Facilitator pick delays renaming talks

With plans still in the air for a committee facilitator, a starting date for the Special Committee to Consider Renaming Airport Road continues to be unfixed.

The Proposals for Facilitation Services applicants must complete have prevented discussion of the issue at tonight's Chapel Hill Town Council meeting and have caused some to ask for an extension.

"We can't get the committee started until after a facilitator has been selected," Town Manager Cal Horton said Friday.

Horton was supposed to make a report about the facilitator at tonight's council meeting, council member Sally Greene said last Monday. But the report was taken off the agenda Friday.

"All I know is what is on the agenda," said Greene, who is on the committee and is working with Mayor Kevin Foy and council member Edith Wiggins to find a facilitator.

"We are charged with selecting the facilitator, and the manager will negotiate the contract with whom we select," Greene said. "I hope the committee will start up soon and stay pretty much on track with the mayor's set timeline."

The committee is responsible for deciding whether Airport Road will be renamed Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The council decided at its Sept. 13 meeting that a facilitator was necessary to aid the town in settling what has become a controversial issue.

But council members wanted more than one option for the facilitator, which Foy's initial proposal did not include. His proposal also listed Sept. 23 as the starting date for the committee.

Foy, Wiggins and Greene will meet Wednesday to look at proposals from potential facilitators.

"I wanted us to have a choice and some competition for the job," Greene said. "We want the best, most reasonably priced choice."

But some who were interested decided not to apply for the position because of concerns with the town's Request for Proposals for Facilitation Services, or RFP.

"It is a complicated RFP," said Joan Guilkey, a local facilitator. "This is a year-old issue, and the town has already had three public hearings."

She also said the facilitator will do more than just conduct meetings for the 20-person committee because it plans to include input from everyone who applied.

Guilkey said interested facilitators got the RFP Wednesday and had until today to turn in a proposal.

"I would hope they would extend the due date," said Stanley Epstein, another local facilitator who was interested but did not apply. "I know two other people who I have talked to who won't be meeting the deadline."

Epstein said he would need more information to turn in an effective proposal. He said it also would help to know the committee's expectations and how strongly people feel about the issue.

Greene said she is sorry if problems with the RFP have prevented people from applying.

Composed of four members of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, four business owners or residents of Airport Road, two people familiar with the area's history and seven citizens at large - in addition to Foy, Greene and Wiggins - the committee was originally scheduled to make a recommendation to the council by November.

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