his gun jammed, he was subdued by an Orange County Sheriff’s deputy and an off-duty highway patrol officer.
Castillo’s lawyers mounted an insanity defense, but jurors sided with prosecutors, who detailed Castillo’s planning.

A defense witness – a social worker with Caring Family Network in Hillsborough – testified that Castillo was denied mental health care by a UNC-run facility, after screeners there questioned whether Castillo was actually having the delusions he claimed. The social worker had referred Castillo to the UNC facility after she was told there would be a six-week wait for him to see a psychiatrist at Caring Family Network, which was contracted with the county at that time to provide psychiatric services.

Courtland Smith, a UNC student and president of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, was shot to death by police early Sunday morning after a traffic stop on I-85 near Greensboro.

Smith, 21, from Houston, Texas, had called 911 saying he needed help because he was suicidal. When police stopped his car, there was a confrontation and Smith was shot by Jeremy Paul Flinchum, 29, of the Archdale Police Department.

The two officers that pulled him over are on paid leave while the State Bureau of Investigation is looking into the event, which is standard protocol in officer-related shootings.

On Wednesday, Smith’s phone call to 911 was released to the public.

By Beth Mechum
Staff Writer

Members of the UNC community are still reeling from the death of Army Pfc. Morris Walker, a 2008 graduate who died Aug. 18 in Afghanistan. Walker — “Mo” to all who knew and loved him — died of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.

Walker, 23, was deployed in April after enlisting in the Army in August 2008. He was based at Fort Richardson in Alaska. He is the first alumnus of UNC to die in the war in Afghanistan. More »

Thank you for your article on the Carrboro Board of Aldermen’s granting a one-year extension on several development permits. As your article points out, these extensions are essential to give these projects time to get going in a challenging economy.

One point omitted is that we only granted the Ballentine AIS a six-month extension, half the time they had requested. Ballentine is an entirely residential subdivision off Old N.C. 86, north of Lake Hogan Farms, much like those that have been typical in northern Carrboro. However, in recent years the board has heard loud and clear from residents that they want mixed-use and commercial projects that will provide retail services and nearby destinations for their neighborhoods. More »