Man injured in fight on Franklin Street
Updated 10:39 p.m. - One man was injured and another arrested after a fight in front of Top of the Hill at about 4:15 p.m. Saturday.
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Updated 10:39 p.m. - One man was injured and another arrested after a fight in front of Top of the Hill at about 4:15 p.m. Saturday.
Starting today, any resident can apply to be appointed to a position on the Chapel Hill Town Council.Bill Strom left the seat Aug. 1, inciting public skepticism of his motivations — had he resigned a few days earlier, his seat would have been up for election, not appointment. Now the council will choose the seat.Some officials and residents said the council shouldn’t be announcing his open seat at 8 a.m. today without much notice or chance for public comment.“This is a mistake in terms of public perception,” council member Matt Czajkowski said. “You can explain it all the ways you want, but you still end up with the same trust issues.”Today’s meeting was called to discuss a time-sensitive property purchase, Mayor Kevin Foy said, but the town code requires that any open seat be discussed at the next meeting.“I don’t understand what the objection is to announcing it,” Foy said. “The substance of the matter is who gets appointed, and we’re just going to discuss the process.”Foy said he will set the application deadline at 30 days — the most time allowed by town charter. An applicant for Strom’s seat will be chosen after the Nov. 3 election, he said, but it hasn’t been determined whether the council that chooses will be the newly elected one or the one currently sitting.“I honestly think and hope the council will delay the decision so the new council will decide who they want to work with,” said candidate Gene Pease, who said he hasn’t decided whether to apply for appointment in addition to running a campaign for election.Candidates will not have time to apply for the seat if they lose the election. Anybody who wants to be considered for the appointment must have an application in by the 30-day deadline, well before Election Day.Four seats on the town council are up for election. There are eight candidates.Candidates Penny Rich and Ed Harrison, an incumbent, said they won’t apply for appointment.“I want to be elected by the people of Chapel Hill,” Rich said. “I do not want to be appointed by the Town Council.”Candidate Will Raymond would not comment and other candidates could not be reached.Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.
After putting out more than 30 applications to internships and government jobs with no luck, May graduate John Knechtel said he wishes he had experience as a restaurant server.
Get a sneak preview of two upcoming acts for Franklin Street Comes Alive! Fred Hagenberger performs Saturday, Aug. 29. The Drowning Lovers perform Friday, Sept. 11.
If Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy wants to challenge Richard Burr for U.S. Senate next year, he knows he has to finalize his decision soon.“It’s definitely time to be planning for a campaign,” Foy said.Though his candidacy still isn’t official, Foy said he’s talked to about 100 people — friends and political forces around the state — to plant seeds for a Senate campaign.“Some of them are pretty enthusiastic,” Foy said. “Others say, ‘Really sit down and think about this. It’s going to be a lot of work.’”The work is raising money, which could prove to be a challenge for a newcomer to state politics. But it’s a wide-open race right now on the Democratic side with no big names talking seriously about running, said Raleigh-based Democratic strategist Gary Pearce.“The way politics is today, it’s sort of unknown,” he said. “It’s unknown who’s going to make it in statewide politics. I could get in there.”Being mayor of a medium-sized town might not be a disadvantage, said Ferrel Guillory, director of the UNC Program on Public Life.“Everybody begins, ‘Oh, it’s local Chapel Hill, nobody has a chance,’” he said. “Chapel Hill is not an isolated area. It’s part of a big metropolitan area.”It’s still the money that makes the name, Pearce said. Foy said he hasn’t started raising it yet, though some have told him they’ll contribute if he makes his decision official.Pearce used John Edwards as an example of money’s effect. He was unknown statewide before his campaign for U.S. Senate in 1998. But $6 million later, he won the seat.“I don’t think any of these candidates have the money for that,” Pearce said. “But if it’s a wide-open race with people like Kevin Foy, (Durham lawyer) Kenneth Lewis and (former N.C. Sen.) Cal Cunningham, all will have about the same fundraising power.”Foy’s pitch: there’s only so much he can do from his office in Chapel Hill and as the chairman of the N.C. Metropolitan Mayors Coalition.“This state deserves to have a solid representative that can help us maintain our economic growth, our quality of life here, our physical structure and our environment,” Foy said.He said he wants light rail systems in the Triangle, the Triad and Mecklenburg County, he said.Pearce said he’s surprised the race hasn’t started heating up — it takes a long time to organize a campaign.“It’s past time,” he said.Foy said he doesn’t have a decision deadline, but he’ll allow enough time to prepare for a May primary.“It’s not too early to start planning,” he said.
Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Sen. John Edwards, said she opened the furniture store on Rosemary Street because she can’t afford to put off her goals anymore.She said she realized it partly because of the cancer, partly because she just turned 60 and partly because, after her husband’s widely-publicized affair, the kids need to feel that they are acting like a family again.“This store is something we’ve done all together,” Edwards said. “I’m not doing this as a passing thing. The things that stay the same are a comfort.” Red Window, her store at 400 W. Rosemary St., held its grand opening Saturday. Trinkets, tables and chairs, floral ceramics and decorative objects laid about the small store in no particular order Tuesday. A truck was unloading items from High Point, where Edwards purchases all of her merchandise.It didn’t have to be a furniture store, Edwards said. It could have been a button store or a stationery store.“I just needed to get on my own two feet,” she said.The grand opening brought plenty of shoppers, TV cameras and harsh questions, she said.Somebody asked about Edwards’ marriage four feet away from her 11-year-old daughter, Emma Claire, she said.“I get aggravated sometimes,” she said.”Her celebrity status has given the store an initial boost, but she doesn’t expect it to last.“All this stuff will die down,” she said. “I tell myself people get tired of reading about it and eventually people will get tired of writing it,” she said, referring to recent controversy surrounding the paternity of her husband’s mistress’ child and questions about whether the mistress was paid campaign funds to keep quiet about the affair.Edwards will admit she did sign a desk and a picture Tuesday after customers asked.She said she plans to continue speaking and eventually writing. But for now, the store is her focus.Edwards will split shifts in the store with UNC graduate Cameron Hughes.“It’s been a lot of fun,” said Hughes, who has worked for the Edwards family since the spring.Edwards consults with her 27-year old daughter and Hughes to check the trendiness of the products.“They’ll say, ‘No, we would never put that in our house,’” Edwards said.The younger Edwards daughter, Emma Claire, already loves to use the credit card reader by the cash register. “I envision this store turning into the sort of Chapel Hill landmark people remember,” Edwards said.Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.
Orange County and the town of Carrboro have had a hard time getting a hold of stimulus funds that larger counties and cities are receiving almost effortlessly.Because the county has a population of fewer than 200,000 and the town has a population of fewer than 35,000, both have to compete for funds. But larger counties and cities, like Chapel Hill, are entitled to money, assistant county manager Willie Best said.“We just have to constantly be applying for things, probably for the next two years,” he said. “It makes it more difficult for us because we’re competing against other places in North Carolina and across the country.”It’s hard to predict when the money will come in. Best will have to seek out opportunities to fund county projects as they come along for possibly the next two years, he said.Best said he hopes for an opportunity to use stimulus funds for broadband in rural Orange County and replacing lights in schools, but he’s not picky, either.“We’re sort of looking at everything,” he said.If he finds something applicable, Best usually informs a county department of its opportunity to receive the funds, then the department drafts a project proposal, he said.The county has received a total of $545,556 in stimulus funds, mostly for transportation, Best said Thursday.Carrboro is still waiting for about $403,500 in stimulus reimbursement for two sidewalk projects and a bus shelter project, public works director George Seiz said. The funds are allocated through the Durham-Chapel Hill-Carrboro Metropolitan Planning Organization.The stimulus funds the county has received so far apply toward projects it wouldn’t have spent money on this year anyway — light-transit buses for the Department on Aging. “We never would have bought anything this year or next year with the budget,” said Jerry Passmore, director of the Department on Aging. “We were fortunate. Our buses are falling apart.”The buses were indirectly funded through the money the Metropolitan Planning Organization got from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.The other projects the department has applied for and could get money for before mid-September include bike racks for buses, bus shelters in Hillsborough and transit software that would cooperate with Chapel Hill Transit’s.“With 100 counties in North Carolina and probably 60 or so with transit operations requesting this stuff, with rural counties asking for a lot of the same things we do, it’s very competitive,” Passmore said. “But the county doesn’t have money.” The Town of Chapel Hill, entitled to stimulus funds because of population size, already has received more than six times the amount of money received by Orange County.In addition to his normal work, Best lines up the potential projects with no idea how much the county can hope to receive or what new technologies or projects will earn the county stimulus dollars in the future.“It’s elusive,” he said. “A lot of the stimulus programs are still being developed.”Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.
Chapel Hill was the first town in the state to include sexual orientation as a category of hate crime law, as well as the first to elect an openly gay council member. And now, the Chapel Hill and Orange County Visitors Bureau is one of the first to invest in gay and lesbian tourism. "The bottom line is that we're trying to capture as many tourist dollars as we can," County Commissioner Mike Nelson said. "We're trying to reach out to a segment in the market that has been underserved in the past."
Victor Riviera immigrated to Chapel Hill from Mexico four months ago and is taking English classes at a local church to ease the transition. But he's already found a niche. Mighty Arms of Atlas, a UNC break-dance group, defies language and culture barriers in fostering creative freedom and hip-hop skills. "It's not a type of music, it's a lifestyle for me," Riviera, 20, said in Spanish. Wednesday, the group performed at Carolina Kickoff, formerly known as Freshman Camp. "We try to get a really good cross-section of life at Carolina," said Sean McKeithan, who organized the performance for first-years. And in Mighty Arms, the members are particularly representative. In addition to UNC students, the group includes dancers from Raleigh and N.C. State University, high school students and married performers, professionals and beginners, Latinos, blacks, whites and Asians. "I've never done any other dance like this where so many cultures come together," said Christi Ogu, an N.C. State student who started with Mighty Arms when she was at Chapel Hill High School. "We everywhere," said Chi Wiu, an East Carolina University student. Ogu said that it's inclusive because there are no rules, you just "break." It's not something you have to take a class for. "It's like an ecstasy for me because I feel like when I dance I can just let go of all my problems," Wiu said. The group was started by UNC students in 2003, and became an official campus group last spring, group President Anna Hibino said. She said they'll start to offer classes for dancing to house music on Saturdays at 3 p.m., in the Underground. But meetings usually are more random than that. Chapel Hill High School senior Daniel Sanchez often just heads to the Pit when he gets off his construction job, if he's not too tired. He lays down a linoleum mat and starts dancing, and sometimes people join. Hibino said times like that are the most rewarding. Saturday she was practicing in the Pit while people were moving into their dorms. "It's nice to kind of feel connected to the University and have people watching every once in a while," she said. Dancers in the group use hip-hop slang - they call each other b-boys and b-girls, and the "b" stands for break. When they compete, it's a "battle." That originated on the streets in New York as a nonviolent way of settling disputes, Hibino said. And there are some guidelines. "You have to look poor as hell when you go on the floor,' said Steve Lin of Raleigh. But the dancing is something everyone can do, Lin said "Everybody has their own style; it's very unique," he said. "All the positions that you put your body in, it ends up looking unreal." Contact the Features editor at features@unc.edu.
Click here to visit the walkers' blog. It wasn't easy walking 160 miles from Wilmington to Chapel Hill, especially when the trekkers ran out of water and nearly collapsed from the heat. But four men arrived at the Old Well on Friday in one piece with a story to tell. Two hundred thirteen years ago, when UNC's first student, Hinton James, made the same journey, it took him a week or two in bed to recover.
As the nation reacts to high gas prices, the Triangle-area public is embracing alternative transportation and adopting new habits. Triangle Transit will have to add buses to their fleet because they're reaching rider capacity, said Damien Graham, Triangle Transit's government affairs manager. "We're sort of entering into a new world," he said. "We have people standing on our routes now." Other transportation alternatives also are thriving due to skyrocketing fuel costs, which averaged $2.686 per gallon in Raleigh at this time last year and now average $3.671.
Multimedia: Pit Attack The Orange County district attorney's office already was handling several major court cases when former Student Body President Eve Carson was shot. One case has wrapped up, but several others still are making their way through the court system. Mohammed Taheri-Azar
CORRECTION Due to a reporting error, Wednesday's pg. 5 article "Commissioners hear school funds requests" incorrectly states that the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools' 2008-09 budget is $6.8 million. That is the minimum increase the district says it needs to continue operations at present levels. The district's full budget request is for $61,193,360. The Daily Tar Heel apologizes for the error. Representatives of the county's two school districts highlighted differences as they asked for money from the Orange County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday.
At WCHL 1360's forum to discuss town and University relations, leaders took pride in their collaborative accomplishments but worried about future changes in leadership. Projects like Carolina North and emergencies, such as former Student Body President Eve Carson's shooting death, have tested relationships between the University, Chapel Hill and Carrboro. And because there have been many opportunities for joint work, leaders have become comfortable with cooperation. "What the town does well and what the University does well are on parallel tracks now, and we're a growing community, a vibrant community," Chapel Hill Town Council member Bill Strom said. But with Chancellor James Moeser's retirement this year, regular turnover in the town council and five of 12 University trustees leaving next July, UNC Board of Trustees Chairman Roger Perry said he hopes new leaders will be able to sustain the vision, especially for Carolina North. "The current board has been in place a while and really understands where this is heading," he said. "Quite frankly I don't think we'll settle on a chancellor who doesn't understand that." He said leaders feel a strong sense of urgency to complete as many projects as possible by the council summer recess next year. "Frankly we still have a lot of issues to work out between the town and the University, like transportation, parking and access to the Carolina North campus," Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton said. Moeser said a foundational study on transportation is nearing completion. But not everything is going as quickly as planned. Strom said that it's taking a long time for UNC to figure out what Carolina North needs to be and that the visions of different groups working on the project often don't connect. At the most recent council meeting where Carolina North was discussed, developers thought they'd solved transportation issues when they included a widening of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in their plans, Strom said. But these aren't quick-fix issues, and a major street widening isn't something the town wants to do. "We're not asking for the frozen entree here," Strom said. "We're asking for true innovative cuisine, and it's taking a little longer than we thought." Growth in the town often causes conflicts between preparing for the future and preserving the character of the town, officials said. Moeser said the University faces similar issues. "We want people who come back to Chapel Hill to not say, 'What happened? Everything's different,'" council member Laurin Easthom said. Mike Collins, vice chairman of the Chapel Hill planning board, said this means fixing transportation issues so that all residents can walk or take the bus to travel. All of the transportation, parking and growth issues fit into conversations about Carolina North. "This conversation to me is so important because we will never see in our lifetime a development the scale of Carolina North," Orange County Water and Sewer Authority board member Gene Pease said. "If it's not done right, it's going to significantly change the character of this town and not for the better." Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.
It's a clash between a historically black community with a 100-year history and a 10-story sustainable development that hopes to push it into the future. And students in the United with the Northside Community NOW group sided with the community at their first meeting Wednesday. "All of the development was coming in so fast and residents felt very manipulated and left out of this process," said senior Hudson Vaughan, who volunteered in Northside through a communications class. The new group wants to host discussions about the development to raise student awareness. Rob Stephens, who has done oral history interviews with residents, described a nostalgia about the community and a history of loss through development. "Inevitability - that's the kind of sinking weight about all of this when we talk to people," he said. "We shouldn't accept that history's inevitable or that anything's inevitable." But Greenbridge Developments already has broken ground for its mixed-use development at the site along Rosemary Street. Some students who attended said they'd only heard good things about Greenbridge. The building will be 30 percent more efficient than most built today, said Frank Phoenix, a Greenbridge Developments partner who attended Wednesday's meeting. It will use recycled rainwater, lighting by daylight, green roofs and solar panels. Phoenix said that both perspectives on the issue are valid, and that Greenbridge hasn't thought up any solid answers to the conflict. "There is a cookbook for building green," Phoenix said. "There is no cookbook that says how to deal with the social equity aspects of development." Residents' property taxes have risen since development plans were finalized, Stephens said. He worries that many will stop being able to afford their homes. "People who might well be in debt can't afford lawyers that will tell them how much their homes are worth," Stephens said. Of the 98 residential units in the development, 15 will be available for low-income housing, Phoenix said. The one-bedroom affordable housing units will go for between $80,000 and $90,000. UNC NOW members said part of their mission would be establishing a comfortable relationship with the Northside community. Students who live in the neighborhood don't understand its history, while some residents feel as though they've been invaded, Stephens said. "This university is being blamed in many ways for the harm done to the community," said communications professor Della Pollock, whose class sent many of the founding members of UNC NOW into the neighborhood last year. "Our students started by forming a partnership with the Northside community." Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.
Student Body President J.J. Raynor said she knows she won't be able to end homelessness in Orange County during her term. But she's been researching the issue and familiarizing herself with community initiatives. She said she plans to boost student involvement and meet with community leaders. "So many students feel directly connected to the issue," Raynor said. "It's about being a responsible, caring and engaged neighbor, and it's so much larger than what you see on the street." There were 224 homeless people in Orange County, 71 of whom were chronically homeless, at the time of a 2007 survey by the Orange County Community Initiative to End Homelessness. "Change is not something the students can do alone; it's not something the community can do alone," said Chris Moran, director of the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service. "We need to bring forces together." Liz Parham, executive director of the Downtown Partnership, said she supports Raynor's plans to educate students about the issue. "Many of the initiatives out there . all take volunteers and commitment and time," Parham said. "I think that raising awareness is essential." Former Student Body President Eve Carson's administration encouraged students to donate to the Real Change from Spare Change program after a student government study found that 86.8 percent of students said they would be more likely to give panhandlers money if they knew where it was going. And now Raynor's team is in the process of evaluating what worked and what didn't. "We really need to sit down and say, 'OK, we had T-shirts sold and wrist bands. Was it successful?'" Raynor said. "And then we can beef up the student body outreach." Junior Chris Belhorn, who served on Carson's homelessness task force and now is co-chairman of Raynor's public service and advocacy committee, said he appreciates Raynor's commitment to researching to understand the issue fully before taking action. Raynor said she has started brainstorming with Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy about how to use resources to reopen conversations about homelessness. Many student groups have already become involved, and Carson Dean, coordinator for the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness, said the student body president should tap into the resources she already has. The Campus Y organized an overnight stay in boxes last month to raise awareness about poverty. And IFC's partnership with student groups, such as N.C. Hillel, allows them to keep their Carrboro building open two nights a week. "Students carry weight, they're passionate, and they have more time to make a difference," Belhorn said. "The student body president sets the tone." Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.
Student Body President J.J. Raynor said she wants to bring businesses downtown that will balance serving students and appealing to the community. Town officials said that they look forward to hearing her opinions but that business recruitment is a very involved task. "There are a lot of issues to consider," said Dwight Bassett, the town's economic development officer. "You may market one space 10 times before you gain success, and a lot of times bills fall apart." Raynor said that she'll send town relations cabinet members to the Chapel Hill Downtown Partnership's meetings to provide student voice and that the cabinet chairwoman is a Chapel Hill native. "They have a really good understanding that any development on Franklin Street has to be town- and student-oriented," she said. "You can have businesses that cater entirely to the students but those are the ones that are going to struggle in the summer months." Raynor has already been in contact with mayoral aide Carlo Robustelli regarding downtown. "Her input has been invaluable in terms of helping us think of ways we can help encourage and develop viable business that will help serve the community at large," Robustelli said. But though Raynor might have good ideas, her influence will probably not go far enough to bring a new store or restaurant, said Liz Parham, executive director of the Downtown Partnership. "She can bring a prospect to me, and I can research and see if they're interested, and they might say they're not," Parham said. "The business has to be profitable at the end, and there could be a situation where it's just too costly for a particular type of business." Parham added that there aren't very many openings for businesses downtown - vacancies are at less than 10 percent. "In most market conditions that's just business growth opportunity," Bassett said. The student body can have its greatest influence on downtown development by simply visiting the stores, Robustelli said. "Students have an incredible power in terms of what businesses they frequent," he said. "Certainly if students aren't visiting, the business will fail." Raynor has other plans for downtown, including instituting a bus route that will connect downtown Chapel Hill and Carrboro. "I want to create more interaction between those two places," she said. "If you're a female student and it's eight at night, it's really dark, and a bus would be safer." Transportation Director Steve Spade said he's been working with Raynor to determine how much this project would cost. "It's a good idea, but I think that when you get into budget considerations there's so much more to be considered than a good idea." Spade said. "I think that at the end of the day, we'll have something out there that provides students better options than what they already have." Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.
Chapel Hill resident Steve Dorozenski makes his wife nervous when he walks to work on Franklin Street early in the morning and back home late at night. After Student Body President Eve Carson was shot to death, Dorozenski, who owns Jack Sprat Cafe on Franklin Street, said he started to consider the danger of the dark alley he passes through on the way. And he wishes there were more police around. "I know it's impossible to make it completely safe, but the town officials should at least attempt to create a safe feeling," Dorozenski said. Police statistics show Chapel Hill experienced slightly more crime last year than the year before. But the rate of personal crimes - homicide, rape, robbery and aggravated assault - decreased by 1 percent from 2005-06 to 2006-07, according to the Chapel Hill police department's quarterly report. The only other homicide this year was the result of a domestic dispute, but police say Carson's killing most likely was random. The idea that it could have happened to anybody has prompted some to tread with more caution. Long-time Chapel Hill resident Matt Johnson, 20, said he started walking his ex-girlfriend home from classes or calling to make sure she was safe. Sophomore Lacey Campbell said she stopped going places alone late at night. And because sophomore Fallon Speaker will live off campus next year, she and her roommate plan to take only daytime classes. "The fact that Eve's a public figure, that she's such an accomplished person that touched so many people's lives, makes it different," Chapel Hill Town Council member Bill Strom said. "It forces people to confront the broad issues surrounding these circumstances." He said town officials are talking about how to improve safety. Because police haven't released details about the circumstances leading up to the shooting death, town officials are pausing before reacting specifically to the event, Strom said. The lack of information on Carson's death bothers Chapel Hill resident Craig Jackson. "They want to keep this village atmosphere for the town, and it's putting the public at risk," Jackson said. "If people knew what was going on, they'd know how to protect themselves." But Police Capt. Chris Blue said police are offering the same services they always have in the wake of Carson's death. They are available to answer questions or make safety presentations to organizations. "She was horribly victimized," he said. "We can do the things we all grow up hearing - telling people where we're going, not being alone in dark places. But it doesn't completely protect us from crime." And some areas are more prone to crime than others. According to police reports, 20 percent of all robberies in Chapel Hill since 2006 occurred on Franklin Street. Rosemary Street is the next most common, accounting for 10.3 percent of the robberies. Sophomore Laura Thompson, a UNC admissions ambassador, said she recently has been answering more questions from parents about Chapel Hill's safety. "Students sometimes think they're in this bubble of safety and that campus extends to Franklin and beyond," she said. "The town of Chapel Hill just seems like a community and so safe most of the time, but when people step off campus they need to be more aware." Thomas Buchanan, 32, has lived in Chapel Hill for most of his life. He said he's always felt safe, but he wishes more people used precautions. "Even after what happened, I'm still seeing girls walk home alone from the bars," he said. "They should have safety in numbers. . Because now I realize the importance of the precautions people are taking." Contact the City Editor at citydesk@unc.edu.