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Chapel Hill celebrates 2020 plan with open house event

Chapel Hill officials and residents celebrated on Tuesday the official start of a decade-long project, which will be funded by a partnership between the town and University and is expected to shape the future of both.

The comprehensive plan, known as Chapel Hill 2020, will focus on interrelationships among themes like land use, transportation, housing and the community atmosphere. It will also create a framework to guide Chapel Hill’s Town Council in managing the town’s future for the next 10 years.

The town council allocated funds for the project in June as part of its annual budget, marking it as a priority for 2011-2012 and approving up to $250,000 to cover all expenses.

The town’s allocation includes $35,000 dedicated to the town’s collaboration with UNC for the project. The University matched that, putting forward $35,000 for the project.

“That might sound like a lot of funding to an uninformed person,” said Catherine Lazorko, spokeswoman for the town.

But she said that the comprehensive plan is resident- and staff-driven, making it less expensive than comprehensive plans in other cities, which are often consultant-led.

“This is definitely going to be a Chapel Hill-unique kind of plan,” she said.

David Knowles, a member of the plan’s initiating committee, said the town’s funds have been essential to starting the project and will remain important as the town progresses through its three-step planning process.

He said the plan was launched when an initiating committee met in May and June to organize the process and also recruited Chapel Hill 2020’s co-chairs, Rosemary Waldorf and George Cianciolo.

In the second stage of the process, the committee and town staff are recruiting residents and stakeholders outside of town operations to be involved in the process.

The goal is to involve 10,000 residents in the planning by the time Chapel Hill 2020 is completed in June.

In the last step of the plan, the committee will provide feedback to participants who guide the process and the town will discuss funding and operations for the first year of the plan’s implementation, Knowles said.

He said he was unsure of how the funds would be allocated to each specific stage, but he said they have been put to good use so far.

“I think we did a great job recruiting Rosemary and George in the beginning,” Knowles said. “But we also wanted this to be as broadly inclusive as possible by recruiting people who haven’t been included before in town affairs.”

Assistant Planning Director Mary Nirdlinger said the project has been fairly inexpensive, but she thinks planning is going well.

“We will gauge the success as we go along, but a lot of people are interested in the process,” she said.

Contact the City Editor ?at city@dailytarheel.com.

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