In most of North Carolina if a person with ambiguous gender walks into a single sex bathroom, the reaction is “no harm, no foul”. A transgender person can quietly select by which gender they choose to be known.

However, Carrboro isn’t like most of North Carolina. Why solve a problem quietly and inexpensively if you can create a cause célèbre in the name of gender binary oppression?

Apparently, Section 14-19B of the Carrboro town code says that no person over five years of age should enter a town owned bathroom designated for the opposite sex unless performing maintenance.

Although no one has ever been cited for breaking this ordinance, Alderman Lydia Lavelle feels the pain of single sex bathrooms! All it took was a statement by an unknown transgender town resident for her to unfurl the social justice banner. Apparently, Carrboro must make unisex town-owned bathrooms available at all locations, or else it’s being socially unjust by practicing gender binary oppression.

Curiously, openly transgender mayoral candidate Ms. Amanda Ashley doesn’t feel that same pain, doesn't suffer from gender binary oppression in using town bathrooms. She isn’t concerned about the ordinance, saying, “It doesn’t make much difference to me”.

However, Ms. Lavelle remains undeterred in recognizing oppression, and won’t take it sitting down. She would rather the town investigate spending tens of thousands of dollars reconstructing bathrooms than have the governance board simply expunge the ordinance.

No word on how much money the town has spent, yet again, on its outside attorney to offer an, yet another, opinion.

Summer can be the silly season for politicians. But in Carrboro, the Boa works relentlessly to polish its reputation for unequal enforcement of the law and the shredding of private property rights to aid its friends. First we had the intervention of the Boa into the ability of the owner of an apartment complex to control who can park on private property. (See Pulp Abbey Court Parking Story.)

Now we have Mayor Mark Chilton and Alderman Lydia Lavelle interfering with the right of another apartment complex owner to provide security for its tenants. Estes Park is an apartment complex of several hundred units located off Estes Drive in Carrboro. It backs up to a railroad right of way (located in Chapel Hill) that heads south into Carrboro. Estes Park residents expressed concern to the complex management about children playing around the railroad tracks behind the apartments. Management responded by building an eight foot high, chain link security fence topped with barb wire alongside the railroad right of way. The fence provides a barrier between the railroad right of way (referred to errorneously by Mr. Chilton as a “trail”) and the apartments. According to Estes Park manager Mr. Brummett, the fence was also designed to protect residents from “security issues” (translation, homeless people camping in municipally owned woods) that have migrated off the railroad tracks. Many Estes Park apartments have been broken into by homeless people. Also, at least one Estes Park resident was mugged by someone fleeing across the railroad tracks.

In most towns in North Carolina, such security measures would be no cause for government intervention. However, the Estes Park owners made the mistake of cutting off access to Carrboro usufructers and trespassers living in the Village West development.

Mayor Chilton expressed dismay at the perimeter fence because it blocks a “frequently used path for walkers and bikers between northern Chapel Hill and downtown Carrboro”. Mayor Chilton has gone as far as to express concern over the new fence’s legality. He ignores the fact that plans are currently in the final stages for a sidewalk stretching from Estes Park to North Greensboro Street, a sidewalk that doesn’t include apartment complex land. (See Carrboro Citizen Fence Story.) In Mr. Chilton’s words, “The barbed wire, in particular, seems kind of hostile. This is not a prison camp or anything.”

Fueling Mayor Chilton and Alderman Lavelle’s efforts are the misleading class warfare statements of Carrboro’s usufructers. Although Estes Park apartments rent for only about $450 to $600 a month (a cost equal to about one half of a mortgage payment for an average Village West condominium, $154,754 in 2006) Village West resident Mr. James Coley wrote Mayor Chilton saying, “Can anyone really believe this is not partly about race and class?” (See Chapel Hill News Estes Park Fence Story. Also see N&O Estes Park Fence Story.)

Pulp readers are used to the convoluted logic of southern Orange. Village West owners have to look at the barbed wire fence. Unlike the Estes Park residents, on average, they don’t have English as a second language (ESL). They have higher incomes. They don’t have a barbed wire fence in their neighborhood. So they charge the Estes Park owners with race and class bias in order to be able to remove the unsightly eyesore and to be able to trespass across the homes of ESL, lower income residents.

The fence story has encroached into the world of the self-absorbed Friends of Bolin Creek (FOBC) “environmental” organization. (See Phictionary.) Reacting to the cutting of trees along the railroad right of way alongside the verdant backs of their suburban homes, FOBC members have also complained to Mr. Chilton. His response has been, “[t]hey cut down several trees for that stupid [e]stes [p]ark fence, [i] think. [c]hapel [h]ill also removed a few dead and downed trees recently.”

Once again Mr. Chilton is completely clueless. UNC has purchased about 8 acres in Carrboro/Chapel Hill for a new rail spur. The railroad is cleaning out its right of way all along Chapel Hill and Carrboro down to the new spur to be constructed.

The ostensible story in the local media is simple. As reported, “The town of Carrboro may soon join its neighbor to the east in keeping campaign contributors – and the candidates who accept their money – on a short leash.” (See Herald Sun Campaign Contribution Story.) The Boa can limit contributions in Carrboro elections to $250 per person per candidate, down from the state limit of $4000. Also, now contributors giving only $50 must be identified, as elsewhere in the state. (The Boa didn’t get the as low as $1 limit it originally wanted.)

A local Orange Progressive politician also tells a simple story. According to former Green Party member, little blue choo line cutter, vehicular weapons expert, tax-exempt business profiteer, and Carrboro anarchist alderman Dan Coleman, ”Carrboro elections have in the past been and are currently very affordable, This measure [allowed by recently passed S488], if we enact it, will allow us to keep them that way.”

Unfortunately, there is no sign of any problem with campaign contributions in Carrboro elections, except the use of outside district moneys. (See Lavelle Big Spender Outside Influence Pulp story.) The only person spending more than $3000 in an election in 2007 was Alderman Lydia Lavelle.

State Senator Ellie Kinnaird, who filed S488 in March 2007, is reported as saying “I think both Carrboro and Chapel Hill, and Orange County, want to be leaders and they believe strongly in campaign finance reform. They don't want money to influence elections.” Unfortunately, Senator Kinnaird is clueless in that she can’t give an example of where money has influenced an Orange election, choosing to ignore the use of outside district moneys by Commish Mike Nelson in his 2006 election campaign.

In order to take advantage of SB 488, the Boa must hold a public hearing and enact an ordinance. If adopted, the contribution limit ordinance sunsets 60 days before the next election. A new limiting ordinance can be adopted between 150 days and 60 days before filing for that next election.

Here’s the real story.

In order to maintain power in Carrboro elections, the Boa asked their favorite state senator to file an anarchist bill that would have allowed the Boa incumbents to maintain power by limiting campaign contributions to as little as $1 per person per candidate. The Boa would have been able to lower the contribution disclosure limit down to $1. The Boa could have done so at any time, even in the middle of an election, as many times as the Boa wanted. That’s what seemed fair and reasonable to Senator Kinnaird and to the Boa.

Unfortunately for Senator Kinnaird and the Boa, there is a state representative with Carrboro constitutents who doesn’t drink Orange Progressive Cool-Aid, Representative Bill Faison. Mr. Faison is responsible for changing S488 from a carte blanche maintaining power tool for the Boa into a law that supposedly is needed for a “problem” that Mayor Mark Chilton acknowledged to Representative Faison doesn’t exist. Mr. Faison required the contribution floor be no lower than $250, removed the $1 campaign contribution disclosure power, removed the ability of the BOA to change the limit during the election, removed the ability of the Boa to change the limit more than once in an election cycle, and imposed a sunset provision requiring reenactment before each election cycle.

So why isn’t the story of the reining in of an abusive anarchist Boa bill told in the local media? The answer is quite simple and in keeping with local politics. Mr. Faison is not in the favored political circle for southern Orange. So he shouldn’t get favorable media coverage. Moreover, his truly progressive actions highlight the abusive nature of the original overreaching bill wanted by the favored faux progressive anarchist Boa politicians.

The real lesson from this story is that the absence of “home rule” power for Carrboro forced an unreasonable, overreaching, anarchists bill to be recrafted into a tolerable, more reasonable bill. (“Home rule” refers to the ability of a local municipal jurisdiction to define its own powers. North Carolina doesn't allow “home rule”, and thus, the Boa had to go to the General Assembly to get the powers set forth in S488. But for a moderate legislator from Orange County (Mr. Faison), Senator Kinnaird and Representatives Insko and Hackney would have rammed through the original anarchist bill.)

Last year, the Boa asked Senator Ellie Kinnaird and Representative Verla Insko to introduce legislation in March 2007 that would enable the Boa to strangle the rights of Carrburbans to make campaign contributions and to do so anonymously.

Representative Insko’s bill (H.465) and Senator Kinnaird’s bill (S.488) would have enabled the Boa to require the disclosure of any campaign contribution, no matter how small the amount. Even a one dollar contribution could have been required to be disclosed. Moreover, H.465 and S.488 enabled the Boa to limit campaign contributions to as little as one dollar as well.

Only after Ms. Sharon Cook and Ms. Katrina Ryan, candidates in the Carrboro 2007 municipal campaign for aldermen, raised an objection to these bills, were changes made in the legislation. S.488 was amended to raise the disclosure threshold to $20 in May 2007. In July 2007, S.488 was further modified only to require disclosure of instate residents who contributed more than $20. Out of state residents were excluded.

About this time alderman candidate and self-described “level-headed” establishment annexee Ms. Lydia Lavelle started revealing her campaign contributions. While publicly for S.488, Ms. Lavelle didn’t release publicly the names of her individual contributors of at least $20. Instead she stuck to the statewide mandate of $100. While publicly wringing her hands on the influence of money in Carrboro elections, Ms. Lavelle turned out to be the largest receiver and spender of money in the Carrboro 2007 election. Showing her concern for keeping local elections local, well over half of Ms. Lavelle’s listed individual campaign contributions came from those living outside Carrboro. See Pulp Lavelle Big Spender Outside Influence Story.

Neither H.465 or S.488 passed in the 2007 legislature.

However, a bill did pass the legislature that limited the campaign disclosure limit to $50 statewide (H.1743, SL 2007-391).

Fast forward to the short legislative session in May 2008. The Boa is pushing for S.488 to become law, again seeking to reduce the rights of Carrboro citizens with regards to any other North Carolina citizen.

In an effort to tighten the Boa coils on diversity of thought, biggest four color glossy mass mailer and outside influence receptacle Aldermen Lavelle and choo-choo line cutter, vehicular weapons expert, political anarchist, apology challenged perp, and anger management specialist Alderman Dan Coleman met with Ms. Cook recently and told her the following:
1) the $20 disclosure limit by town ordinance (as opposed to the $50 statewide limit) is no longer part of S.488, the only active bill that can be amended and passed in this short legislative session;
2) the express exclusion of out of state residents from the disclosure limit by town ordinance is required by “federal law”; and
3) the Board can by ordinance cap campaign contributions to any amount less than the current $4000 state limit at any time.

Unfortunately, the Aldermen's statements aren't all accurate. No house or senate bill (including S.488) currently active in the legislature has removed the $20 disclosure limit. Moreover, SL 2007-391 (formerly H.1743) removed the distinction between out of state and in state residents for statewide campaign disclosures (excluding the language regarding Carrboro that was in that bill). According to the committee chairman, members objected to this artificial distinction that gave out of state residents more rights than in state residents. Yet, Aldermen Coleman and Lavelle remain adamant about being forced by “federal law” to have an artifical distinction.

Moreover, Aldermen Coleman and Lavelle couldn’t provide any examples of any excessive campaign influencing in Carrboro regarding campaign contributions except by those few candidates (such as Alderman Lavelle) who brought in most of their campaign monies from outside Carrboro (as revealed by disclosed individual campaign contributions). S.488 doesn’t address the problem of out of Carrboro monies influencing Carrboro elections. The Boa ignores a real issue to address a speculative issue.

Discerning herpteologists see further reasons to beware the Boa constrictor mentality. S.488 allows the Boa to change campaign contribution and disclosure limits at any time and as often as it desires. The Boa can wait until after candidates have filed to slither about with these limits.

No better demonstration can be given of how the local steno pool (local press and other media) works than the failure to report on restraints of annexation abuses practiced by the town of Carrboro in 2006 . The abuses have been well chronicled in the Pulp. Carrboro made a forced (involuntary) annexation of about 400 homes that violated seven aspects of the law (all missed by 2007 elected Carrboro Alderman Lydia Lavelle who lives in the annexed area and was in favor of the annexation as performed).

Annexation illegalities included:
1) Annexation was through a vacant half mile, non-urban area;
2) Annexation was without upgrading inadequate water pressure to the annexxed area;
3) Annexation was without providing road annexation much less road maintenance;
4) Annexation was without providing access to bond improvements (sidewalks);
5) Annexation was without providing adequate public safety protection (fire, police, and EMS) with a promised completed second fire substation not even under construction;
6) Annexation provided no value to annexed citizens; and
7) Annexation unduly burdened, without notification, the existing municipal citizens by not calculating all municiapl costs to bring all annexed citizens up to par in service levels.

Despite the embarrassment surrounding the annexation and a subsequent attempt to deannex some of the area annexed (through a petition to State Representative Bill Faison), the steno pool slept through the House Select Committee decision. No local paper presented the outcome of the committee vote with any weight or explanation.

After holding a series of public hearings across the state, a special House select committee on annexation moratorium voted Wednesday April 24th to recommend that a temporary moratorium be placed on all involuntary and satellite municipal annexations. If adopted after the General Assembly goes into its short session on May 13, the moratorium would be in place until June 30, 2009. The proposed moratorium was approved 10-2 by the committee. One of the two dissenters was UNC law professor and former Carrboro alderman Judith Wegener.

Amazingly, Professor Wegner told the house select committee that another blue ribbon committee paid for by your state taxes (with her also as a member of that committee, of course) is needed to study state annexation laws, water resource availability, and the role of counties. Although there have been some abuses, Professor Wegner felt that a three month legislative session was enough time to form the blue ribbon committee and to address any problems. She was more concerned about enabling municipalities to “face” major growth armed with annexation statutory weaponry.

The annexation moratorium still faces long odds before being implemented. The all powerful city and town lobbying group, the North Carolina League of Municipalities (NCLM), whose efforts are paid for by city and town taxes without voter approval of NCLM policies. The NCLM says that forced annexation is needed to maintain strong growth and economic vitality for many of the state's municipalities., an admission that many municipalities live beyond their means.

Chairman Goforth disagreed with the appraisal of the NCLM, ”So many cities are doing a good job with annexation in a calm, timely fashion, but so many are abusing the people of North Carolina.”

Several state representative committee members suggested that the annexation laws be changed to give more public input for annexation. The incredibly non-progressive idea of allowing people who own land slated for incorporation to receive more reliable service installation schedules, members said, and have an easier time getting city taxes deferred or refunded if timetables aren't met threatens existing NCLM autonomy to treat citizens as economic wage slaves.

House Speaker, developer, and bourgeoisie rentier Joe Hackney is against the idea of a moratorium.

In the summer of 2007, Carrboro alderman candidate and self-described “level-headed” establishment annexee Lydia Lavelle supported SB 488, a bill to limit campaign contributions in Carrboro to any amount desired by the Boa and to require naming individual contributors of at least $20, thereby making the dispensing of political retribution easier for Boa members and their surrogates. Ms. Lavelle is quoted as saying “I support the bill. If it can’t happen in this session, then I hope it can in the short session [2008].”

Almost four months after the November election, Ms. Lavelle hasn’t released publicly the names of her individual contributors of at least $20, as she advocated during the campaign. Instead she apparently prefers to stick to the statewide mandate of $100. It turns out the largest receiver and spender of money in the Carrboro election was none other than Ms. Lavelle.

Showing her concern for keeping local elections local, well over half of Ms. Lavelle’s listed individual campaign contributions came from those living outside Carrboro.

No word on whether or not Ms. Lavelle is among the critics of former US Senator Jessie Helms for his use of out of district money to win his elections.

No word on why the full cost of a four color, glossy, full page, mailer widely sent to thousands of Carrboro households doesn’t appear to be readily discernable in Ms. Lavelle’s campaign expenditure filings.

See Lavelle Campaign filings.

See Carrboro Citizen Campaign Bill Story.

With stunning duplicity, all of the winning candidates elected to the Boa last Fall discover a need for parking in the Carrboro historic business district. Only four months ago, Aldermen Joel Hall Broun, Dan Coleman, and Alderman (then candidate) Lydia Lavelle all said repeatedly in public forums that there was no problem with parking in the Carrboro historic business district. Bourgeoise mill house rentier, dense developer, and tax exempt expert Mayor Mark Chilton even ridiculed candidates in local political forums who begged to tell the reality.

Showing their respect for logical consistency, the Boa attended a retreat to ponder personal values, a Boa first, (see Poet Lariat - Boa Annual Tent Revival) and discovered that parking is a problem in the historic business district. (No word on whether or not “parking” is an emerging value in Carrboro.)

Now in a “dance with bricks” pirouette, the Boa wants a long term parking plan in place, most likely in place after they have approved the development plans of their political friends along Main Street, saving them the loss of profits from including adequate parking spaces.

Alderman Jacquie Gist leaped feet first into reality by saying that the new residential developments approved by the Boa in and near the district will force new residents to rely on parking on residential streets. (Translation, the Boa is approving residential development with insufficient parking allowances, a profit-enhancing move for its loyal local developer constituency.)

No word from Alderman Gist on how people visiting historic district businesses are supposed to park.

No word on apologies from Mayor Chilton now that he has reversed into the parking mess, perhaps awaiting the next election when all will be well again, at least until the vote is in.

See Carrboro Citizen Tent Revival Story.