Chapel Hill Festivities Must Stay

Chapel Hill Town Manager Cal Horton presented two memorandums to the Chapel Hill Town Council last week that could alter the entertainment quotient of the town. The memos were discussed at a March 25 meeting.

The first memo outlined a potential tax to be levied on major UNC sporting event tickets (basically basketball and football games). The second memo outlined seven plans for dealing with the Franklin Street Halloween bash.

Let's start with the tax.

Roland Giduz, a former council member, has been petitioning the council for the past 21 years to tax UNC sporting events to raise extra cash for the town. He did so again Feb. 11.

Calling the games "luxury sports entertainment," Giduz claims that a modest tax smaller than the existing sales tax could net a cool million each year for Chapel Hill's coffers.

Giduz chastises the Town Council in his petition, saying town leaders have only "timidly" asked the state for such taxation permission in the past.

In Horton's memo, he outlines several items town leaders hope to discuss with local representatives in the N.C. General Assembly before it begins its summer "short session." Giduz's request is part of that agenda.

So there will be a public hearing on the matter next Monday night.

Then there's Halloween.

After record-setting crowds at 2000's bash, the town put strict crowd control and safety measures in place last year.

The result was a smaller, more controlled crowd. But the event was more ... um ... boring. Traffic around the town was snarled. Even residents living a few miles away couldn't get to the celebration. It cost the town $23,000 more than the previous year, and businesses complained that they lost revenue.

So with "Halloween: 2002" mere months away, Horton outlined seven options to handle the event. They range from doing the same thing as last year, going back to the pre-2001 plan, sponsoring a Halloween festival or Octoberfest instead, moving the event to a more remote location, or canceling the event all together.

A public forum on the proposals will be held April 22.

Both proposals could seriously hamper Chapel Hill's festive ethos. And unlike road widening or stormwater runoff, I suspect a lot of people will give a damn about what the Town Council does -- both residents and students.

These ideas come at a time when the Town Council would be most receptive to them. Why? Because they both are matters of town finance.

With the state in a budget nightmare, Chapel Hill and other localities have been shortchanged and forced to make tough budget cuts.

A ticket tax would bring in $1 million each year. Canceling Halloween would keep the town from footing the bill for police protection -- which often means hiring extra bodies from neighboring areas.

But breathe easy.

I doubt any drastic change will come to pass for either of these staples.

Over the past 20 years, the Halloween party has become a local-tradition-turned-national phenomenon. People come to it from across the state. It was featured on MTV. Businesses (especially bars and restaurants) make a killing from it.

Canceling it or drastically changing it would result in a public outcry. (Horton even warns about riots, property damage, and police confrontations from cancellation in his memo.)

As for the ticket tax, it would have to be passed by the General Assembly to take effect. Obviously, UNC is opposed to it -- and its voice is powerful in Raleigh. It's never been enthusiastically championed by state lawmakers either.

But more importantly, the General Assembly's short session only considers "noncontroversial" bills likely to pass smoothly. This ain't one of them.

Of course, these things could always crop up again in the future. If you care about them at all, go to these public forums and tell the local politicos.

Help keep Chapel Hill from becoming the boring, stale town some of us came here from.

Columnist Jonathan Chaney can be reached at jhchaney@email.unc.edu.